HiIve finally accepted the inevitable and installed windows xp at the weekend after several weeks of frustration with pss's excellent A320-pro running on my windows 98 system. I'm aware that xp does a lot of tasks in the background that may not actually be required. Does anyone have any tips or links to articles regarding xp settings that have either a good or bad effect on the performance of fs2002 ?Thanks Gary

Hi Gary,I can help you here, but can you give me some details of your system, ie;1. Graphic card2. System Memory3. are you on a local network4. do you use cable5. do you run any (other) large programs on your machine (ie, video editing)I ask this, as I can give help re. Graphics card but also with System Services and Virtual Memory settings, if this would be helpfulI have an XP2000+ and I have tweaked it so that FS performance is very acceptable.warm regards,Andrew Tingle

Here is a link I found useful.. it tells you which services you can safely disable, and what each service does..http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Gary,Hope this helps you. I rushed a bit to write it as a quick response to your request - so do excuse any mistakes!!TWEAKING XP FOR OPTIMAL FS PERFORMANCESYSTEM SERVICESI have stopped the following services. Please note that you should make a note of service that you stop so that you can restore them if problems arise (but certainly have not caused any problems for myself

Oh, forgot to add - obviously disable virus protection for the period you are using fs!!

Very good guide I must say. Good input to this thread. I am sure there are experts who might expand this further but this captures a whole lot.Thanks from this forum.Shez

AndrewThanks for your excellent advice, with respect to my system:-AMD XP1600+256M RamGeForce 3 Ti200No networkBy the way, i always used KillWin before running fs2002 on my 98 system - any reasons you know of for not continuing to do so ?Once again, thanks for your helpful responseGary

Gary,Glad this was of some help to you. I note that you have a GeForce 3 Ti200 as well. What drivers are you using. After yet more experimentation I have settled for the 29.42 drivers.With respect to KillWin, I have never used this application so I cannot really comment as to whether it is any better or worse than End it All 2. All I do know is that End it All 2 allows me to kill processes that the original End it All never even listed - so maybe it may be worth some experimentation for you.Have you experimented with Riva? What drivers are you using?If its any bonus I have most FS settings maxed out and Project AI and am getting adv. of 50 FPS in FS with my set up.Any further queries, I will be only too happy to help (if I can).Andrew

Oh, sorry - should add my rig is an Athlon XP2000+ - so not much faster than yours!

Hi AndrewI don't confess to be an expert on graphics card drivers, hence, i'm using the ones that were shipped by the card manufacturer - "Sparkle". Last night, i downloaded from there site, the latest drivers for the ti200 but haven't installed them yet. I note that you seem to have settled for 29.42 - if these aren't the latest versions, how do i go about getting them ? Unfortunately, i'm responding from work so have no way of finding out exactly what versions i'm actually running with until i get home.One other question (sorry) my mobo is an elite K7S5A and i've read conflicting articles regarding which agp drivers to use with XP. Some say the (default) XP drivers are better and others say use the latest agp drivers available. Any comments ?Thanks Andrerw,Gary

Gary,The 29.42 drivers are by no means the latest, but each revision of drivers seem to cater for the developing software scene. The result of that is that though latest drivers may pander to the latest games, sometimes performance can worsen for older games. At least this is how I understand it.Drivers can be downloded from www.guru3d.comregards,Andrew

Excellent post, Andrew! Looks like this forum welcomes yet another enthusiast prepared to spend time helping others.Perhaps I could add one little piece of advice. When you are disabling services in Windows XP it is better to set them to 'Manual' rather than 'Disabled'. This will ensure that that a service is still available should a program require it. All you will note, should the occasion ever arise, is a slightly longer loading time at the point when the service is restarted by Windows.N.B.****************************************************There should be no problems with the above list but one word of warning: DO NOT DISABLE 'Remote Procedure Call' (RPC) as you may well have difficulty getting back into Windows. LEAVE THAT ONE ALONE!********************************************************After you have reset your chosen list of services to 'Manual' run your computer for a week or so as you would do normally. Revisit the Services list from time to time and see whether any have been restarted. These can then be reset to 'automatic' as they are in fact required.Lastly, before resetting from 'Automatic' to 'Manual' click on the 'Dependencies' tab to see whether the service is linked to something else and needs to be running.Mike :-wave

Mike,I couldn't agree more. This is what I originally did with the settings as outlined above - all of which as considered "none vital" though I am not a cble user and this may well be different for such users with a couple of these settings.regards,Andrew.PS. If you wish for better frame rates in FS then I have also made another post on this forum in response to another query. I will copy it here (as only short) and may proove of use to other users. Feedback has been very postive.Hope this helps,....Another hot tip would be to limit visability. Using FSUIPC I limit visability as follows;1000 - Clear800 - Cloudy600 - Overcastand graduated vis;0 - 99000 @ 3000This gives your FPS quite a kick, trust me. And, realistically, whenever I look out across the landscape in Real Life I don't see all that far, so feels rather realistic.Hope this helps!Regards,Andrew

Hi AndrewSorry to be a pain, but i've one more question regarding 29.42 drivers. There appears to be 2 different versions, an older one fixed at 60hz and a newer one which addresses this "problem" but its description says that it may only work with GeForce 4 cards. Which one would you recommend using ? Thanks again for your helpGary

Gary,I have emailed you with respect to the driver you require. Any problems, please feel free to either post here or email me directly.I am more than happy - as stated in my mail to you - to sort out all you need and send it to you.Just let me know - as for the refresh issue, you need Nvidia Refresh Tool or Riva to sort this. Again, can sort this for you if that helps.Andrew