Maintaining Files During Development
During a development cycle, unused and out of date .ini files may accumulate due to frequent action map changes, Microsoft?DirectInput?reinstallations, multiple users, and other normal development situations. These files could possibly cause unexpected mappings or reports of "recent" (DIEDBS_RECENTDEVICE) for devices that would not be expected to return that value. For this reason, it is good practice to occasionally delete any unused .ini files. These files can be found in C:\Program Files\Common Files\DirectX\DirectInput\User Maps.
Note The procedure suggested above is meant to be performed only manually during a development cycle to ensure that the development environment is in a cleaner state. A shipping application should never delete user maps as this could result in the loss of a user's preferred settings.