This was essentially the solution for me too but with a minor twist.
There was a device I couldn't disable / remove called a Jumi Joystick. I found out it was for Jumi Controller, a virtual driver for controlling your PC with your iPod. Uninstalling the software (annoyingly the uninstall program is in the program's folder and not in Control Panel either) solved this issue. I can also now run with some other changes I'd previously made reverted; all compatibility options are now disabled for deadspace3.exe, the process's CPU affinity is set to all processors (default), and I now have all realtime virus protection enabled.
Thanks for that bobbobertonne and hopefully this helps anyone with an unremovable device or potentially some virtual driver running they've forgotten about.
