After months of trying to get USB gear (CH) to work on Windows8 I have finally succeeded...But! Ya gotta jump through hoops.
As you know in previous posts on my PC the USB gear showed up in control panel, were recognized and would not work.
Couldn't calibrate in windows 8.....they would not respond. Now by saying recognized they were listed in devices on the control panel screen.
Their Icons were there but did not function even immediately after starting the system. I did in power management disable Win8 from
arbitrarily powering down the USB ports and hubs. Even so...the CH gear would not respond even though Control Panel saw them.
Now the solution I found someone is going to have to explain to me. It does not make sense. Here goes............
After starting windows I go to control Panel in Win8 and select devices. As I said before the CH gear shows up as XBOX controllers but
recognized as CH USB gear. I then right click on the icons one by one and remove the devices. After doing so I restart the PC and
all three USB CH controllers work. They can be calibrated in windows and they work in game with my controller mappings etc.
and will continue to work very well until I shut down the PC. After shutting down the PC and restarting sometime later again the controllers
will not work and I then repeat the remove devices etc. and they again work fine

BTW I am not using control manager. I used it before and it caused my system to lose the USB mouse....go figure.
Splain Dat Lucy?