Erm... Well, I have an external hard disk over here with four partitions. I found Windows Vista is unable to remove one of those partitions, without removing the entire hard disk (you right click the little USB icon in the system tray and select "remove hardware safely", or whatever it's called in the English version. You then click choose the option to see all available partitions. You then click " one of the partitions and choose 'remove", after which it asks you which partition you want to remove. Then it will remove ALL partitions instead of just the one you selected). Maybe I'm using Macintosh terminolgy, of which one is "ejecting a disc", and another "remove a disc", and that's the reason you didn't understand immediately?Not trying to look snotty or arrogant, but come on, Windows should be able to remove one partition, instead of the entire HD with all of the partitions? I can't believe it can't do that...So anyway. I think we should let this thread rest a bit for now. Until I get the eSATA controller, I won't be able to say anything about performance improvements anyway...

Erm... Well, I have an external hard disk over here with four partitions. I found Windows Vista is unable to remove one of those partitions, without removing the entire hard disk (you right click the little USB icon in the system tray and select "remove hardware safely", or whatever it's called in the English version. You then click choose the option to see all available partitions. You then click " one of the partitions and choose 'remove", after which it asks you which partition you want to remove. Then it will remove ALL partitions instead of just the one you selected). Maybe I'm using Macintosh terminolgy, of which one is "ejecting a disc", and another "remove a disc", and that's the reason you didn't understand immediately?Not trying to look snotty or arrogant, but come on, Windows should be able to remove one partition, instead of the entire HD with all of the partitions? I can't believe it can't do that...So anyway. I think we should let this thread rest a bit for now. Until I get the eSATA controller, I won't be able to say anything about performance improvements anyway...

I may be demonstrating my ignorance of Vista operations here, but removing a partition is not done via the "safely remove hardware" dialog in XP.That is only used to stop operations so you can safely disconnect the hardware.Instead: Control Panel, Admin tools, Computer Management, Disk Management.

Removing a partition is not done, as Bert says, through "safely remove hardware". I'm not at my Vista cimputer, but you should be able to do it as Bert says. It can also be done on a DOS level. Might still be able to lose all data on the drive.We need a little more info on your Computer. We know you have a dual boot MAC. As you know, W7 will be more like Vista than XP. Unless your dual core has a 1066 or better FSB with more than a 2MB cache, and the ram speed is 800 or better, FSX will never run really well at mid settings with a lot of addons with your GPU. That means you will have to spend a lot of time tweaking. It can be done. Many run FSX on lesser systems than yours, to their satisfaction. FS9 will run great on your system.Blame MS or FSX if you want, but it won't change anything. Even guys with i7s have problems.Bob

Ah, I see. I'll try that method... after I reinstall Vista. I;m afraid it's fried. I don't know what happened, but it refuses to recognize hardware now. I bought an ESATA connector, and it first all was fine, later Vista just crashed. Since, it does not even recognize my USB stick correctly. And no, there is nothing wrong with any of the hardware: the USB ports and my newly bought eSATA controller work just fine on the Macside of my laptop. I'm reinstalling, although I know in two months I'll have to do this all over again. I haven't got a choice though.I'm afraid I don't have any of thr things you mentioned in that post and I have come to accept that I won't be able to run FSX as well as I'd like, not with much addons. Anyway, I wasn't planning on throing lots of addons at it. I'll stay with WoAI AI, some payware aircraft and some payware scenery, REX en GEX Europe when it comes out, but that'll be the limit for now. First let me see if i can make it work well on mid settings, then let's talk about addons.Anyway, what would you like to know about the computer? A year ago, it was quite powerful, but I'm afraid it is already rather obsolete...

Well, also remember that mac likes Fat32 file system while windows likes NTFS. When I first got my usb external drive it was Fat32. All was good untill i started saving large AVI (video) files. Fat32 in windows has a file size limit (at least for AVI files, and maybe others) The AVI files were broke into smaller sizes with the loss of some video. 20 GBs of video were broken down. I changed file system to NTFS and all was good . I get the impression that NTFS might be better for windows. Might be fun for you to do a little research on this just in case I'm full of hot air.Bob

Oh no, you're completely right. NTFS is much better for Windows than FAT. it's simply more modern and can do more. I thought of this problem, so I reformatted all partitions on my drive to NTFS, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore.But Mac doesn't really like FAT any more than Windows does. As a matter of fact, Mac has its own sets of filesystem formats. There are four I think, and a fifth is underway with Mac OS 10.6. It's just that it doesn't seem possible to have Mac format drives in NTFS, rather only FAT32. Well, Disk utility anyway. When you use Bottcamp to make a Windows partition, you in fact can choose NTFS.All the reinstallation has been done over night. I now need to install all service packs, once I managed to get Vista hooked up to the internet. Good news is that Vista has already started recognizing the eSATA controller and the USB stick. I think the reinstall was well appreciated.

