On the bleeding edge of Win7

[SubLogical 1]

Among other issues here are some that persist:1) Saitek controls (Pro Yoke, Rudder Pedals and Throttle Quad) all have the latest Saitek drivers and are set up in the FS settings but work intermittently. To correct a non-functioning unit I have to pull the USB plug and re-insert it, which then causes a "Driver Load" and then it works fine ... until the next time.2) JS Auto Pilot occasionally goes on vacation and refuses to control the airplane although all the lights are green indicating it should ... but no deal ... it won't go so low as to steer using the HDG command or maintain the ALT. The Flight Director continues to operate properly by sending correct lateral and vertical signals. Once this problem occurs I have found no way to correct it ... you're only choice seems to be to hand her in from then on in.3) Too many "WSOD" although keeping up with the latest Nvidia drivers seems to help in this area. I'm not sure why but FSInn, VatSpy and a couple of other add-ons just wouldn't load in any compatibility mode. Squawkbox did load but when I met online with a friend ... it may have caused the CTD.These mishaps are not regular but lurk around most flights. Some flights go flawlessly which is encouraging, but currently, I'm finding the changeover to Win 7 a less stable platform experience than the nightmare of Vista.Anyone else experiencing any "Quirky" teething troubles?Ken ParkBTW I'm running a spaceship in terms of horsepower.

[MELKOR 5]

I too have recently upgraded to a spaceship machine, and am using Win7 64-bit.You are not alone.Have not had any joystick issues (using CH yoke, rudder, and throttles - seem very solid in Win 7), or JS41 autopilot issues.But, man oh man, have had a lot of issues with graphics. Prior to this upgrade (had WinXP 32-bit) I used to be able to "Alt-Enter" at will, but now I'm afraid to Alt-Enter at all during a flight, lest I get the dreaded missing textures, black screen of death, or white screen of death. Seems to happen with the JS41 most of all (not sure why), but have seen these issues with ALL my aircraft at some point.I am quite convinced the root cause of these graphics issues is the nVidia driver (regardless of the endless threads about reducing sound quality and blah blah blah)... sure hope they get their proverbial heads out of their arses and fix these things once and for all.Regarding your add-on issues: Try starting them with "Run as Administator" (via right click), or just turn off that mostly useless "feature" called UAC (turning it off will cause "Run as Administrator" to be the default for all programs you start).

[trisager 2]

Same problem here with the Saitek rudder pedals. At least I get some exercise, getting up and walking around my desk to unplug/replug the USB connector. This can happen with any airplane, not just the JS41. Probably a Saitek driver issue.Generally, though, I'm quite pleased with Windows 7 (64-bit version). No problems alt-tabbing, and FSInn works fine. About the only minor issue that I have is that FSX won't close properly after the JS41 has been loaded (I get an error message that FSX has stopped responding).

[SubLogical 1]

Glad to hear I'm not alone out here in Win7 land.Here's what may help:1) I have loaded Nvidia driver 195.62 and don't see many WSOD's anymore ... but the environment is fragile ... you must be careful how many times you click something. The "not responding" window is more up than down.2) I don't know if this is the answer but I put my three Saitek pieces on one USB hub and so far so good ... kinda one for all and all for one!3) I'm also finding that to restart FSX from the desktop Icon each time I fly seems to clear the decks for everything to work well.4) I'm having trouble with the JS41 AP control ... too many times it quits working and can't be restarted during the flight as far as I know. This only seems to happen if you confuse it with a few too many clicks in an effort to regain your flight path.If you do everything right it does everything right. I have found that it shows everything is working fine by the lights ... but it ain't ... I should have been a beta tester for them ... I can wreck it in a heartbeat!5) Caution needed on the video cards. I had a Nvidia GTX 280 installed and thought I could really improve my frame rates by adding a Nvidia 295 and bridging them with the SLI facilities ... no deal ... you can't bridge different cards ... so if you havea 280 or a 290 buy another of the same and then bridge them for max results ... otherwise throw the weaker card away.6)Re frame rates ... I'm floored by what I'm getting ... with most of the sliders set "high" I'm getting up to 50 fpm in 2D and 18 to 25 in 3D with two monitors. Amazingly to me, the higher the resolutions I use on the monitors the better the frame rate ... andespecially in "Full Screen"Thanks for the replies ... you fellow bleeders!Ken Park :( PS Everything worked well this morning!

[mhlarsen 2]

2) I don't know if this is the answer but I put my three Saitek pieces on one USB hub and so far so good ... kinda one for all and all for one!

From my own experience I cannot recommend using USB hubs for Saitek controllers. This gave weird and intermittent errors, which I at first attributed to various installed faulty software. Now I have all my Saitek controllers connected directly to my USB ports and have no more problems.

[fx4guy 0]

Im getting rdy to build a new rig with the Asus Rampage II mobo and upgrade to win7 64 ultimate. My question is for you guys that have had your JS on an xp rig is there anything i need to do before i can install the JS on the new rig? A deactivation or something like that or is it that we get so many activations before it wont work anymore? Thanks for any help you guys can provide I want to try and make this transition as easy as possible.

[Gary A 8]

Im getting rdy to build a new rig with the Asus Rampage II mobo and upgrade to win7 64 ultimate. My question is for you guys that have had your JS on an xp rig is there anything i need to do before i can install the JS on the new rig? A deactivation or something like that or is it that we get so many activations before it wont work anymore? Thanks for any help you guys can provide I want to try and make this transition as easy as possible.

Not to hijack Ken

[trisager 2]

Avoid W7 if possible. I understand that this may not be possible but XP-64 is much better for FSX far more stable.

I beg to differ. Windows 7 64-bit is a great platform for FSX, and by miles the best OS from Microsoft yet.

