Incorrect “New Hardware Found” messages on booting XP Pro

I’m running XP Pro SP2 v.5.1.2600 on a Dell Pentium 4 3GHz with 1GB RAM.

Since I installed a USB joystick, every time I boot it up the system:

1) tells me in a pop-up on the Start bar that it’s found a new device, (almost) correctly named

2) opens a dialog to install drivers, on which only the Cancel button is not greyed out

3) when I’ve cancelled #2, pops up another message to tell me that there have been problems with installation and the device may not work properly.

This sequence occurs each time I boot up, whether or not the joystick is connected to the PC. I should add that the joystick works perfectly when it is connected.

As you can imagine, this irritates me a lot. Any ideas on how to stop it?