new thrustmaster t300 1st problem

rizzee · Jan 15, 2015

this is what i just had it would not calibrate then all of a sudden after 10 mins it worked fine..not sure if this is going to happen again but who knows.

Terry Rock · Feb 6, 2015

I would return that wheel on just the possibility that the shaft is now compromised...having hit the stops that hard.

Brandon Wright · Feb 6, 2015

Mach said:
I wondered whether manually resetting the DOR would help?

or This might help give it a kick in the ***

Sorry if that's no help at all...

I tried the first one, no difference. The second one is worth a try though, I've not done that.

Terry Rock said:
I would return that wheel on just the possibility that the shaft is now compromised...having hit the stops that hard.

Hit the stops?

Michael Parnell · Feb 6, 2015

Mine hits the stops hard , but not any harder than the DFGT I had for 3 years.
I had the same deal with the FFB on GSCE and just reversed the setting to negative.
After playing around with this chart some I got it all working right with settings on normal.
For the formula cars though I put the setting on high.

Brandon Wright · Feb 6, 2015

I still don't understand what you guys mean by "hit the stops". Do you mean the max rotation in each direction? My wheel hits those everytime I turn on the PC so I have to presume the wheel is plenty capable of surviving such a thing.

rizzee · Feb 6, 2015

Brandon Wright said:
I still don't understand what you guys mean by "hit the stops". Do you mean the max rotation in each direction? My wheel hits those everytime I turn on the PC so I have to presume the wheel is plenty capable of surviving such a thing.

IF YOUR WHEEL CALIBRATES VERY HARD AND FAST I WOULD TAKE IT BACK THATS WHAT MINE WAS DOING AND IT WAS THE SERVO CAUSING THE PROBLEMS...it only took shopto 2 days to pick it up and send a new one which was good...

now if your wheel calibrates like mine in this vid take it back

rizzee · Feb 6, 2015

it should calibrate nice and softly if normal.

Brandon Wright · Feb 6, 2015

It calibrates firmly, but not like in that video. Mine doesn't spin nearly that fast either. I have noticed that I can hear a bit of a noise when it spins during calibration now, the first week or two it was pretty quiet but now it kinda sounds like a DFGT (slight sound of gears turning).

Lancey · Feb 7, 2015

I must be a lucky SOB, my T300RS has not given me any sort of trouble at all and I've had it since late October. Very happy with it. Touch wood it stays trouble free.

Skazz · Feb 7, 2015

Brandon Wright said:
By reflashing, do you mean reinstalling the T300 driver? I have done that, didn't change anything. I've still had no response to my email to Thrustmaster five days ago, starting to get a bit frustrated.

Sorry, I meant use the firmware updater which is installed alongside the driver, and apply firmware 24 again. Just in case the firmware is in some way misbehaving.

The boot loader method is intended for emergencies, but the normal firmware update tool which you will see installed with the Thrustmaster drivers software is something quick and easy to do.

Brandon Wright · Feb 7, 2015

Hmmm, I don't think I've seen that. I'll have to look for it.

Brandon Wright · Feb 7, 2015

Skazz said:
Sorry, I meant use the firmware updater which is installed alongside the driver, and apply firmware 24 again. Just in case the firmware is in some way misbehaving.

The boot loader method is intended for emergencies, but the normal firmware update tool which you will see installed with the Thrustmaster drivers software is something quick and easy to do.

I'm not finding it?

Mach · Feb 7, 2015

Mine is in the guillimot folder...I think..however ya spell it..I'm not in....but it's in one of the program files folders.

Brandon Wright · Feb 8, 2015

I seem to have made some progress. I tried a restore to earlier date, the oldest date was only a few weeks ago but I gave it a go. It seems to have mostly mended the problem. I noticed it uninstalled some bits from GSCE and this problem seemed to arise when I installed GSCE so maybe something with that game was causing a conflict? I'm not certain it's fully mended but it certainly feels a lot better and I can drive around. I did a couple hours in AC with several cars I'd driven recently and didn't notice any of the abnormal behavior.

RichardHessels · Feb 10, 2015

Did you try different USB ports. Sometimes devices work better on USB2 ports.
USB3 ports can have compatibility issues.

