It's time for everyone's favorite topic again!

I am trying to play Freespace 2 for the first time. I have a Saitek X52 pro. No matter what, Freespace 2 will not even acknowledge that I have a flight stick attached. Nothing I do works. Here is the list of things I've tried:

Running Win7 x64
Win7 installed drivers for the x52 pro on it's own.
I tried playing vanilla Freespace 2, but the flight stick wasn't recognized.
I installed the latest version of Freespace Open with the Launcher v5.5g.
Freespace 2 did not see my flight stick.
I downloaded and installed the latest official drivers for the x52 pro.
Freespace 2 did not see my flightstick.
Launcher v5.5g seemed to be old, so I uninstalled everything from the game directory.
I reinstalled Freespace 2, the latest version of FSO, and the wxLauncher.
This launcher worked better, installed the MediaVPS mods, and detected my flight stick.
Freespace 2 still did not detect my flight stick.
I've tried xPadder, but it did not support half the buttons on the stick, so that's not an option.

Any help is greatly appreciated. This is absurd.

Would you believe about 30 minutes after posting this, it started working? No idea why, all I know is that after that second full re-installation, I decided to try to Launcher 5.5 again, and it worked. Been playing since.
Game is amazing.