huge delay loading fs2004

[N2056 33]

I went from 600mhz PIII, 256mb SDRAM & TNT2 64mb video to an athlon 1.8G, 256mb ddr & geforce fx 5200 video (45.23's). It takes about three minutes from the time I start the sim get the splash screen. Once it's running it seems ok for the most part. I won't go into problems I have once it's running yet - I'm just trying to figure out why it takes so long to load. I see the same sort of delay now when I start fs2002 also. I use 98SE, and went to the onboard AC97 Audio due to memory problems using my soundblaster card. Thanks for the help!Robert

[crvm 0]

Well you should not have that issue with 256 megs of ram although I would call that the minumum for FS. It's hard to tell because we have no idea what things you have running etc. What I would do is to change to Windows XP PRO with a *Clean* format on your hard drive. If you cannot upgrade I would at least format. I format at least once every six months depending on how much installing and removing I do in this time. It's like a new system everytime...[h4]Best Wishes,Randy J. Smithhttp://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-8/196432/winglets_lg.jpg [h3] AMD XP 2200 |MUNCHKIN 512 DDR RAM |ECS[/b ][i] K7S5A MB[/i] |GF2 MX 32 MEG and still runs GOOD!|WIN XP PRO |MITSUBISHI DIAMOND PLUS 91 19"[/h3]

[ChandlerL 3]

Rob,If I may interject with some advice? :) That onboard AC97 audio is a very, very old standard (1997 to be precise). More importantly, it is a non-accelerated audio solution. When using AC97, the CPU has to do the heavy lifting for audio processing (rather than a chip-based [hardware] audio accelerator). This will negatively and possibly, dramatically, affect your gaming performance. Some benchmarks show as much as a 24%* CPU utilization on audio where sound accelerator cards from M-Audio, Creative Labs, etc., never break more than 4%*.Take care,ChanP.S. When you went to the new computer, did you use the hard drive from the new computer without a fresh windows install or was your new system a completely fresh computer?* Audio benchmark numbers acquired from multiple benchmarks sites and Ziff-Davis's Audio Winbench.