I just purchased the receiver a couple days ago and have been experiencing the syncing problem.  I have to agree with you TBoomer.  The issue with it not syncing is a power issue.  It doesn't work when people have it connected on the same hub as some higher powered usb devices, such as most gaming keyboards and mice and sketch pads.  A simple fix on MSs part would be for them to alter the design of this thing to where it uses an external power to power itself whether than leeching an ungodly amount off of our integrated usb hubs.  Other than that, it seems that getting an external  powered hub or adding a usb card is the way to go.  I'm on my way out as we speak to pick one up.  Lucky for me though, I work at a certain major computer store and get things at cost

That usualy means the batteries in the controller are going dead. The wireless headsets won't work with a controller thats dieing either.

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TAKE OVER THE WORLD WITH GAMES!

This is not the case when it comes to the problem at hand.  This is the wireless receiver not communicating with the controller due to a problem on the receivers end.  I tried the same controller on both my 360 and my PC with and without the powered USB hub.  I did not encounter a problem when I used the hub.

Well, I went out today and purchased an add-in usb card and plug the receiver into that and it works perfectly.  This is a power issue we're dealing with.  It's why when a system is booted with no other devices attached it works perfectly, yet the moment you plug something in that sucks a bit of juice, it stops working.  Doing what I did is probably the most effective and affordable options available.  A PCI usb card would cost 20 bucks or below.  It's cheaper than getting a hub and has a higher chance of working.

Well the whole reason I bought the Wireless Gaming Receiver and even the Wireless headset is because I wanted to use them for Ventrilo or Teamspeak while playing PC games. Even though I now have them working by using a powered USB hub, I'm still plagued by the poor quality of the headset, poor battery life and poor voice quality. Because of this, I'm currently waiting for a MSI Starkey bluetooth adapter for my PC and a Scala 500 BT headset to arrive. When they arrive I'll be retiring my MS wireless headset to only 360 use, using the new bluetooth setup for the PC, and tossing the god damn wireless gaming receiver in the garbage. Worst $20 spent, ever!

Well, I have sent a final email to Microsoft about the issues of this product and if I don't get a satisfactory response I will seriously think about what kind of action I can take.
It is not acceptable that I would have to buy a powered hub to get this device to work, even if I did, I am not convinced it would work. When I plug mine in it stops my headset working and when I shut down it gets stuck on "Logging Off" until I unplug the headset.

How can Microsoft get a product so wrong for an operating system they also made, they seriously need to rethink what they do in the future or they may well be losing a customer.

I was able to use mine fine by plugging it into the usb ports after the computer had started up. That was until a few days ago and now it wont sync anything no matter how i try (unplugging everything, reinstalling drivers etc etc).  I only have keyboard and mouse plugged in the usb (both microsoft)

Anyone found a reliable fix yet?

That was the same re-occuring problems people are encountering with the receiver.  It works fine when you first turn it on but when it turns itself off it is unable to resync.  My solution was as stated above a powered USB Hub which only the receiver is plugged into.

I've bought a PCI-USB card.

Put my receiver on it.

Now it works fine (got Vista x64).

Maybe Microsoft should tell about this issue, and also make a new controller device so we can shut it down.

god damnit, mine was working fine for about a week. and just this morning it started doing what everyone else's is doing. At least I found out I'm not alone. So I take it there's no solution yet?

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

Nope, and there probably never will be. Email MS and they tell you to phone, you phone them and they just say take it back to the place of purchase and deny it is their fault.  Bloody ridiculous!

that's really ****ing lame. I wanna play Halo 2 for Vista, but I suck with the mouse and keyboard. I guess I'll have to buy a wired controller now. That was probably M$ plan, to make us buy this crappy product, and then have to buy the wired controller anyway. What a bunch of asses.

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

I just use my Playstation 2 controller now which is wired but I prefer it to the 360's controller, it's a lot more responsive I feel and I have had no problems with it. I wanted this product because it's pretty cool to have wireless controllers but since MS have failed to give us a working product then that won't be happening.
Have you tried yours with a seperate powered USB hub, apparently that fixes it for most people?

what's a separate powered usb hub?

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

Hard to believe but I will confirm the powered hub as a resolution. After trying every combination of USB devices and ports I finally gave up and hooked up a small powered USB hub. It's a cheap little $30 Compaq branded device I got from Office Depot years ago. I unplugged the receiver from the PC, plugged in the hub and plugged the receiver into the hub. Before I could even reach for the controller it had already stopped blinking all four quadrants and set itself to device 1.

I'm running Vista 32 and I checked game controllers in the control panel. I can move the controller and the screen updates as expected. Next I synced up the wireless headset and it worked without a hitch. In fact it actually hijacked the system sounds and Vista thinks headphones are connected. I was a bit surprised when system sounds started comming out of the 360 headset, but all I had to do was right-click on the speaker in the tray, select 'Playback Devices', select the speakers and click the 'Set Default' button. Sounds restored to the main speakers.

For chatting in games I use TeamSpeak. It was very easy to select the headset for voice playback and headset microphone for voice input. Works like a champ, and for some reason I don't seem to have the quality problems with the headset as someone mentioned earlier.

