Barrie,I would suggest that your system is struggling given the specs you post, and scenery such as Gary's Heathrow, Stanstead etc will stress your system, depending of course on your FS settings.You are correct in thinking FS is CPU intensive but the graphics card also plays a role and I think a 32MB card, coupled with a 1.4 CPU is somewhat underpowered for complex scenery like Gary's and the B-25.I have the trial version of 'BT' (still waiting delivery of the full version) so will see how I get on over Stanstead.In case you are not aware of it, there is a program on the web called 'enditall' which allows you to quickly 'kill' any background programs so that your system can concentrate just on FS. Do a search for it, I'm not sure of the down load location and I know it works on Win9.x but not sure if it works on later OS's.As to the patch for Gary's scenery, I have the patches installed for 'London Airports' and the scenery file dates are 11-14/2/03 so check the dates you have and if earlier then you nedd the patch.Thanks to Ian for the note about possible frame rate hits, I had not heard of that.Hope you resolve the stutters and enjoy smooth flying in 'BT'.Rgds

Hi Vulcan,Thanks for your comments. I'm sure you're right about my system being marginal, and it's amazing how quickly you become outdated. As usual it's all down to money, or lack of it. I wish I knew more about building your own system, but from what little I do know the problem usually is compatibility between the various parts that make up the whole.The chap who built my current computer did say that to upgrade the CPU would mean a new motherboard as well as new graphics card etc. In other words he was saying start again with a new computer. I'm sure it will eventually come to that but not just yet (Still recovering from purchasing BT, sorry Bill!). My biggest dread is the possibility of having to reinstall FS2k2 because of other factors. Besides as I have stated, the problem isn't really that bad to justify a change at the moment. If I regularly suffer any more crashes then we will have to think again but I am confident that won't be the case.I have heard of End it all and used to have it with FS2k but haven't tried it since.I was under the impression that Don said the updates for UK2000 were causing problems, or did I read that wrong? Again I'll check that out.Anyway thanks for your opinion and assessment.Regards, Barrie

Barrie,There are reports, and I have experienced, huge frame rate losses at certain UK2000 sceneries after patching.My example was Biggin Hill, where pre-patch I was getting 11-15kps on my system with a complex aircraft (the Flight1 Meridian, to be specific - BT never causes me any fps problems that I have come across yet) and post patch I got an incredible 0.1fps and yes, the decimal point is in the right place!!!Turn off UK2000 and it is fine. Use a simple aircraft, it is fine. The mixture of the two is a total disaster, however. My CPU is an Athlon XP2000, so I suspect that with a slower CPU than that, the effect of even small glitches at airports will be greatly exaggerated.Ian P.:-halo

Hi Ian, :-hmmmAre you saying not to patch UK2000 sceneries? That's how I read it.I now am pretty sure I did patch them. Should I reinstall these sceneries without the patch?Regards, Barrie

Barrie: I've just spent around 20 minutes pottering around over Duxford and EGSS in both Briefing Time and the Meridian. Although I didn't experience any lock-ups, I did get several very quick pauses while the more detailed UK2000 scenery loaded - notably Stansted, which caused about a half second pause on my system.What I have done since this thread started is tried to solve the problem that I had, in case the same is affecting you. I now seem to have achieved this goal and, although I still get a major frame rate hit at Biggin Hill, with a slightly less severe one (-1fps) at Stansted, I now have a usable setup.What I did was to totally uninstall all 5 UK2000 sceneries. I then re-installed them, but didn't launch FS and didn't use the installer to add them to the scenery library. I then patched them all, using newly downloaded patch files, again not booting FS between installs, but this time allowing the installer to add the scenery to the library.This appears to have all but cured my problem. Might be worth a go if you do trace yours to a clash with the scenery?"November Fife Six Zulu, final to land, zero-six."Ian P.:-halo

OK Ian, Thanks, I'll look into that one. Gary doesn't seem to be aware of any problem according to mail I received tonight.Barrie

Hmm. I was led to believe he was... :-(Have you got any further isolating the glitch?Ian P.:-halo

Hi Ian, Well I flew BT from Reading Regional to Andrews AFB and this is the default scenery which is rather bland of course, ie not much detail. This ran perfectly smoothly not a hesitation anywhere. So it's obviously the complex UK scenery that's stretching my system I think.Bill has suggested that I ought to be running a 64Mb card and upping my 512 of DDR Ram to 1Gig, so I shall look into that possibility.Mind you, it's not desperate I feel, I get away with most scenery and I can always lower the options sliders a touch. I already have scenery shadows off but I do like aircraft shadows onI also have the impression that closing down the programs running in the background including the virus checker does improve things.BTW how do you get on with the videos? I think they are very interesting but I had a problem running them with both WMP and QuickTime player. So on Bills advice I opted for Real Time player and that works perfectly.I envy the guys who had a ride in her. Yes Bill, where did you get that hat? I want one! :-lolRegards, Barrie

EndItAll. A Flightsim essential file... ;-)Unfortunately I can't seem to find a download link at the moment. :-(A 64Mb card is definately worth the effort. I paid GB

Hi Ian,Yes I have seen adverts for the card you mention for around

Hi Barry !If you take the top off your PC, you can easily tell if your graphics card is AGP. The slot is usually brown, and there is usually only one of them. If your card is in one of the 3-6 PCI slots and there doesn't appear to be any one slot unique from the others, your motherboard doesn't have AGP.Just for comparison, look at the current Abit boards here:http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/at7max2/If you enlarge the photo of the AT7-MAX2 board, the AGP slot is the single mid-brown vertical one bang in the middle of the board.From looking at the adverts in the UK, almost all current graphics cards are listed as being AGP, the older PCI types being very difficult to find.Alastair

Hi Alastair,OK, thanks for the info. Yes my MB is AGPBarrie