Wow, where to begin. I guess back in October of last year when FSX was released. Man how I wanted to rush out to Best Buy and pick up my copy the day it was released. I fought off the urge.After waiting three weeks I could no longer stand it. I hadn't read anything terribly bad about the product other than it was slow on some user machines and decided that my current rig would handle it just fine. After all, I'm a PC Technician by trade and an extreme MSFS guy by night. Been so for the last 20 years.Well, after installing FSX on my system I was made painfully aware that if I wanted to run this sim at acceptable frame rates I would have to ante up and build a new system. Something the wife fears is my mentioning the fact that my simulators are having a rough time on any of my PC's. She has learned over the years that when this starts to happen large quantities of cash are about to evaporate into thin air. So the time had come to build a new rig and FSX was the catalyst. How do I break it to the wife?I spent several weeks researching the latest technology that would have the best possible chance of running FSX acceptably. What I wound up building was this;Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.6Ghz (Now Overclocked to 3.75Ghz running @1.55v)4GB Corsair 800Mhz Ram (Overclocked to 900Mhz with 4,4,4,12 timings running @ 2.1v)EVGA NForce 680i MainboardEVGA 8800GTX 756mb RAM (Not overclocked. It doesn't need it)Creative X-Fi Gamer soundcard750 PSUTwo Maxtor 500GB 7500RPM SATA HDDsOne Western Digital 300GB HDDOne Plextor SATA DVD-RW+ DriveA serious heatsink (air cooled)All New CH Products USB HotasTrackIR Pro 4.0And a new desk.Total cost? $3,700 not inclucing the desk or my copy of FSX Deluxe. I have an awesome wife. But, My last system was 6 years old running a 2.4Ghz P4, 1GB Ram and an ATI 9800 Pro Radeon. A little long in tooth but it served me well. So, it was definetly time to upgrade.Anyway, I build my new box and burn it in for three days. I then start the overcocking process. After spending two weeks bumping up the voltages, FSB and clock settings I find the sweet spot. This is a montser machine no doubt. I couldn't wait to install my sims. Patience, let it burn in. I waited another week and did a battery of tests. Aquamark3 on this machine gives me a 187.21 mark. It is a monster.I then begin the arduous task of migrating all of my data and game files and add-ons over to the new system. Went without a hitch. I installed LOMAC and add my add-ons. Fire it up and was instantly blown away. This machine will run LOMAC with all sliders set to full @ 98FPS over highly populated areas to 280+FPS over the countryside. "Insane", I say. Like a little boy on Christmas morning I eagerly began installing my other demanding games and mods, GTR, GTL, IL-2+PF+AEP and then the mother of all resource hogs, FSX. Surely my system would destroy it. I guess you can bet where this is going huh? LOL.Anyway, I get FSX installed, fire it up and am instantly blown away. Not by the beauty of the sim but the FPS counter. A mere 16FPS at major airports with sliders set to mid-level. Depression sets in. Arrgggg!So, I begin the task of researching the forums and started the tweaking process. Much improvement was made. I have gone from averaging 16FPS to 45+FPS over major cities, 31FPS at major airports with traffic and 78FPS over water. Not bad. Especially when you consider that I am running the sim at 32-bit, 1920X1440 @ 85hz, 16xAA and 16xQ anisotropic. Very impressive indeed. It's what I live for. :-)So, there I am, basking in the pleasures of my knowledge and skill. Proud of myself for making all of the right choices in hardware and having the ability to mod the game with the many tweaks suggested by many members across many forums. Then Satan himself finds his way into my machine.This Satan that I speak of is well known in the forums. I believe his name in the forums is "Activation." Ahhhhhhhh! Run for your life. And I did. Matter