Had much the same problem recently but with a interact force feedback wheel.
It wouldnt even recognise it was connected and the game played but with no picture and garbled sound.
A friend who is a programmer got the latest drivers off the creative site and also updated the drivers for the graphics card and accelerator and hey presto it works.
Check out the sites for all the hardware in your computer(If you look in the DirectX folder fire up the DxDiagexe file and it will tell you most of what you have)
Uninstall the joystick,update all the drivers you can find, including the joystick and see if that improves things.
If you are still haveing probs drop me an email and i'll pass it on to my mate and see if he can shed any light on it for you