Joystick stops working

[RupertVonHentzau]

I am using my old and still quite trustworthy SpeedLink "BlackWidow" flying offline with an Acer notebook.
CloD runs well lately on med to high settings using most of the helpful hints gathered here. I even dared to switch to "original textures" with no problems up to now.
But (maybe since latest official patch last year) once in a while I find the joystick not working right from the start of a mission, nor when returning to options/settings in the menu, and now even within a running mission.
I then shut down the computer and return to CloD after restarting, most of the time with my joystick responding again.

I get this only with CloD and THINK it might be game related - not a problem with the hardware. I was downloading the latest drivers but found a documented bug for the one I used (Win 7/64 bit) to get the SpeedLink joystick working. So I had to return to default.

Anyone with a similar experience or even a solution?