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Controlling Windows w/ gamepad like a PS3 or XBOX

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PrincessBridget:
I hope this is the right spot for this... Ok so I have a dream! :D I've been attempting this for years off and on and after seeing PS3/XBOX and PC Media Center stuff. I sooo want to control the whole PC from my gamepad with the *buttons* and not even touch the mouse! Kinda like the PS3 XMB thing. I'll explain...

My goal is to be controlling my PC completely through the gamepad, away from the PC, without using any sort of mouse (even virtually), or the keyboard. The gamepad buttons will push certain keys and shortcuts. That's actually where I'm at, but I have to remember a billion buttons and combinations. I'd like a nice interface that let's the A button play/go/etc on whatever item is selected, and the B button cancel. Basically I want the computer to be like a game console with menu navigation! I hope I'm explaining this right...

Media Center on Windows 7 is really nice and would be nearly *perfect* if it would handle all files, but it only sees the files it wants to see, and for example I can't navigate to a "foreign" .vgm music file. Media Center can be completely driven by keyboard I think, and therefore gamepad if you use Joy2Key or Xpadder. It even has a virtual keyboard that you can navigate with the arrow keys and push A and it'll type it.

Soo if I'm making any sense here, is there possibly a Media Center kind of thing out there that would let me navigate the whole computer like Windows Explorer would, except in a nice Media Center interface with full gamepad or at least keyboard control? Every Media Center I've used seems picky about what it will actually see and launch.

The best I've gotten to controlling the PC with just gamepad is using Xpadder with like every button and a half mapped to a keyboard shortcut. Like, Flip 3D is Triangle+Left/right, close tab is tap Select, close window is hold Select, scrolling through a page is the left analog stick (PS3 controller). A bunch of stuff like that.

skwire:
Have you looked into any media center software?  If not, here are a few to get you started.

XBMC
Boxee
TVersity
Media Portal

PrincessBridget:
They're not really what I'm after... they're all being specific with what they handle. I want to just use the whole computer in an alternative way with a gamepad, and having a good UI like a media center does, would be nice. Butttt I don't think a media center is the word for what I'm after...

skwire:
The problem you're going to find is that the regular Windows interface is simply not designed to be controlled with a gamepad.  Good luck.

PrincessBridget:
Yep... I found that out a long time ago! So I thought you people would know something about it, or am I really that one-in-a-million?

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