That's it, I give up on Vista. I removed he Windows partition, made a new one, and I;m no working with Windows XP, at least until I get Windows 7. This will ensure FS2004 will certainly work correctly, and I;ll see how FSX responds. I'm not going to bother too much with FSX, though.

Bummer. Sorry Vista is a problem for you. I have run FS9 on my Vista machine with no problem. Nothing wrong with XP, though.Bob

FS9 ran okay on Vista, but it runs better on XP. I had problems with windowed mode, and if FS9 was accidentely minimized, I had to restart the entire program. Also right-clicking was a problem in FS9 Vista if it meant a pop-up windowd was displayed. These errors are now gone. It's mainly that Vista itself got my headaches. So in the end, I went over to my game closet, looked, and saw that all except Halo 2 (which isn't that good anyway) work on Windows XP. So, why bother with Vista if I don't really need it anyway? Anyway, I'm happy now, and I'm not even sure anymore I'll upgrade to Windows 7 that soon. XP will stay on here for a bit longer.Anyway, thanks to all that posted with usefull comments. I'll certainly remember the tip on removing partitions, so I might be able to have just the FSX partition active.

FS9 ran okay on Vista, but it runs better on XP. I had problems with windowed mode, and if FS9 was accidentely minimized, I had to restart the entire program. Also right-clicking was a problem in FS9 Vista if it meant a pop-up windowd was displayed. These errors are now gone. It's mainly that Vista itself got my headaches. So in the end, I went over to my game closet, looked, and saw that all except Halo 2 (which isn't that good anyway) work on Windows XP. So, why bother with Vista if I don't really need it anyway? Anyway, I'm happy now, and I'm not even sure anymore I'll upgrade to Windows 7 that soon. XP will stay on here for a bit longer.Anyway, thanks to all that posted with usefull comments. I'll certainly remember the tip on removing partitions, so I might be able to have just the FSX partition active.

Just for clarity, "Removing Partitions" removes them from your hard drive, permanently!

...Erm, you did understand what I meant with ejecting/removing, yes? I fear you didn't (because quite frankly, it seemed so weird to me that the operation I meant would be done through diskmanager). I'm talking of a very simple procedure that has always been a possiblity on Macintosh systems, but I can't figure out on Windows. So, let me explain:I have an external HD, and it has 4 partitions. When I plug the external into my computer's FW800 port, Windows loads all partitions and displays them: four partitons are on the "My Computer" screen and all is fine. However, now I want just one partition to be displayed, namely the FSX one. So, the other three should simply become "inactive", as if they have been removed from the computers FW800 port. On Macintosh, we call this procedure either removing, or ejecting the partitions. On Macintosh it's all very simple: you click the icon of the partition that you want to have ejected, you press Cmd - E (cmd, or command, is what on Windows usually is control), and voila, the partition has been removed. Meaning, it hasn't been wiped or something, it has been inactived, so the computer doesn't have any acces to it. It's like plugging out your USB stick. On Windows, I have tried this too. Via "remove hardware safely", I managed to come to a menu that asked me exactly what partition I wanted to remove. However, every time I then choose the partition to remove/eject and click "remove", it removes the entire drive. Now, is there a way to do what I want to do or not?So, I don't want to remove the partitions permanently, as in "wipe" them, but I want to make them inactive, like plugging out a USB stick (eject them).

Weird weird world. I hate to drag this ols thing up again, but I reinstalled FSX succesfully on my brand new Windows XP installation and I'm running it, like before, from my external hard disk. FSX runs fine... I normally get FPS of between 20 and 30, with sometimes a drop to 16 or 14. All my current tests have been with the default airbus, at quite high scenery settings, with probably 250 WoAI packages installed and running. I tried EHAM, and got continually around 25 FPS, tried Princess Juliana airport (where I previoiusly has such bad performance), and again had FPS of around 20. I don't know what happened, but I'm happy!

I am having the same problem with 737 PIC (I have the JustFlight Version). My frames swing way up from 30 down to 5 and there is a horrible stutter that can last up to 1 second. I don't think it's a hardware problem... I have a very robust system and I can run any of Captain Sims add-on aircraft (727, 757, & 767) right at 30fps, with no problem at all. There is something going on with the 737 PIC... I've completely removed the add-on and I've done a re-install and have had no luck. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.P.S. A word to the wise... Stay Away from JustFlight Add-On payware, they offer minimal support if any.

I would post your problem with the 737PIC in a new thread. This one is ancient and the title is not very close to your actual problem.