How to release the 360 home button in Windows 10?

I’m having this problem in Windows 10 and i tried everything i read online but after the latest update i can’t fix it.

Basically, the home button in the 360 controller does random things in RetroArch when i use Windows 10.

In Windows 7 it’s all good. I set the button to bring the RetroArch menu and that’s all it does. But in Windows 10 it brings the menu plus one random function, usually different depending on the core. In Messen Core it sometimes pauses the game. In MAME/MESS core it sometimes brings the TAB menu. Other times it brings the sound DB slider. It makes using RetroArch in Windows 10 really inconvenient.

Is there a way to make Windows 10 stop using this button however it wants?

After some more searching i finally found a solution.

It involves installing an older driver for the controller:

The guide button doesn’t do anything weird for me in Win10. The only thing I did was disable it in Windows Settings, Gaming, Game Bar, “Open Game bar using this button on a controller: [Guide button icon]”. If you launch from Steam you’d want to turn off using it to open the overlay there too, and maybe turn off Steam’s Xbox controller support entirely even if you just have it running in the background.

I already had the “Open Game bar using this button on a controller” unchecked and it was still doing random things in RetroArch. By installing the 2009 version of the driver it fixed it though.

I now have new issues with this. The 2009 version of the 360 driver “releases” the guide/home button in Windows 10 and it doesn’t interfere with RetroArch. But it also makes games like Forza 7 unplayable because the pad doesn’t work. It needs mor recent drivers for the games to recognize the controller but newer drivers interfere with RetroArch.

Btw, it’s only RetroArch that gives me problems. I don’t see other programs having any interference. But now, whenever i press the guide button to bring up the menu, it tries to do something with the network (i see an error message about it) and toggles windowed/fullscreen at the same time, even though i have no hotkesy setup for those functions.

Edit: Ok this is weird… if i rename the “RetroArch” folder to anything, the home button doesn’t do any interference. If i rename it back to the default “RetroArch” the problem comes back. I tried a fresh RetroArch test install and the same thing happens.

OK i figured out that the issue has to do with “running as administrator”. If i disable this, the guide button issue goes away and everything is fine!

The problem now is that Hyperspin doesn’t work at all if you disable the administrator option. Launchbox runs fine and i can launch RetroArch with it without the guide button issues. But Hyperspin needs admin rights and when i launch RetroArch through that, the issue comes back.

What a mess.

Maybe disabling User Account Control in Win10 would fix your issues? It’s not really a recommended thing to do for security reasons though.

It’s already disabled.

Turns out the whole thing is random. Sometimes the button will be OK, other times it won’t. Sometimes Hyperspin will work without admin rights, other times it won’t. Sometimes changing the admin rights in Hyperspin will affect the home button and sometimes it won’t.

Another random fix that seemed to have an effect was to change the shortcut. Running Hyperspin from the shortcut resulted in the guide button in RetroArch to interfere. Running it directly from the folder fixed the issue. Making a new shortcut and running it from there also fixed the issue, though, if admin rights are enabled the issue comes back. And if any other program in the chain has admin rights (like running everything from Kodi for instance and that has admin rights) the button issue in RetroArch will likely come back again.

I really hate Windows 10.

I would check out something more modern like AttractMode and see if it has the same issue. I use Steam as my launcher and have no guide button issues there.