MotioninJoy (and later linux)

Stigg's picture

Semi-rant, but if you use MotioninJoy, please read.
I know, barf already.

I mentioned for Christmas that I received a Logitech keyboard and mouse. They are wireless via bluetooth. Simple plug and play. Or so I thought. They worked fine. Plug in the bluetooth dongle, power on the keyboard and mouse, and wha-lah, they work.

Until today. When I booted into Windows. They were completely unresponsive. I rebooted, didn't work. Plugged them in and out and didn't work. Had to go run and grab my old keyboard and mouse and downloaded the latest drivers, and they still didn't work. I discovered that they were registering as input devices, but weren't doing anything. While I was in there, I noticed that MotioninJoy, a driver that allows you to use the PS3 controller with your computer was still there, so I deleted that. Still didn't work.

I fucked around with it for awhile and resulted to googling my issues. I tried a few things and still didn't work. But, I did see during some diagnosis that the MotioninJoy drivers were still there. Ok, delete them again. More fucking around, more diagnosing, and... fuck. there are the motioninjoy drivers AGAIN. I swore I deleted every damned instance of them from my computer, but there they were. A quick google for something like 'motioninjoy bluetooth keyboard and mouse' resulted in a slew of warnings about MotioninJoy.

I won't go so far as to say that MotioninJoy is a virus (as many of the interwebz claimed), but they are a shady driver. You simply CAN NOT get rid of them without a system restore or fresh install.

The workaround is fairly simple, but convoluted at best. You have to delete the motioninjoy driver, then plug in your mouse and keyboard dongle and start them up. Which is easy enough... but not a simple thought, as to delete them, you are already using your other mouse and keyboard. If you reboot your computer, the motioninjoy drivers 'reinstall' (I don't know if they are actually reinstalling... but they are 'functional' when you reboot).

---------

So... now comes the reason why I had MotionInJoy installed in the first place. Awhile ago I emulated the NES, SNES, GB's, N64, PS1,PS2, and the Wii. The better solution for a controller (than the keyboard or the PS3 controller) is the Xbox 360 controller (since Microsoft has easy to use drivers for, well, Microsoft Windows), but since I don't have an Xbox I used the PS3, which the only drivers that work are the MotioninJoy.

Being super frustrated with MotioninJoy, I looked up how to get the PS3 controller working with Linux (specifically debian, more specifically Ubuntu). It's ridiculously simple. Run:
sudo apt-get install libusb-dev libusb-0.1-4 xserver-xorg-input-joystick
sudo apt-get update
and wha-lah, you are up and running with your PS3 controller. Use it as a mouse, use it in games, whatever. And no interference with your bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Comments



Still didn't school us on how to get rid of the drivers. It sounds exactly like my adventures in manually de-crapping peoples machines from their internet cooties.

Why would you make your drivers do that intentionally?

Anyways, probably some shit buried deep in the registry named something like stigg_is_a_tool.


Stigg's picture

You can't. Really. You delete them and immediately plug the bluetooth device in and their drivers temporarily take the place of the motioninjoy until you reboot without the dongle in, at which point the MiJ drivers get 'reinstalled'. It is shady as hell.

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