of fact I still am. And I'm getting tired.After having FSX tweaked and running for 2.5 months I began adding my payware aircraft and some of the great utilities out there. One of which is GA-Traffic for FSX. This is a really neat utility that allows you to generate traffic.bgl files using your installed GA aircraft. Have you ever seen an airport loaded up with Carenado, Dreamfleet and Eaglesoft aircraft? Take my word for it. It's very cool. Only problem is the size of the textures on some of these aircraft bring FSX to it's knees. Fortunately, GA-Traffic will create an AI plane out of any plane in your inventory that weighs less than 14000lbs. It will convert the texture to below 1MB. Awesome, lets give it a go. And I did. I loaded up the sim and took a look around at my local airport in Louisiana. Wow, this is great. It was awesome. The game locked up after flying for 30 minutes or so and didn't CTD, it rebooted my system to POST. Not good. No problem. I will remove the GA-Traffic.BGL file and isolate the aircraft with the bad texture. I removed the file and relaunched FSX. What's this? This product is not activated? What? Ok, how do I reactivate it? Oh, I can't because the sim doesn't ask me to when I launch it. It just gives me this error. Then I go into the menu and force a reactivation. It asks for my Product ID and I type it in. "This product ID is not Valid." What? This is a joke right? Nope, I'm in h3ll. Let's uninstall and reinstall. Nope, uninstaller.msi error 1603. Not cool. Hey Microsoft, what did you do to my computer?So, back to the forums it is. I find out that MS has a work around in the form of MS KB928080. Let's give it a try. Great, I run the utility, reboot the system, place my FSX disk 1 in my DVD drive and am asked to repair or uninstall. I repair. Then I launch the game and walla, it asks if I want to activate the product. I choose yes and type in my product ID. Awesome, it's accepted. I then proceed to play FSX.Thirty minutes later my screen goes black and a message pops up telling me that the demo of FSX is over. What? Arggggg! I'm getting angry now. I repeat the steps above and the same thing happens over and over. So, I unistall the game completely and reload a vanilla copy. 30 minutes later I'm told the demo is over. I click "ok" and the screen remains black. I alt-tab to another program and what is waiting for me on my desktop? Why, it's the "this product is not activated error." Ok, we have a serious problme here. I click "ok" to this message and you'll never guess what happens next. FSX pops back up full screen waitng for me to unpause it. I unpause it and I can fly right where the demo mode error kicks me out. Okay, something is really fubar here. After another 20-60 minutes I get booted out of the game and my system reboots.I call Microsoft, what fun. They have no clue. I am asked to disconnect all my USB devices and test. Problem persists. I am asked to reinstall the game in a different profile, problem persists. I am asked if I have "reloaded Windows?" I reply, "Not gonna happen, you guys can give me an RMA and a refund before that happens. Get an engineer on the phone that understands the registry entries for your activation code. I'm not reinstalling Windows so this can happen again. This system is new and I am an expert at building systems. This is a FSX specific issue. I know it, your engineer team knows it and the entire internet community knows it. None of my other programs or games do this to my system." Silence on the other end. Eventually I am told that a level 2 engineer will call me within the next two days. Microsoft has a very big problem on their hands folks. And as of this writing they have no clue as to how to deal with this. My suggestion to all of you is do not mod this game until this activation nightmare is corrected by MS. Otherwise you run the risk of the game locking hard and rebooting your sytem. This is the activation "kiss of death". You have been warned.

