Delving into the driver's binary signatures (reverse-engineered by the open-source community), the Microntek driver operates at the kernel level ( microntek.sys ). It hooks into the USB stack's IRP_MJ_INTERNAL_DEVICE_CONTROL to set the EXCLUSIVE flag on the device object. This is a legitimate, documented Windows mechanism ( IoCreateDevice with FILE_DEVICE_EXCLUSIVE ). However, if the driver crashes or fails to release the handle properly—common in poorly coded budget hardware drivers—the joystick becomes locked until a system reboot. This has earned the driver a reputation for being "sticky" on certain legacy chipsets.
Appendix B — Useful commands (Windows) microntek usb joystick driver exclusive
You can verify detection by running lsusb (you should see ID 0079:0006 ) and evtest to confirm the device responds to button presses. microntek usb joystick driver exclusive