My Xbox 360 has a habit of “thinking” I have pushed left on the thumbstick when I haven’t. That is, an action on screen mapped to the “move left” action will occur with out me telling it to do so.
I talked to a co-worker yesterday, and he says he has the same problem.
Also, my Batteries seem to die too fast, and the ring around the Xbox Guide button circles around a lot. I have a guess at what is going on, but I don’t want to bias the answers.
Have you tried re-synching with the console?
Whoa, one of my three controllers pushes left, too! I figured it was just “one of those things” and have learned to deal with it (mostly be using the other 2 controllers and leaving that one as a glorified charging cradle.) It doesn’t do it constantly, but often enough to be annoying.
The issue is that its center point is mis-calibrated. The center point is slightly off from where the stick sits when it is at rest. I had this issue with a controller I had purchased from a third-party once (honestly I don’t remember whether it was a 360 controller or some other console - I’m not sure the 360 allows third-party controllers), but the only solution was a new controller.
Moved Cafe Society --> the Game Room, using a well calibrated controller.
What’s going on is that your batteries are dying. When the lights start to flash around the center button, push it. On the screen that pops up you’ll see above the upper-right hand corner of the menu a battery shape. The lights start flashing when the first of three battery life indicators disappears. You still have lots of battery life left, but have a spare set ready for when they die.
Those controllers absolutely eat batteries, though. So when you’re not using it, turn it off. It will do so itself, but in the meantime it’s using juice.
Remove the batteries as well when you turn it off. I had a controller that still ran down the batteries when the console was off. I don’t worry about it anymore now that I have a charger, but even so i still unplug the pack due to habit.
I’ve worn through a few controllers. Might that be an issue?
Currently, one of mine has a right thumbstick that drifts a tiny bit up and to the left.
Yeah. It’s basically controller wear and tear - the controller no longer understands where “center” is. This CAN be caused by the stick being off-center when the controller is turned on - for example, if the controller is upside down on the sofa and the stick is pressed to the side, but that’s pretty unlikely on a wireless controller that you need to be holding to power on. (Does happen with wired ones though, presumably because the console figures that wherever the stick is at power up must be “centered”). You might be able to use this phenomena to counteract the effect you are having though - try holding the stick slightly to the left while powering on.
That said, if the centering “spring” or whatever the controller uses to return to center is broken and doesn’t do a good job of centering the stick, well, it’s probably replacement time.
WRT to the battery issue: Behold, the clever solution. Seriously. I run all my Xbox controllers (and my remote controls, and pretty much anything else that wants AA or AAA batteries) on rechargable NiMh batteries. Works flawlessly, so long as you always have two more batteries than you’re actually using. 
Yeah, rechargeables are a must with a wireless pad. Some people go for the MS packs (either “quick charge” or “play and charge”) but someone out there at a techie site broke open an MS battery pack and found it’s pretty much just rechargeable AA’s inside (with a little circuitry to take care of the charging and whatnot), so might as well go for a reliable brand like Duracell or Energizer instead of some brand MS got for cheap overseas.
And I’ve heard nothing but complaints about the “play and charge” cables and how quickly they fail, for what it’s worth.
As for the sticks, I never had an issue with my official pad, but I also have two wired third party pads (one a MadCatz, one a Hori) and they both have issues once in a while. But oddly just with the left stick, never the right. They both have decent d-pads, though, unlike MS’s abominable one.
Re: Rechargeable Batteries : I had some, but they BARELY fit into the official factory included wireless controller battery pack. This fit is so tight, that I concluded there must be a better / more elegant solution.
Erm…my rechargable batteries are exactly the same size as every other AA battery I’ve ever used. o.o
I use re-chargeable batteries also. Had an issue with two new controllers recently where the trollr would switch itself off. The battery housing was a wee bit loose on each and this was causing the problem. I taped them up for a bit before getting fed up and replacing them.