Assuming you are running those 2 SATA drives in a RAID configuration, it might be the RAID controllers firmware/driver. I know there's a known problem with some manufacturer's RAID controller (don't remember which though), and I believe they have an updated driver and/or firmware that fixes the problem (the problem is basically that the RAID controller keeps readjusting/moving the MFT and that makes the hardware comaparison logic keep thinking you've got a different computer than the last time it checked, thus wanting to be activated again).

I'm not setup in RAID although my MB is capable. I did update the BIOS just two days ago after reading about a problem on the EVGA NForce680i SATA controler that indicated issues with large file transfers across the SATA bus. After that BIOS flash, my onboard sound began crackling and popping in FSX. So, At first I thought the lockup issues were related to that. Before, I just got general CTD's after installing GA-Traffic. After the BIOS flash was the hard lock and reboot thus throwing FSX into the eternal activation loop. I've since purchased a SB X-Fi Gamer soundcard and disabled the onboard sound. I still get occasional lockups.

GA-Traffic for FSXThere have been several reports of this program resetting FSX to the demo mode. I have no clue how that happens or if it is true.But several people have made the report, and a complete uninstall of FSX, repair of the OS (restore to backup point at install of the OS), registry clean and reinstall of FSX was required to bring back their system.

I have a similar system, same motherboard (BIOS P24) but with an Extreme X6800 CPU and two Evga GeForce 8800GTX KO ACS3 video cards. I

>controller keeps readjusting/moving the MFT and that makes the>hardware comaparison logic keep thinking you've got a>different computer than the last time it checked, thus wanting>to be activated again).>>Tim, I do not have RAID and yet I was victim to this EXACT same error. Possibly the cold crash and reboot I had, was the result of some hardware issue (such as stressing overclock), but that's beside the point--the sim should dust itself off and restart WITHOUT having to re-Activate. Seems to me that something isn't quite right with the Activation if it can't handle a simple crash and reboot...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

I don't have/use GA-Traffic for FSX, but when I had the crash/reboot and activation problem, I had to do the following:1) boot WinXP to Last Known Good Config2) completely uninstall FSX3) reinstall FSX, and use up another 'free' activationI attempted to use the KB fix, but that fix caused my XP to become unbootable. That's why I had to go to Last Known Good.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

>Wow, where to begin. I guess back in October of last year>when FSX was released. Man how I wanted to rush out to Best>Buy and pick up my copy the day it was released. I fought off>the urge.>>After waiting three weeks I could no longer stand it. I hadn't>read anything terribly bad about the product other than it was>slow on some user machines and decided that my current rig>would handle it just fine. After all, I'm a PC Technician by>trade and an extreme MSFS guy by night. Been so for the last>20 years.>>Well, after installing FSX on my system I was made painfully>aware that if I wanted to run this sim at acceptable frame>rates I would have to ante up and build a new system.>Something the wife fears is my mentioning the fact that my>simulators are having a rough time on any of my PC's. She has>learned over the years that when this starts to happen large>quantities of cash are about to evaporate into thin air. So>the time had come to build a new rig and FSX was the catalyst.>How do I break it to the wife?>>I spent several weeks researching the latest technology that>would have the best possible chance of running FSX acceptably.>What I wound up building was this;>>Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.6Ghz (Now Overclocked to 3.75Ghz>running @1.55v)>4GB Corsair 800Mhz Ram (Overclocked to 900Mhz with 4,4,4,12>timings running @ 2.1v)>EVGA NForce 680i Mainboard>EVGA 8800GTX 756mb RAM (Not overclocked. It doesn't need it)>Creative X-Fi Gamer soundcard>750 PSU>Two Maxtor 500GB 7500RPM SATA HDDs>One Western Digital 300GB HDD>One Plextor SATA DVD-RW+ Drive>A serious heatsink (air cooled)>All New CH Products USB Hotas>TrackIR Pro 4.0>And a new desk.>>Total cost? $3,700 not inclucing the desk or my copy of FSX>Deluxe. I have an awesome wife. But, My last system was 6>years old running a 2.4Ghz P4, 1GB Ram and an ATI 9800 Pro>Radeon. A little long in tooth but it served me well. So, it>was definetly time to upgrade.>>Anyway, I build my new box and burn it in for three days. I>then start the overcocking process. After spending two weeks>bumping up the voltages, FSB and clock settings I find the>sweet spot. This is a montser machine no doubt. I couldn't>wait to install my sims. Patience, let it burn in. I waited>another week and did a battery of tests. Aquamark3 on this>machine gives me a 187.21 mark. It is a monster.>>I then begin the arduous task of migrating all of my data and>game files and add-ons over to the new system. Went without a>hitch. I installed LOMAC and add my add-ons. Fire it up and>was instantly blown away. This machine will run LOMAC with all>sliders set to full @ 98FPS over highly populated areas to>280+FPS over the countryside. "Insane", I say. >>Like a little boy on Christmas morning I eagerly began>installing my other demanding games and mods, GTR, GTL,>IL-2+PF+AEP and then the mother of all resource hogs, FSX.