If your xbox 360 controller is battery powered (regular AA battery pack) and it’s super sensitive to powering off the the middle of combat, it could be a safety feature is causing you grief.
The AA battery pack is wired in series so the 1.5v AA batteries are connected together inside the pack for a total voltage of 3v at the ends sticking out of the pack, which make contact with the springs inside the controller when the pack is inserted. For safety, the battery pack has a small contact switch inside that connects the two batteries together once inserted into the controller. Remove the pack from the controller, and the batteries are disconnected. This ensures that shorting across the two exposed ends of the batteries won’t do anything because they are disconnected on the inside of the pack.
Nice idea… brilliant even. However, the switch is a simple flap of metal that contacts another simple bump of metal inside. Over time this becomes dirty and corroded and there is no way to really clean it without disassembling the pack, which is possible even though it’s not meant to be opened. Once this switch is fouled up, you’ll notice the controller randomly powers off even if the batteries are good… especially when setting it down or getting into some serious controllering and knocking the pack with your fingers. This enraged me to the point I took the pack out and tried to figure out what was going on.
The little plastic tab on the controller presses into the metal flap in the center of the pack, which pushes this metal flap into another metal bump inside the pack to make the connection.
I knew I had to take the pack apart somehow to fix it. I found this guy’s video on how to open the pack casing, which was really helpful.
The video is about cleaning the battery contacts, which may need to happen from time to time… but really the trick he missed was jumpering the two plates to bypass this safety switch. I never have batteries in the pack when it’s out of a controller, so for me this is not a safety issue.
Once the pack is in two pieces, do your cleaning but solder these plates together.
Nope it’s a simple mechanism with one thin strip of metal that gets pressed into another little bit of metal. Even brand new controllers could be sensitive to setting down too hard and powering off. This mechanism was never very robust to begin with, but over time it becomes extremely irritating.
Side bar. I have a wired xbox 360 controller with no battery attached to my pc… but this happenes to the wireless ones too. When pluged into usb and not. And these symptoms happen to me too. I assumed the joystic was pulling to much power. Usualy during a vibration. Disabling vibration and unpluging all other usb devices seems to stop it. I doult these 2 things are related tho…
Side note: I love the xbox360 controllers. I use them to play Switch games on PC. Recently I modified them to replace the aging battery packs with more modern LiPo ones, and added a USB-C charging port: https://chrz.de/2025/04/22/new-batteries-for-xbox-360-controllers/
Yeah some of those aftermarket cables have shoddy connections at the controller end of things, and since it’s a friction fit… you might benefit from doing some cleaning of both the controller contacts and the cable contacts. If you’re using the wireless rechargeable battery pack with USB cable you can pop on and off (I used to go this route), then the pack may still have this power safety feature in it, which could be causing issues. I know you can use the controller with the cable inserted but without the battery pack installed, but I’m not sure how the controller handles sudden loss of the battery while operating… you could test this theory by plugging in the cable with battery, then mid-game pull the battery out… see how the controller reacts.
It might also be two things… shit cable connections when using the cable and shit battery power safety feature when using the battery? Who knows.
Awesome! I just roll with AA alkaline since the rechargeable packs always kinda sucked… but I might reconsider.
hardware collection
I notice as I spend more and more time on this planet, I identify certain pieces of hardware that work great… so I latch on to them. My original Microsoft Natrual keyboard obession… Microsoft IntelliPoint USB mouse… and… another Microsoft hardware product… the xbox 360 controller. Hmm… I guess I’m some kind of Microsoft hardware fanboi… never put it together until just now.
That’s not to say Microsoft makes great hardware… they don’t… they make 99% dogshit like every company… but every once in a while they put out a fucking gem… and they are just bad ass workhorses.
Depends on how the power supply is designed, but making it so that it uses power from the cable if available while being able to switch instantly to battery power is really easy. So I assume that it would handle that situation gracefully.
I tend to do the same… And while I still hang on to a Microsoft mouse, it’s falling apart…
I tend to hold on to Asus ROG stuff and to Alfa WiFi cards…
I’ve had to replace the USB cable going into my IntelliPoint optical mouse twice now… but the buttons and sensor are still operating really well… though the sensor lens needs cleaning from time to time… tiny hairs cause chaos.
