ryan, seems like an easy problem to fix but give us a little more to work with. What kind of joystick? What operating system, cpu, vid card, etc.
You should be able to go to control panel, game controllers and check to see that your joystick is in fact installed, then you can calibrate the joystick while you are there.
Assuming the stick is there in windows, go into game, on clipboard, select setup, joystick, then 'select joystick' and select your new stick. Now, once you selected the stick in the game, you need to calibrate it using the calibrate button -- same window you started from -- setup, joystick, only click calibrate. Follow the instructions.
