[ DOCS ] / 10 · TROUBLESHOOTING
The fixes for the issues that come up most. If your problem isn't here, skip to Support.
Open joy.cpl from the Windows Run dialog and confirm Xbox 360 Controller for Windows appears in the list. If it does not, the ViGEmBus driver isn't loaded — run the installer again; the driver step is at the end.
If the controller appears in joy.cpl but the game still doesn't see it, the game's input system may be looking for a specific pad type. Steam Input is a common cause — disable it for the game in the Steam library properties.
ViGEmBus is missing or failed to load. Click Re-run installer in the dialog, or download the installer again from the homepage and run it — the driver step is idempotent.
On rare occasions an anti-cheat (Vanguard, BattlEye) will unload ViGEmBus mid-session. Closing the game restores it.
Check that you've pasted the full key (no leading or trailing whitespace) and that this device has internet access. Activation is a single HTTPS call to Polar.
Limit reached means every device slot on this key is already in use — deactivate one of them from the Account tab on the original PC, or contact support with your order ID and we'll reset the slot.
PhantomPad's hooks suppress input only while the toggle is ON. If the title-bar pulse is grey/off, press F8.
Games that run with an elevated process (admin / anti-cheat ring 0) can sometimes bypass user-mode hooks for specific keys. That is a system-level limitation, not a bug in PhantomPad.
Settings, profiles, license cache, and the rolling log live in %APPDATA%\PhantomPad\. Paste that path into Explorer's address bar to open the folder.
The log file is app.log (and app.log.1 after one rotation). When you contact support, attaching this file gives us the engine state when the issue happened.