Hi,I posted this on the FS9 forum, but haven't gotten any replies, so I figured I'd try here - I have been experiencing a texture rendering problem lately in FS9.1 (but no problems w/FSX). I thought it was due to running FSACARS, but it's happening now on all flights. Textures, both aircraft and scenery, are failing to render properly, and everything is "greyed out" briefly while flying and changing views (2d-->3d cockpit/external/panning around/tower)...eventually they load, but it can take up to 20-25 seconds.By the time I reach my destination airport, FS9 is failing to render properly at all - everything is just "green nothingness" - no runways, taxiways, or buildings. This problem never used to happen, and the disc activity light stays on nearly all of the time while it's attempting to render anything/nearly everything....seems that the HDD isn't able to keep up the necessary speed to deliver the data fast enough....this system is about 18 months old....(perhaps a new power supply would help? The current one is a 350 watt...or, what about changing to a GTX280 video card, which requires greater power??)I have FS9 on a 2nd internal 300 GB HDD, and my system is defragged by Diskeeper on a weekly basis, and it currently shows no fragmentation on drive E (FS9 drive), drive C (300GB boot and FSX drive), drive G (200 GB additional storage) or drive H (250GB external storage drive), so the system is optimized. All drives are single NTFS partitions.Here are my specs - Intel core 2 quad Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz4GB RAMnVidia GeForce 8500 GTWinXP Pro 32 bit, SP3 & all current updatesTwo Mitsubishi flat panel monitors running off the nVidia cardSoundblaster X-FI Extreme Audio cardI also have GoFlight's full airliner setup w/dual EFIS controls, and serial FP2 CDU.I've removed 3 empty slot's covers to aid in cooling, as well as setting the video card fan to 100% via Rivatuner - temp stays within a 3 degree margin when flying in FS9 (54 - 57 Centigrade), so temperature doesn't seem to be the problem....As mentioned, this is a rather recent development, and I'm not sure what to do about it, as FSX runs nicely (thanks to Nick N's setup guide!)Does anyone have any ideas on the problem and/or how to solve it?Thanks,Jim

(perhaps a new power supply would help? The current one is a 350 watt...or, what about changing to a GTX280 video card, which requires greater power??)

Jim,I used the Asus PSU calculator tool ( http://support.asus.com/PowerSupplyCalcula...SLanguage=en-us ) on your hardware and ended up with this information:Your Recommended Minimum Power Supply is 450 Watts!Do NOT install a GTX 280 card with that PSU!It seems possible that the PSU might be the cause.

What is the condition of your FS9 harddrive? If FSX works and FS9 doesn't then maybe FS9 is all futz'd up.I think you could delete the FS9.cfg file and let it rebuild it.Is the disk nearly full? Is DiskKeeper reliable? You could try a re-install of FS9 using the 'repair' option.But you most likely would have to re-install any add-ons for FS9 too.

Jim,I used the Asus PSU calculator tool ( http://support.asus.com/PowerSupplyCalcula...SLanguage=en-us ) on your hardware and ended up with this information:Your Recommended Minimum Power Supply is 450 Watts!Do NOT install a GTX 280 card with that PSU!It seems possible that the PSU might be the cause.

Hi - thanks for replying! I changed the power supply out to a 650W one, but haven't changed the video card yet. I have yet to do a full flight in FS9, but I did a brief test flight using the CLS 747-200 and 9Dragons Kai Tak scenery....response was a bit better, but by the end of the flight, the texture load delays were up to about 7 seconds, which is better than it was using the older PSU, but I'm still going to try a "full flight" to test it out before possibly swapping out to a GTX280. I will report back.Jim

What is the condition of your FS9 harddrive? If FSX works and FS9 doesn't then maybe FS9 is all futz'd up.I think you could delete the FS9.cfg file and let it rebuild it.Is the disk nearly full? Is DiskKeeper reliable? You could try a re-install of FS9 using the 'repair' option.But you most likely would have to re-install any add-ons for FS9 too.

