HFX 3.1.0 - Hammerhead FX Driver

HFX is a fully-featured driver for Hammerhead FX gamepads (connected via USB) running on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 & Vista. It provides rumble feedback, advanced programmability and support for multiple simultaneously connected gamepads.

HFX was designed with stability, flexibility and ease of use in mind. With the programming features of the HFX driver, setting up your games becomes a matter of set it and forget it.

Requirements

• One or more USB Hammerhead FX gamepads. Supported models include: SV-262A, SV-262E and SV-262F.
• Each gamepad must be connected to a USB port. This driver does not support gamepads connected via game port.
• Windows 2000, XP, 2003 or Vista operating system. (64 bit Windows is not supported.)

Installation

First plug in all of your Hammerhead FX gamepads. Then run setup.exe to start the HFX Setup Wizard. It will guide you through the installation process.

Note: The driver has not been tested or evaluated by the Windows Hardware Quality Labs and, as such, does not have a WHQL signature. During setup, Windows will display a dialog notifying you of this and ask if you wish to continue. You must select Continue Anyway in order to successfully install the driver.

Incompatibility with Ideazon Z-Engine

If you have installed the Ideazon Z-Engine, you will need to take an extra step to properly install the HFX driver. Before running the HFX Setup Wizard, open Task Manager and terminate the zboard.exe process. If you do not do this, the HFX Setup Wizard may hang while installing and the keyboard may stop responding to key presses. After the HFX Setup Wizard has completed, you may restart the computer in order to restart the zboard.exe process.

This appears to be an Ideazon bug. The most recent version of the Z-Engine that was tested is version 2.3.0.19.

Programming

You may customize the gamepad settings using the Game Controllers applet in the Control Panel.

In addition, the HFX Driver offers a command line utility that you can use to program your Hammerhead FX gamepads on-the-fly; making it simple to customize the gamepad settings for each game you play.

You may learn more about this powerful tool by running the following command from within a Command Prompt window: "hfx_set help"

What Is hfx_help.exe?

After installation of the HFX driver, you may notice that a new process, hfx_help.exe, is running. This process is part of the HFX Driver and is in charge of applying your settings whenever you log in to the PC or connect a Hammerhead FX gamepad. It also corrects erroneous data that may have been copied to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER section of the registry by Windows Vista.

Version History

• Version 3.1.0
  • Feature: Added support for Windows Vista.
  • Fix: hfx_help.exe was not properly added to autostart.
  • Fix: Calibration data left over from a previous driver could cause a problem.
  • Fix: Autofire settings may be improperly applied if a gamepad using global settings was previously using private settings.
  • Fix: Using hfx_set to change the settings for all gamepads did not adjust the settings of disconnected gamepads.
  • Fix: Session settings for disconnected gamepads were not reset when the user opted to "reload" gamepad settings for all gamepads.
  • Fix: Session settings may not be reloaded when logging back in using fast user switching.
  • Fix: The Rumble Strength option was not grayed out in the control panel applet when rumble was set to disabled.
  • Fix: After displaying the help file, hfx_set would wait until the help file was closed before the console could be used.
  • Fix: The descriptions in the version resource of each driver file are not very descriptive.
• Version 3.0.4
  • Fixed an error in the help file that could cause an error of "The Page Cannot Be Displayed" on some systems.
  • Applied a work around to the Setup Wizard to deal with the situation when the driver is successfully installed, but Windows thinks it wasn't.
  • Added custom sorting routine to guarantee that multiple gamepads will always receive the same enumeration IDs on future versions of Windows.
  • Fixed an error that would occur after installation and prevent deletion of the folder containing the HFX Setup Wizard until reboot of the system.
• Version 3.0.2
  • Initial Public Release

HFX Driver
© Marc Klenotic. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.klenotic.com/pl/hfx/

Marc Klenotic is not, nor has ever been, affiliated with Interact Accessories, Inc. Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 & Windows Vista are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.