minneyar: D:OS EE immediately crashes on startup any time I have a joystick connected. I've tried it with both a USB Xbox 360 control pad and a Mayflash Wii U Pro Controller adapter
Try uninstalling the drivers. The Xbox controller should certainly work; I'm not sure if it was a Mayfield adapter, but one person reported using a Wii U adapter fine in Xinput mode, but it caused a crash in Dinput mode, until they uninstalled the drivers (which were only needed for force feedback support).
If you check the Event Viewer, does that give an error code or 'Faulting Module' file name?
With controllers (and a USB hub) reported to cause this issue, the faulting module names have been ntdll.dll and EZFRD64.DLL.
- click Start (or WinKey-R or WinKey-W in Win 8), then type "event viewer" into the search box
- after starting the Event Viewer, expand 'Windows Logs' in the left column and select 'Application'
- in the center column, look for a recent error (maybe sort by Date and Time) for the game
- check the information under the 'General' tab below the list of events, starting with "Faulting application name..."