>Surely my system would destroy it. I guess you can bet where>this is going huh? LOL.>>Anyway, I get FSX installed, fire it up and am instantly blown>away. Not by the beauty of the sim but the FPS counter. A mere>16FPS at major airports with sliders set to mid-level.>Depression sets in. Arrgggg!>>So, I begin the task of researching the forums and started the>tweaking process. Much improvement was made. I have gone from>averaging 16FPS to 45+FPS over major cities, 31FPS at major>airports with traffic and 78FPS over water. Not bad.>Especially when you consider that I am running the sim at>32-bit, 1920X1440 @ 85hz, 16xAA and 16xQ anisotropic. Very>impressive indeed. It's what I live for. :-)>>So, there I am, basking in the pleasures of my knowledge and>skill. Proud of myself for making all of the right choices in>hardware and having the ability to mod the game with the many>tweaks suggested by many members across many forums. Then>Satan himself finds his way into my machine.>>This Satan that I speak of is well known in the forums. I>believe his name in the forums is "Activation." Ahhhhhhhh! Run>for your life. And I did. Matter of fact I still am. And I'm>getting tired.>>After having FSX tweaked and running for 2.5 months I began>adding my payware aircraft and some of the great utilities out>there. One of which is GA-Traffic for FSX. This is a really>neat utility that allows you to generate traffic.bgl files>using your installed GA aircraft. Have you ever seen an>airport loaded up with Carenado, Dreamfleet and Eaglesoft>aircraft? Take my word for it. It's very cool. Only problem is>the size of the textures on some of these aircraft bring FSX>to it's knees. Fortunately, GA-Traffic will create an AI plane>out of any plane in your inventory that weighs less than>14000lbs. It will convert the texture to below 1MB. Awesome,>lets give it a go. And I did. >>I loaded up the sim and took a look around at my local airport>in Louisiana. Wow, this is great. It was awesome. The game>locked up after flying for 30 minutes or so and didn't CTD, it>rebooted my system to POST. Not good. No problem. I will>remove the GA-Traffic.BGL file and isolate the aircraft with>the bad texture. I removed the file and relaunched FSX. >>What's this? This product is not activated? What? Ok, how do I>reactivate it? Oh, I can't because the sim doesn't ask me to>when I launch it. It just gives me this error. Then I go into>the menu and force a reactivation. It asks for my Product ID>and I type it in. "This product ID is not Valid." What? This>is a joke right? Nope, I'm in h3ll. Let's uninstall and>reinstall. Nope, uninstaller.msi error 1603. Not cool. Hey>Microsoft, what did you do to my computer?>>So, back to the forums it is. I find out that MS has a work>around in the form of MS KB928080. Let's give it a try. Great,>I run the utility, reboot the system, place my FSX disk 1 in>my DVD drive and am asked to repair or uninstall. I repair.>Then I launch the game and walla, it asks if I want to>activate the product. I choose yes and type in my product ID.>Awesome, it's accepted. I then proceed to play FSX.>>Thirty minutes later my screen goes black and a message pops>up telling me that the demo of FSX is over. What? Arggggg! I'm>getting angry now. I repeat the steps above and the same thing>happens over and over. So, I unistall the game completely and>reload a vanilla copy. 30 minutes later I'm told the demo is>over. I click "ok" and the screen remains black. I alt-tab to>another program and what is waiting for me on my desktop? Why,>it's the "this product is not activated error." Ok, we have a>serious problme here. I click "ok" to this message and you'll>never guess what happens next. FSX pops back up full screen>waitng for me to unpause it. I unpause it and I can fly right>where the demo mode error kicks me out. Okay, something is>really fubar here. After another 20-60 minutes I get booted>out of the game and my system reboots.>>I call Microsoft, what fun. They have no clue. I am asked to>disconnect all my USB devices and test. Problem persists. I am>asked to reinstall the game in a different profile, problem>persists. I am asked if I have "reloaded Windows?" I reply,>"Not gonna happen, you guys can give me an RMA and a refund>before that happens. Get an engineer on the phone that>understands the registry entries for your activation code. I'm>not reinstalling Windows so this can happen again. This system>is new and I am an expert at building systems. This is a FSX>specific issue. I know it, your engineer team knows it and the>entire internet community knows it. None of my other programs>or games do this to my system." Silence on the other end.>Eventually I am told that a level 2 engineer will call me>within the next two days. >>Microsoft has a very big problem on their hands folks. And as>of this writing they have no clue as to how to deal with this.>My suggestion to all of you is do not mod this game until this>activation nightmare is corrected by MS. Otherwise you run the>risk of the game locking hard and rebooting your sytem. This>is the activation "kiss of death". You have been warned. Boy, am I glad I didn't jump on that ship just yet! Whew, I am not upgrading the PC or purchasing the sim at least until the 3rdQ of 2007. For one, prices on hardware will go down (that GTX must be sweet but the price, pfffffft), two I'll let the ACES fix all of the crap that is being talked about left and right. Thanks for reading. :D

