FitGirl Elden Ring Repack 1.06 Freezes Completely When Controller Connected

Title. Has been working fine for 40 hours of game play. As of yesterday, trying to run the game with my 8BitDo Ultimate (xinput or direct mode) hard locks the game. Seeing 2 year old posts reporting similar, but no luck trying any of the suggestions. Already reinstalled game, drivers, etc. No issues detected in other games. Thoughts?