Long Load Time for FS2004?

[Kosta 122]

37seconds to the Create a flight screen and 30sec to load my default flight (runway at Flytampa's Vienna with default C172, UT Europe, GEPro, REX, the usual stuff...).330 sceneries installed, 220 aircraft (no airline AI, many payware aircraft and scenery AI aircraft) and many many liveries - FS consisting of some 110GB installation.FS9 is on the Raptor drive.So, if you experience long booting, I suggest you start simple: move aircraft to another folder (I usually create a folder inside aircraft folder, call it deactivated, and move aircraft there if I don't need them), and deactivate sceneries. Either you have a culprit in your system, which is causing this problem, or you simply have so many aircraft (sceneries make very little impact on booting time) and not enough computing power :(

[McCrash 3]

What disk drive letter do you have the flight sim on? Is the disk over 70% full? What O/S are you using and is it 32 or 64 bit?If the sim is on different driver (not on 'c') then you could clone it to a faster hard drive.

[scianoir 610]

I have had FS2004 for years. I defrag regularly and turn off my antivirus before starting the sim. If I recall, it used to take 5 minutes or less to execute FS9.exe until I got the create a flight screen. It now takes 10 minutes or so for me to be able to create a flight.I have tons of addon aircraft and scenery (including photorealistic). I don't see why this should matter as none are chosen until I create a flight. I even disabled much of the scenery but it still takes that blasted 10 minutes or so to load.I'm running a P4 3.4Gig processor with 2Gig memory on an ASUS P4C800 motherboard.s I don't overclock anything.Can anyone help as to why I might be getting such a long wait for FS9 to execute? It's a pain whenever I have to restart the sim.gwillmot

Hi GwillmotI have had this problem in the past often taking even longer than 10 minutes to get to the 'create flight' stage and I can understand your frustration. I had a huge amount of both scenery and aircraft (including AI aircraft) for a total fs9 size of over 250GB. Then Windows XP imploded and I had to reinstall it together with fs9. I installed all my scenery first (around 150GB) and the load time to 'create flight' has always been less than a minute, even as I added more and more scenery. The main problem with the initial phase of loading fs9 appears to be with the number of aircraft including AI types. The suggestion to put most of your addon aircraft in a folder outside of fs9 and then simply move the file/s of the aircraft you are going to use for a particular session back into the aircraft folder of fs9 before you start fs9 is an excellent one and should make a big difference. As AI aircraft also seem to provide a heavy initial workload for fs9 on startup, it is very useful to make these 'invisible' to the fs9 aircraft selection screen. This can be done simply and easily using a freeware program called BBQHIDEA which is available I think on Avsim as well as other sites and enables you to modify the .air files for selected AI aircraft to make them invisible in the aircraft selection screen. This is very easy to use for either individual AI aircraft or batches of AI aircraft and has a great effect on load time.I have done both of these things with my newly reinstalled fs9 and, although it might take a little time initially to get them organised if you have a lot of aircraft addons and AI aircraft, it is well worth it for the difference makes in the load time to the 'create flight' stage! Try it!Hope these tips help!Bill

[gwillmot 31]

OK...here are the first results based on the comments that additional aircraft might be the problem.I moved all but the default aircraft into a "hanger" folder and initiated FS2004. Boot time to "Select A Flight" screen is now exactly 3 minutes.......down from my previous 10-11 minute time.I am beginning to suspect all of the AI aircraft that I have added from WOAI, etc. I'm going to start adding back and see what happens. I can live with 3 minutes no problem. I'm going to leave the scenery alone as I'd rather have my scenery than AI aircraft.I'll keep you posted & thanks for the suggestions that the sim looks at "all" files prior to boot up.gwillmot

[DaveBedford 0]

I suspected that might be the problem (I just found this thread). I used to install "My Traffic" by default and wondered why my FS9 took so long to load. Without "My Traffic" loading time is down by a good few minutes - as is time between clicking "Start Flight" and the flight loading.Dave

[romanus 28]

Ive noticed the same issue of longer load times, and found that at least on my system, it was related to WOAI.I have 94 WOAI packages installed, plus a few posky planes that I fly, maybe 4. My load time is 14secs from dbl click to create a flight.Now, in the past I have had nearly all of the available WOAI stuff installed, which are a couple hundred, and load times were usually nearly a minute, maybe minute and a half..