>I have a similar system, same motherboard (BIOS P24) but with>an Extreme X6800 CPU and two Evga GeForce 8800GTX KO ACS3>video cards. I

Alright here's the skinny. You boys better sit down for this one. LOL! this here is bound to spread like wild fire once the word gets out.I just got off the phone with Microsoft 2nd level support. We spent a total of 3 hours working on it. I gave the level two technician access to my system via remote services. What I'm getting ready to tell you all will floor you if it's true.Here's the deal. When I was having soft crashes of FSX I never had a problem with the activation. That soft crashes were caused by the SATA channel on my MB no being able to process the enormous quantities of textures I was asking of it after loading FSX GA Traffic. I have Carenado, Eaglesoft, PMDG and Dreamfleet GA aircraft. Some of those folders have 100 pluse texture folders in them. This was causing my soft crashes. After doing research I found that this was a known problem on EVGA 680i NForce motherboards. A BIOS flash was required to correct the problem. NVidia gives you two ways to accomplish this. Download a file and extract it to a floppy or use the NTune software and flash the BIOS from within Windows. I do not have a FDD so I chose the NTune route. There's a new version of NTune out there that supports this feature so I had to download it and install it in order to flash my BIOS. And, I did.The BIOS flash went without a hitch. Everything in the system is working flawlessly. Everything except FSX. The first time I ran FSX it was fine for thirty minutes. Then I got a hard crash and the system rebooted. Ever since then I am nagged to activate my product. I attribute the initial hard crash as FSX attempting to spawn the "the FSX trial period is over" screen and failing thus causing a hard crash. I say this because I can now run the game for 30 minutes, get the "trial over" screen, click "ok" and I'm let back into the sim to fly for 30 more minutes. Only thing is now, after the second 30 minutes, I think FSX attempts to load the "trial over" message again and it can't because it's already been displayed once. FSX hard crashes as a result. The MS tech and I widdled it down to this. He tells me that FSX has problems with overclocked hardware. He stated that when you overclock any device in Windows it changes the device ID. What? I'm not buying it. I argued that it worked fine for 2.5 months before this latest version of NTune was installed. My hardware is overclocked at the BIOS level anyway and not through NTune. NTune is for sissies! He argued that he's had 40 or so calls in the last week and all of the issues revolved around NVidia NTune software. So, removing it resolved the issue for those people. Not for me. The latest version of NTune binds with your GPU driver once installed. If you remove NTune you cannot access your GPU driver in the NVidia Control Panel. Nice. The MS tech is thinking that the NTune software is changing the device ID's everytime I reboot the system. He is most certain it is interfering with the MS FSX activation. In short, if you have the latest NVidia GPU driver and NVidia Ntune installed FSX won't work because FSX thinks you hardware ID's don't match.What I think is that the NTune software stops FSX activation cold in it's tracks when it trys to access the hardware information. That's what I think. Ntune is very powerful in terms of dynamic BIOS access through windows. I can change the voltage on my CPU, FSB Setting, Clock Multipliers, RAM timings etc. with it. So, it's definetly embedded deeply into Windows. FSX doesn't like this. I have no doubt that FSX and NTune are the cause of this. Problem is I must have NTune installed for my hardware to operate. I told the MS tech that I thought it was wrong for Microsoft to dictate to me, the owner of my computer, that I cannot overclock it and run FSX. I own this machine Microsoft, not you. Whats' worse is that the MS tech admitted that approximately 70% of gamers overclock. The developers of FSX must know this. If there is a crack I am on it. I don't need this, I didn't ask for this and I certainly won't tolerate it.

There is a new version of nTune on Nvidia

Kewl beans. We'll see how this goes. Oh, I forgot to mention. The MS tech took it upon himslef to open NTune and started an automatic overclock tuning session. I was like "STOP. DO NOT DO THAT." He says, "I want to see if your hardware is stable." Jeez, idiot, you do not launch an auto overclock utility when the system is already overclocked far beyond the capabilities of NTune. Furthermore, NTune locks up and cuases a loop all it's own. I instructed him not to do it and he attemtpted anyway so I stopped it immediately. He then removes NTune and reboots my system. Upon reboot I'm getting a blue screen and a reboot. Great, another looping problem. He then tells me, "You have a hardware problem." I reply, "Ya, you yanked NTune from the system. You can't do that." "No", he says, "It's a hardware problem." I was really irritated at that point. Yes, you can look around on my machine but do not think for a second that you can manipulate my hardware configuration settings. Especially when you don't know what you're doing.

djt01,Have you run FS 9 on that rig? I have similar (X6800, single 8800GTX, 4GB Corsair TWIN2X-8500C5, didn't go with any OC from them) coming from Falcon. When, anyone's guess, ordered 12-30-06. This may be the last box for *quite* awhile.jb[a href=http://exmixer.com/]Windows utility links/FS 2004[/a]

Yes I've run FS9 on this machine. It screams. Oddly enough, FS9 still exhibits difficulty loading ground textures fast enough on the machine. It required the same amount of tweaking as FSX. I get 60FPS at airports with ActiveSky and Ultimate Traffic running. :-)

Bananimal,>>Yes I've run FS9 on this machine. It screams.<