Brandon Wright · Feb 10, 2015

Yes, I tried both my USB2 ports and two USB3 ports, no difference. Thrustmaster recommends using USB2 so that's where I keep it. Still not sure what happened but reverting to an earlier save date on the PC seems to have mostly fixed it. I suspect it's something to do with GSCE so I've not tried that game yet to see how it feels as I don't want everything to get broken again. At least I can race now with the wheel feeling mostly ok (still don't think it's quite right).

8 days and counting since I emailed Thrustmaster, still no response.

RichardHessels · Feb 11, 2015

It would be really strange that a game that works as Direct-X client has any influence over the workings of a piece of software or hardware while it's not loaded in memory.
This seems more like a Thrustmaster driver issue on your side.
The device-driver or the windows registry got messed up somehow.
If it would be a firmware issue the problem would still be there.

Brandon Wright · Feb 11, 2015

Richard Hessels said:
It would be really strange that a game that works as Direct-X client has any influence over the workings of a piece of software or hardware while it's not loaded in memory.
This seems more like a Thrustmaster driver issue on your side.
The device-driver or the windows registry got messed up somehow.
If it would be a firmware issue the problem would still be there.

How can I go about troubleshooting/fixing that?

RichardHessels · Feb 11, 2015

First see if you have the latest drivers and firmware for your motherboard and wheel installed.
Btw, never use the drivers that came with the wheel.
Best is to throw away that CD instantly, it's already outdated by the time you received the wheel.

Than I would try to fix it in trough registry editor - regedit.exe
But you more or less have to know what you are doing, so you don't mess up the ini files.
Because when you do, you could make your windows not startup at all anymore.

If you are very careful not much could go wrong, don't blame me if it does..
Anything related to thrustmaster would not make windows startup fail.

First uninstall all Thrustmaster drivers.
Restart, than go to the search box at the start menu, type regedit.exe, and click that.
With CTRL-F and search for Thrustmaster, you can find all the first register that has a relation to Thrustmaster.
Right click on the value under the name tab (look at my screenshot), than choose delete.
Than pressing F3 it finds the next line with Thrustmaster specific values.
Remove all the lines that contain any values related with Thrustmaster.
When regedit can't find any thrustmaster lines anymore and everything is removed.
It should now be completely free of Thrustmaster drivers and erratic values.
Restart the computer (always a bit anxious if it will startup).
Than re-install the latest version of the drivers.

I can't give you any guarantees, but if the problem is than still there it's probably a hardware problem with the wheel.

Brandon Wright · Nov 18, 2015

So, 9 months later and things haven't gotten any better. My wheel started behaving like the video in the OP and I sent it back to Thrustmaster about a month ago for repairs, hoping that would finally solve my problems. They said one of the ffb engines/motors had gone faulty, they replaced it , tested it, and all was good. I got it back last week, first thing I noticed is the screw hole where the desk clamp screws in was crooked and now I could barely open the clamp wide enough to fit on my rig. I managed to get it on there, but it was a lot harder than it had been previously. Also, I noticed that the wheel now wobbled if I pulled on it, like the connector between the rim and base was loose, but it was fully tightened. Not a huge deal, but shoddy for sure.

I get it hooked back up and it feels great! A nice, smooth weight to it, I can feel suspension moving, I can feel tires scrubbing, I can feel it get lighter when understeering but it still has some weight and is telling me what my tires are doing as they lose grip. Then after a couple days I notice that when understeer happens it's going really light again, and a day or two after that it's gotten so bad that at the first sign of understeer the wheel just goes limp and flops over like someone unplugged it from the power source, it's a miserable feeling. Now, any time I move the wheel past the 9:00 or 3:00 position the wheel just loses all of it's force/resistance and feels like crap. It felt great last week and I haven't changed any settings, but now it's rubbish (happens in all of my sims).

You can kind of see it in this video, once the wheel goes past 9:00 or 3:00 the wheel just flops over and loses all weight/force/resistance. I'm back in contact with Thrustmaster, the gave me a couple things to try when I get home this evening, but I've pretty much lost confidence in them and their product. If I can for sure determine that this is a problem with the T300 and not with my PC then I'm probably just going to toss it in the bin and take advantage of the CSWv2 Black Friday Deal next week.

Brandon Wright · Nov 19, 2015

Small update, I notice if I turn the auto-center setting in the profiler to "by wheel" instead of "by game" then there is suddenly weight to the wheel (thought it feels a big generic and gets too heavy in the turns). But when I change it to "by game" then the wheel goes light in the turns again. Anybody have any idea what could be causing this? Does this sound like a software or hardware issue?