Windower Breaks XInput/Steam Controller

Ok, I've been playing around with trying to get the steam controller working in FFXI. Since they just added XInput, I figured that I'd try that, lo and behold it worked in vanilla FFXI without any problems (I did have to swap A & B but that's w/e).

The issue starts when I load FFXI up through Windower in steam (which is required to use the Steam Controller). FFXI doesn't recognize the controller any longer, and I'm not able to pull up the steam overlay (which I was able to do in vanilla FFXI).

I'm not sure what might be causing this, but my suspicion is that since FFXI is being run through windower, it doesn't recognize it as 'FFXI' so it doesn't load the proper overlay.

Thoughts or suggestions?

Edit:
I'm able to use the Steam overlay when in POL, but not FFXI could it be an injection conflict?

I don't really have an answer for this, but I figured I would fill in some of the gaps, at least regarding the overlay which may or may not be related to the Steam controller issue.

With a completely default configuration, the Steam overlay shouldn't work at all with vanilla PlayOnline Viewer or Final Fantasy XI on Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or 10. It will work on XP. Here's a list of configurations which will work for the vanilla client.

• Running as a user with administrative privileges on Windows XP.

• Running as a user with administrative privileges with the UAC turned off.

• Right clicking, and running Steam as an administrator with the UAC turned on.

• Running Steam in XP compatibility mode with the UAC turned on.

• Configuring PlayOnline Viewer to run without administrative privileges, and then running Steam normally, with or without the UAC turned on. (Warning: this is not trivial to set up.)

Pretty much any other configuration will cause the Steam overlay injection to fail. I do not know if Windower 4 will work at all with the Steam overlay. Running Windower through Steam is certainly not a configuration we support.

How all of this might relate to getting the Steam controller to work is beyond me. I don't have one, so troubleshooting this is difficult, if not impossible on my end.

I'm running Windows 7 without UAC enabled. My FFXI version is from amazon, so I didn't install it through steam. I added FFXI to steam as a non-steam game and it works fine. I also added Windower just to see if it worked, and it does (though Windower doesn't have a steam DB ID#). As far as FFXI goes, I'm running using the non-windowed mode for FFXI, if that happens to make a difference to windower.

One of the biggest issues is that the Steam Controller really can't be used without Steam being active (it's their controller, so I'm not too surprised by this).

If I launch POL/FFXI through the steam client (both in desktop and Big Picture Mode) the steam controller is recognized and can be used (Big Picture Mode must be used to change the controller configuration on the fly). I'm able to access the Steam overlay in both POL and FFXI by using Shift+Tab.

What's interesting is that if I launch Windower through steam, I get the Steam overlay pop-up on the windower start page (which you can use Shift-Tab to see the Steam overlay but it dosen't work very well). You also get the pop up when POL starts. However, once FFXI starts up (after hitting Play in POL) Steam no longer recognizes that Windower is running, and it goes back to the library.

On a side note, I have the Steam Controller desktop config set to gamepad, so it is recognized correctly when I run FFXI Config through Steam. I'm also using the new Controller Alternate Setting E for XInput.

I'm by no means a programmer, so I can only tell you what I'm seeing and what I suspect is happening. Someone more familiar with windower or Steam would probably be able to shed some additional light.