[JET 1 0]

GuysI can say this with quite a bit of confidence - like others said before, longer initial load times (up to the opening screen) are in direct relation to the number of aircraft in the Aircraft folder. Toss your 100 WOAI folders in a temporary folder and you'll see the difference.Loading time from opening screen to the flight itself, mostly related to scenery complexity and most of all, amount and size of addon scenery in the area.Period. Really. No tweak or cfg tricks to try :(

[gwillmot 31]

:( Final Report :( The majority of responders to this thread were absolutely correct in diagnosing my problem......it is AI traffic files which slowed down my FS9 loading.I had MyTraffic, PAI, WOI, and Military AI traffic/aircraft loaded on my machine. I guess things got out of hand. I had no idea that the sim looked at all the aircraft files before loading.I kept MyTraffic traffic/planes and moved all other AI aircraft/traffic to another disk. I did keep a few AI "planes" that were boat/ship traffic for some of the scenery that I have. The removed aircraft files accounted for 17 Gig of disk space. This included a reduction of about 1,000 aircraft when viewed in Flightsim Manager. I checked traffic with what I have left and find I have plenty of company when flying. I kept all of my addon scenery.I now boot in 3 minutes tops and subsequent boots (close sim and reopen) take a minute or less.Many thanks for the advice and education from all of you fellow simmers who responded. This has resulted in "livable" boot times as well as a cleaner disk.Well, back to flying.....which is what we really want to spend time doing anyway!Thanks again,gwillmot

[msalo 1]

I have just about every WOAI package installed, as well as many many user addon aircraft, tons of scenery including pretty much every MegaScenery FS9 title, as well as many addon airports. I also have the complete FS Global 2008 terrain mesh installed. My load time is maybe 1 minute. My FS9 is installed on a dedicated 300GB WD VelociRaptor (nothing but FS on that drive), and defragged with O&O Defrag as per Nick N's specs. As was recommended by others in this thread. A dedicated hard drive (even if it's not a Raptor/VelociRaptor drive) for FS is the way to go, as well as proper defragging of that drive. It really does make a world of difference on any machine!-m@

[gwillmot 31]

I have just about every WOAI package installed, as well as many many user addon aircraft, tons of scenery including pretty much every MegaScenery FS9 title, as well as many addon airports. I also have the complete FS Global 2008 terrain mesh installed. My load time is maybe 1 minute. My FS9 is installed on a dedicated 300GB WD VelociRaptor (nothing but FS on that drive), and defragged with O&O Defrag as per Nick N's specs. As was recommended by others in this thread. A dedicated hard drive (even if it's not a Raptor/VelociRaptor drive) for FS is the way to go, as well as proper defragging of that drive. It really does make a world of difference on any machine!-m@

....and I bet your machine is quite a bit newer and more powerful than mine. That has a lot to do with it in my case.gwillmot

[msalo 1]

....and I bet your machine is quite a bit newer and more powerful than mine. That has a lot to do with it in my case.gwillmot

Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, XP Pro x64Runs FSX like junk, but makes FS9 run like a champ!

[gwillmot 31]

Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, XP Pro x64Runs FSX like junk, but makes FS9 run like a champ!

P4 3.4GHz 2GB RAM XP Pro 32-bit ASUS P4C800 MB, drives non-SATA & it still has mudflaps with a raccoon tail on the antenna...............I was right!gwillmot

[Guest simmer9304]

Hey what's this talk about 'old' rigs being slow?I have well over 200 WOAI packages and several others along with many complex aircraft and scenery and my fs9 boots up in 5 minutes. And thats on a Pentium 4 2.53Ghz 1GB RAM XP Pro x83 Nvidia G6800 Extreme. Runs fs9 like a charm :(

[Swoop 0]

So what the heck are we complaining about here? To be able to fly is really cool...no mater how long it takes...Mark

[JET 1 0]

There are a couple of times when a fast load is more than welcome.1. developing an addon where frequent reloads of the sim are needed to test something2. after a CTD, otherwise the joystick could fly through the window :(