It sucks that a $20 reciever ended up being a $50 purchase, but I honestly would have spent $50 to have this capability in the first place. I know that's not the point, and it still needs to be fixed, but I'm much happier now.

BTW, I wrote down all the device information in Device Manager before and after moving it to a powered hub. There was no change in the power bits, nor was there ever an error code. Power issue or not, the hub seems to work.

Ok, I too wish I had done a little research, but I was dumb and assumed (we all no what happens when you asssume don't we?) MS would have made it work well with a variety of devices. Do they have chimpanzees doing there testing? Anyway, I have Vista Home Premium X64, EVGA NF68 etc and Logitech MX5000 Bluetooth Desktop (becasue MS's BT solutions sucks) and low and behold, I can't sync my controller (and this is a couple days after my 360 died with three flashing read lights so I am already aggrivated, but that is another story). And shortly after trying to get this thing to sync my Bluetooth receiver goes dead and I have to reboot. Needless to say after 3 hours of cussing I took the POS back. Now I read that a powered USB hub "should" do the trick. Can anyone confirm this does indeeed work with the MX5000? I have no sympathy for companies like Creative, HP and Nvidia which are now just getting stable , or first drivers for Vista and they had plenty of time to work on them, but what does that say for MS???

The solution with the powered usb hub worked just fine for me, but still this isn't a "deal" to begin with.
If you think it should be a deal without finding a real solution to your products MS, start donating powered usb hubs to all of your X360WGR clients. I mean that.

Wow, I guess I'll have to be getting one of these powered USB hubs. That's pretty rediculous to me. I have to spend 50 bucks for all of that. I could've just gotten a wired controller for 40.

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

 

Yea same problem here, its been working fine for over 3 months, no problems switching between the 360 and PC, till last night and i have changed nothing.

So I tried a system restore to a week before and still the same problem. Then i tried a full uninstall / reinstall of the drivers and still I can't use the headset or the controller on the PC. It's just driving me mad.

And from what I have been reading all over the net it's a real big problem for lots of people.

Come on Microsoft get it sorted I want to spend my time gaming not pulling my hair out.

Well, I got a powered USB hub, and it does work. Which is stupid. Can anyone explain why that works?

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

 The 659th Elvis wrote:

Well, I got a powered USB hub, and it does work. Which is stupid. Can anyone explain why that works?

My only assumption is that the receiver does not have enough power off the standard USB peripherals so it requires a powered USB hub to give it that extra boost.  This would also indicate the reason due to the fact that it works fine when there is no other USB devices plugged into the system.

oh, didn't know it worked when there was nothing else plugged in. but that wouldn't help me anyway because my mouse and keyboard are plugged into that, and i don't feel like unplugging stuff all the time.

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

omg, this receiver friggin sucks. Now the controllers connecting, only after me re plugging it in. And when it connects, it doesn't do anything. I'm looking at the controller connected and nothing happens when I try to play with it. Almost as if the controller's broken, but I know it's not because I use it with a 360. What a pile of horse crap.

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

I had the same problem with windows xp pro, a sennheiser headset and the 360 controller. SCRATCHY SOUND upon plugging in the xbox controller. Changing to xbcd drivers did not help. The only thing that helped was a usb hub.

well, I got it to work. The powered USB ports didn't work, but what I did was take everything out of my pc and plug it into the USB peripheral, then plugged only the wireless receiver back into the PC. Works fine now, still too much effort for what it's worth.

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Games completed: 48
97% of teens won't stand up for God. If you're one of the 3% who will, put this in your sig.

Yip, that's pretty much what I did. Unplugged the USB printer and external drive. I then plugged the WGR back in and then tried the mouse (Logitech G7) and wow it still works. Checked the controller and it had already connected.

So I guess the receiver draws too much power. Typical M$ bullshit. 

I have tried all of the suggestions on this thread and mine still isn't working.  I have gaming rig, no printer attached, only one other device running off usb and a hefty 800W OCZ PSU.  Anyone been in contact with Trading Standards?  http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/index.cfm

I TOO have just verified the power issue. i had it hooked up to my mobo's usb but i have alot of wieght on my mobo and PSU, so u rewired the front usb panels to work again. (They werent plugged in because im lazy) and tried the plugs in the front and it worked fine.

This is definietly a power issue.  There is a story up on Engadget that links to this thread.  Glad I found this thread.  I have had this problem for the past few days, it just stopped working.  I had had it always plugged in all the time with my Saitek gaming keyboard, and a generic microsoft laser mouse.  After I moved my room around it stopped working on my computer, but it works perfectly fine on my moms computer and my dads computer.  Im going to try adding in a PCI - USB 2.0 card tomorrow to see if that fixs the issue at hand.  Ill let you guys know soon as I put it in.

My computer should be able to handle this no sweat, I have a 550W PSU.  I've been running SLi'd 8600GT's for some time now before the device went kerplunk!

P.S. - Microsoft hasn't said squat to me either :(

I had this issue come up in my first week of having the device, but then it went away.

Then it just came back tomorrow with a vengeance, and now NOTHING will get it working. I've tried reboots, having it bethe only USB device plugged in, and the above with EVERY USB port I have.

What the ***. Way to have the "Games for Windows" thing and make it not work. It's like Microsoft wants to get gamers off of the PC and onto their little overheating box of doom. (tm)