[Guest Paradiselost]

I've been doing an FSX install on a new machine with Windows 7 64 bit. I'd not run FSX before, and I've loaded a lot of 3rd Party software on. I've had excellent framerates (given the rig, I should) but I have battled a little with Out of Memory issues. I've been trying some of the techniques that appear on this and other boards and have been making progress. I do notice significant differences betwen 3rd Party vendors; PMDG for example seems excellent, Digital Aviation I gave up on.I have run into lots of buggy issues (barometric pressure not updating from REX for example, now seems fixed).The only thing that seems contrary to the advice you often see is that I've locked my framerates at 60. I was seeing 200+ in some cases, which was nice but I thought rather uneccessary. I might try changing that back when the system seems more settled.I never used Vista, and always though that I'd struggle with my old XP based Alienware for FSX (it was 5 years old).My new kit has SSD so I've no comparison (the Alienware used raptors in FS9) but I do think that they're a potentially big piece of the equation. I have FSX sitting on a seperate Corsair 256 gb drive. Yes, I know it's expensive. yes, I know it's be half the price in 6 months!The amount of information that's popping up on the boards about W7 & FSX is encouraging. Overall I'm impressed with Windows 7 and I do think that, and people buying new hardware maybe the tipping point of people moving from FS9 to FSX. It certainly was in my case.On some of the hardware advice in this thread it definitely matches what the vendor (Falcon Northwest) suggested to me when I was putting the order together. They pointed me towards the GTX 285 rather than the 295.Incidentally my Saitek rudder (and 52 pro) work fine other than I can't get the Profiler software to load up properly.

[fx4guy 0]

I am installing 2 hard drives one 1.5tb and another Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb just for fsx. The only thing that im going to reuse from my current rig is my Nvidia 9800gt card. May upgrade that in the future or sooner if it poses a problem. All my stuff wont be here till the 4th so Im going to try and take my time to get the build right the first time. Also im going to use the onboard sound at this point as well to see how the performance is like that. Im hoping with a quad core processor that it wont be an issue. Here is the list of stuff i bought case and power supply were purchased earlier this year. I dont think ill need the Thermal paste but just in case the fan doesnt have it already applied ill be all set.HD 150G|WD WD1500HLFS MB ASUS ROG RAMPAGE II EXTREME X58CPU THERMPASTE|AS5-3.5GMEM 2Gx3|OCZ OCZ3G1600LV6GK R CPU INTEL|CORE I7 920 2.66G 45N R CPU COOL SUNBEAM|CR-CCTF R

[SubLogical 1]

I thought an update of my experience might be useful for the W7r's ....1) Saitek problems solved by using one USB hub for all Saitek components and think poster who recommended all Saiteks straight to the CPU is sound if you've got the room.2) Auto Pilot problems continue and I can't help but feel this could use a bit more programming. I realize now that it has trouble "capturing" a first waypoint that is a long distance off and I have better luck when I include a fix close to the departure airport. But I believe it's GPS oriented rather than VOR so this shouldn't make any difference. The indicator lights will show all systems working even when they're not ... and at minimum this should be corrected. Again, I should add that it mainly works very well and as always, it might be me, rather than the AP that needs a bit more programming!3)The WSOD (FSX CTD) are gone. The Nvidia 295 works very well with the driver ver. 195.62 and I continue to crank up the load and get smooth flying with frame rates (3D JS41) of between 18 and the pegged 26 that I set. Above 26 I believe you're wasting CPU resources.4) I was unable to get REX2 to run its WX engine on a networked laptop (HRESULT_E FAIL error) to drive FSX wx so I loaded the REX textures (worth the price of the program) into FSX, run FSX's own Real Time Weather engine (and FSUIPC) which drives the wx and textures and also loaded ASA on the laptop (without FSX ... it complains but works nicely) and take my weather information en route from it i.e. dial in the ICAO codes and see what's happening where you're going. Patch-worked for sure but it makes for some great visual flights in whatever weather with no apparent frame rate hits or WSOD's.5) For what it's worth I feel one good video card carrying 2MB of memory is a better bet than two lesser cards in the SLI mode ... I thought I was going to install dual 295's but I'm getting on fine with one and 8MB of Ram.Still to be tested are flying on line with FSInn and running Team Speak at the same time but as of this post I've never had better simming and I think W7-64 is the "only way to fly".Regards to all,Ken PS Be sure to fly in "full screen" ... your frame rates will probably be better.

[Limp 0]

I'm getting corrupted graphics as well with J41 or E-JET under Win 7 64 bits... Quite annoying... I need to get back to Michael from FS GS hoping he might now the solution...

[CapnOz 111]

Guys, I was having some of these problems myself. I tried using my older( year and half old ) hardware to run Win7 64 bit.My solution was to start from scratch and buy WIN7 compliant harware( mobo, vcard and mem), which the manufacture will boast of, if the hardware IS win7 tested and compliant.I DO NOT have any problems. Matter of fact, I can now say how pleased i am with Win 7, and would NEVER consider going back to that old xp dinosaur OS.I have come to the conclusion that although SOME of the older stuff may work, it doesnt work as well, and if you are using Win7 ...its worth it to have Win 7 tested and compliant hardware. There may be work around soultions for the those who love to dink with your system, but if your like me, and would rather spend your time flying instead of tweaking..then you know what to do.

[Limp 0]

All my hardware is compliant... In the mean time I'm having fun with another game...

[TorqueWrench 6]

1) Saitek controls (Pro Yoke, Rudder Pedals and Throttle Quad) all have the latest Saitek drivers and are set up in the FS settings but work intermittently. To correct a non-functioning unit I have to pull the USB plug and re-insert it, which then causes a "Driver Load" and then it works fine ... until the next time.

I think Windows is powering down this USB hub when it's not used. You can change USB hub power management under Device Manager.