Anyone here remember "QuickJoy"?
I think that's what it was called. It was an old Windows 95/98 utility from CH Products(?) maker of joysticks. It let you configure different combinations of joysticks/gamepads/etc. you wanted your games to be able to see. In essence, it took the place of having to physically plug/unplug USB joysticks and gamepads when there were conflicts between different games and certain controllers.
So you could keep ALL your various USB game devices plugged in all the time, and just tell QuickJoy which ones Windows should be using at the moment. I think you could create "sets" of controllers, like different profiles, for use in different games. For example, use your rudder pedals and flightstick in a "Flight Sim" profile for Jane's Longbow, but just your gamepad for "Arcade" games.
I think what it did was to enable/disable the drivers for those devices on-the-fly in the Windows Registry, without having to unplug the devices. It was a godsend at a time before Windows XP. Of course, there were some games after XP that would benefit from something like that, too. I loved that utility, and swapped in/out of various controller profiles many times throughout the day.
Ah the good old days...