Hi awl: I just had a terrible fps drop in FSX and I cannot figure out what has happened or caused it.I used to get around 40-50FPS configured the way I normally do in flight. Last night my fps became so erratic I can barely fly.Now it will run 8fps, jump to 50fps, drop to 12, go up to 45, back down to 5.I just cant figure out what has happened. I spent 4 hrs tinkering with it last night to no avail. I flew fine for about an hour. Shut the computer down, came back and restarted FSX again and the frame rate problem started. I did not Download anything that may have given me a virus so doubt it is that. What gets me is normally if a patch or an addon slows things down it will drop from an average of 45fps to 40 or 35, but it is a steady average. Now I have numbers all over the ballpark.I tried night and daytime flying from my default field.I changed no fsx cfg settings. Nothing I can detect is running in my windows background. I installed nothing that should have changed things. Also the menu system quit working in the flight sim as well At the same time this FPS bug started! I can get to the menu bar. It pops up, but if I try to select anything from the bar I cannot do it. Also trying to select something from the menu bar tends to make my whole system lockup now. I cant even hit the escape key and end the flight!I don't think that has anything to do with frame rates because I am paused at the time.Also trying to minimize FSX I may lockup as well, or I try to get to task manager to end the FSX process and the whole computer locks up.Its as if something in the windows background is hogging resources, yet the few times I did get to task manager I see nothing odd running, and see no inordinate CPU usage.I would be happy to post all my computer hardware, but I don't think that has anything to do with this trouble. I presume its some bug or software glitch that cropped up.Thank you to everyone who has any idea what I can try next.I DO NOT want to do a whole new fsx install. I don't have the hair left on my head to go through with that.-Stampee

The best thing you can do, and what works best for me when this happens, is rename the fsx.cfg file and let FSX build a new one. Make all your edits for any tweaks from the original file.

Have you run your virus scanning program and are it's definitions up to date?Possibly you have a virus or malware program "playing games" with your system.

I ran a virus scan to no avail. I deleted my fsx file to no avail. Frame rates are still jumping all over.I ran task manager and watched CPU usage while FSX was flying. I had it in window mode maximized to full screen the way I always run, then task manager set to always be on top.CPU usage for fsx was jumping all over creation as well. It was running from 45%-80% maximum.I then set priority to above normal to no avail. I saw nothing else in task manager hogging cpu time.this makes no sense to me. I never actually checked FSX cpu percentage while it was running, but... how can FSX not use close to the maximum power as it should be doing?heck if it only needed 40% cpu power my frame rates should be through the roof and silky smooth running.What the HECK could have changed all of a sudden?For what it is worth I have an MSI k8t mainboard with dual core amd processor 4200 and a 7600GS 512meg video card.before this woe I would run dual monitors in maximized window mode and was getting around 30-45 steady FPSI always got alot better frame rate in window mode then in full screen mode, who knows why, but it was consistant and I was satisfied with it.ANy more advice would be greatly appreciated.-Stampee

HURRAH: I have my frame rates back. I found a forum article where a man was talking about getting fsx to run on both cores in the olden days before SP2 and acceleration. He talked about turning 1 core on and off. I went to task manager and deselected one core of my CPU then reselected it while in flight. My frame rates came back as they were originally. This makes no sense of course. Why did FSX get foobared and wasn't running on my dual cores as it has been for 2 years?I am happy of course that I am flying again, but... what happened? and why if task manager showed both cores as being selected would un-checking core 0 then reselecting it make things work properly again? This is why I hate modern computers, punch cards were a lot easier to work with.... :)-Stampee

HURRAH: I have my frame rates back. I found a forum article where a man was talking about getting fsx to run on both cores in the olden days before SP2 and acceleration. He talked about turning 1 core on and off. I went to task manager and deselected one core of my CPU then reselected it while in flight. My frame rates came back as they were originally. This makes no sense of course. Why did FSX get foobared and wasn't running on my dual cores as it has been for 2 years?I am happy of course that I am flying again, but... what happened? and why if task manager showed both cores as being selected would un-checking core 0 then reselecting it make things work properly again? This is why I hate modern computers, punch cards were a lot easier to work with.... :)-Stampee

Congrats on getting some fps back! Did you fix the menu system too? I recall FS9 crashing all the time whenever my cursor hit the menu bar. It turned out the video card drivers were not installed properly. I haven't heard about this problem in FSX. You can also check your dll.xml file to see if it's corrupted. I know the Wilco 737PIC corrupted the dll.xml with their first upgrade to FSX from FS9. A later update fixed this issue. If that happened to you, PMDG has info on how to rebuild the xml on their website.Best regards,Jim

HURRAH: I have my frame rates back. I found a forum article where a man was talking about getting fsx to run on both cores in the olden days before SP2 and acceleration. He talked about turning 1 core on and off. I went to task manager and deselected one core of my CPU then reselected it while in flight. My frame rates came back as they were originally. This makes no sense of course. Why did FSX get foobared and wasn't running on my dual cores as it has been for 2 years?I am happy of course that I am flying again, but... what happened? and why if task manager showed both cores as being selected would un-checking core 0 then reselecting it make things work properly again? This is why I hate modern computers, punch cards were a lot easier to work with.... :)-Stampee

I wonder if it is because HyperThreading is turned on in your BIOS. This will make the chip get really hot and prone to glitches. FSX doesn't use HyperThread cores either. You can then OC the CPU clock higher also.jja

The menu system started working again properly. Maybe FSX was so overloaded that it could not bring up the menu system properly. I went from an unreliable 15 FPS to a steady 40 FPS with this fix. I really do not know why that core quit working, maybe it was heat related, but I have been gun shy about hot temps and am always checking the air out the back of the case and Power supply and both are if anything cool feeling. I also am constantly checking cpu core temps. Running fsx they reach around 50C then in normal windows use they drop to 32CI had a power supply fail recently and had suspected a hot cpu originally so have been watching temps.I have an AMD dual core athalon 64 so do not have any hyper-threading. Thank you for the suggestion however.-Stampee