whats up guys,i asked this question about a week ago but it got washed up among all the other posts so here goes again. When I start FS i usually get good frame rates but after about 20 mins into the game they decrease. When I say good frames i mean in the 20s in flight. Like I said after 10-20 mins the frames drop to the single digits or around 10. This only started happening within the past 2 weeks so I did a system restore and that didnt help.Can anyone help me out this time?Thanx in advance,GeoffP4 2.0 ghz512 MB DDR Ram30 gig HDATI Mobility Radeon 7500

Hello Geoff,Not being an expert by any means, but my first choice would be heat . . .you are making too much of it, as FS is very grapic intensive which works everything in your system to the max........pop the sides off your unit and set a reg house fan to blow through the case....see if this makes any difference.........if it does, then you are generating too much heat and need to cool that puppy down.Clay

What OS are you using? Assuming its Windows 2000 or XP, when the sim slows down, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and select "task manager" from the menu that pops up. Select the "Processes" tab. Look in the column labeled "CPU". This column shows the percentage of CPU time being taken by each task. Odds are you'll find a runaway process thats eating lots of CPU time. The process name may give you some clue as to what program is running wild. Try highlighting the process and clicking the "End Process" button. You'll get a warning about all the dire things that can happen when you kill a process. Go ahead and press "yes", the worst that ever happens is you'll have to restart.If you're using one of the Garmin530 units now available, the processes hsi400wx.exe and gnc500wt.exe will show large CPU usage if FS2002 is paused, so do this when the Garmin isn't running. I'd also mention that both the Reality XP and FSAvionics Garmins can cause massive FS slowdown if the simulator is left in Pause mode for too long when running on Win XP.Good Luck

Thanx for the quick responses guys. You're probably right about the heat but the only problem is I have a laptop so I cant take of the cover. I have it elavated to let air flow under it to help cool it off. Also, I will try the CTRL-ALT-DEL thing and see how that works. Thanx again guys,Geoff