Hi - thanks for replying as well! My FS9 disk is ok....no bad sectors or anything like that, and as far as I know, DiskKeeper is a relaible tool for dealing with fragmentation. There are still 211GB of free space left on the 300GB drive, so that's not a problem.I will try the FS9.cfg file deletion and rebuild to see if that helps...I do NOT want to even think about having to do a complete reinstall of FS9, with all of the customizations I've put into it, though! It would take at least a week to redo everything....In my last post, I did replace the PSU and got some better responses with a "heavy frame rate eater" aircraft and custom scenery...results were better, but not yet as it used to be, but that was only one quick test flight. I have not swapped out my video card to the GTX 280 yet...will try FS9.cfg delete/rebuild first, and report back.Jim

Well, after I deleted the FS9.cfg file and did a real test flight from KLAS to KSLC in the PMDG 737-700, the problem still exists - no rendering of KSLC or the surrounding area by the time I arrived. The HDD was spinning away like crazy, disc activity light on without a break. Upon exiting the flight, it took about 4 minutes to unload back to the select a flight screen, which is highly unusual. So, it seems that the more robust 650W PSU was not the solution....I'm leaning towards the HDD going bad, because of its constant hard spinning....I doubt seriously that swapping out the video card to the GTX 280 will make the problem go away.....any thoughts from any other experts on this? As previously mentioned in my original post, FSX has not been affected, and it's on the boot drive, while FS9 is on another physical drive.....I hate the thought of having to replace that drive and reload everything, because that is MAJOR work....it would truly suck to have to do that.....Jim

Well, after I deleted the FS9.cfg file and did a real test flight from KLAS to KSLC in the PMDG 737-700, the problem still exists - no rendering of KSLC or the surrounding area by the time I arrived. The HDD was spinning away like crazy, disc activity light on without a break. Upon exiting the flight, it took about 4 minutes to unload back to the select a flight screen, which is highly unusual. So, it seems that the more robust 650W PSU was not the solution....I'm leaning towards the HDD going bad, because of its constant hard spinning....I doubt seriously that swapping out the video card to the GTX 280 will make the problem go away.....any thoughts from any other experts on this? As previously mentioned in my original post, FSX has not been affected, and it's on the boot drive, while FS9 is on another physical drive.....I hate the thought of having to replace that drive and reload everything, because that is MAJOR work....it would truly suck to have to do that.....Jim

Hello Jim,Just a thought before replacing your hard drive and reinstalling everything again. Do you have any other programs installed on the same HD as FS9?If so, you may wish to start up another program and see if there is a notable performance loss as well. If you have one drive exclusively for FS9, (which is likely the case), and no other programs on it, then try this;Start up FS9. In your FS9 menu, temporarily disable all your addon scenery by unchecking the boxes in the menu and then turn down all your settings to "minimum". Go for a fly but keep the simulators sound off, (press "Q" on your keyboard to toggle this), so you can hear your hard drive when it starts thrashing.While flying in the sim, note if your hard drive starts to thrash again, (constantly swapping page files, from virtual memory to RAM).If it still does this, I would suspect a faulty head or some other defect with the hard drive. If not, keep your addon scenery disabled and try turning up your display settings slowly. Do a couple of flights as you adjust.It has been my experience that some scenery add-ons, particularly ones containing high res textures, have caused noticeable performance drop in my own computer. Your computer as described above should make FS9 hum along at a pretty good pace!This may be an alternative solution to verify if the problem is, in fact, the hard drive or just something wrong with the FS9 configuration. In any case I hope it saves you some time and helps you find the problem.I have a feeling that the problem is with something in the FS9 files and not the hard drive.Cheers!Mark

Hello Jim,Just a thought before replacing your hard drive and reinstalling everything again. Do you have any other programs installed on the same HD as FS9?If so, you may wish to start up another program and see if there is a notable performance loss as well. If you have one drive exclusively for FS9, (which is likely the case), and no other programs on it, then try this;Start up FS9. In your FS9 menu, temporarily disable all your addon scenery by unchecking the boxes in the menu and then turn down all your settings to "minimum". Go for a fly but keep the simulators sound off, (press "Q" on your keyboard to toggle this), so you can hear your hard drive when it starts thrashing.While flying in the sim, note if your hard drive starts to thrash again, (constantly swapping page files, from virtual memory to RAM).If it still does this, I would suspect a faulty head or some other defect with the hard drive. If not, keep your addon scenery disabled and try turning up your display settings slowly. Do a couple of flights as you adjust.It has been my experience that some scenery add-ons, particularly ones containing high res textures, have caused noticeable performance drop in my own computer. Your computer as described above should make FS9 hum along at a pretty good pace!This may be an alternative solution to verify if the problem is, in fact, the hard drive or just something wrong with the FS9 configuration. In any case I hope it saves you some time and helps you find the problem.I have a feeling that the problem is with something in the FS9 files and not the hard drive.Cheers!Mark

Hi Mark,Ok, I'll give that idea a shot...some my scenery is heavy duty, as are my add-on planes. The thing is, my system used to zip along really well running FS9, even with all scenery activated, and with dense settings....that's what's weird, as it used to work fine, but doesn't anymore. I will report my findings from your suggestions. My FS9 drive is purely dedicated to FS9.Thanks!Jim