Another one bites the dust...

[Benjamin J 751]

So there I was, thinking I had both FSX and FS2004 working properly now.Well, not...For testing purposes I had to use FS2004. I hadn't started it up in close to half a year, I think. Loading was quick, as always, but there were scenery.cfg problems. For reason I can't comprehend, FS2004 always makes a complete mess of the scenery.cfg if I alter the scenery library via the UI. I made the mistake of looking at the FS2004 scenery library in FS2004, and clicking okay, and the scenery.cfg was an utter mess aftewrads. So after I spent an hour restoring it and added the to test sceneries, I loaded the sim. Wow, a stunning 1FPS and instant freeze-up of FS2004! Never seen anything like it, but I'm sure it's because of all the reinstallations of FSX I did the past couple of months (I read somewhere that FSX installations do something funny to FS2004's registry keys). So, patience running low, I decided to get rid of FS2004 and install it anew, using it only for testing purposes from this point on (meaning I would only install addons that were to be tested, nothing else). I therefor started uninstalling sceneries and aircraft of FS2004. About two hours later I started FSX. After waiting 5 minutes for the UI to load, and waiting for another 5 minutes before the UI was somewhere near operable (this seems normal if I have lots of huge scenery files installed, but the MegaSceneryEarth sceneries especially seem to bog down the FSX UI), I wanted to change the starting airport. I proceded to select the airport and I clicked okay. I waited for a minute and what a surprise: CTD!Right. This is also somewhat normal the past few weeks. So I restarted FSX, opened the default flight, and the sim crashed once I wanted to open the menu bar to change airports from within the simulation. At this point I had enough. This was crazy. There I was: both FS2004 and FSX completely inoperable.I have no removed everything MSFS related, except for some programs like EditVoicePack which have nothing to do with the core FS2004 and FSX programs. I proceded to reinstall FSX per Nick's guide. I'm going to do it very differently this time. I'm not going to add lots of sceneries and aircraft. I'm going to be extremely conservative, and only install the stuff I really want. And when I say really want, I mean the stuff I really, really want. This includes aircraft like the LDS767 and PMDG 747, and airports like Ben Gurion X, Aerosoft Amsterdam and FlyTampa Vienna, or FSDT's KJFK and Aerosoft Manhattan. This could turn out a problematic policy for reviewing products or beta testing sceneries, but that's how it is. This is the fourth reinstallation of FSX, and I'm getting more or less fed up with it. Further more, I'm going to be very selective on tweaks. I'm not going to run the fsx.cfg through Bojote's automated thingy, but I'm going to add as few tweaks as possible. I want a FSX that is as standard as I can get it, with as little outside interference as I can get.Why am I suddenly so conservative? Well, remember that thread I once started? In which I basically lauded FSX for the stuff it gives us? Even with all the misfortune I've been getting with FSX, I'm still holding by the idea of that thread. I still think FSX is a good sim that gives us a wealth of stuff for us to excersie our hobby. BUT, here's is the famous line:FSX is great......when it works!And I've noticed that FSX stops working reliably with the amount of addons being installed getting bigger and bigger. As such, I'm only going to put in the stuff that I really want, that truly interests me.I didn't start this thread just to complain/praise FSX or whatever. I do have some questions now:1) What tweaks are most recommended?2) When can I safely install FS2004 without FSX (addon) installations positively destroying FS2004?3) How does compressing FSX's files influence FSX's performance? When I say compressing, I mean that Windows function that maks the files'names turn blue instead of black.It's mainly the second question that is of biggest importance right now. Please note that at this point FSX and the Acceleration pack are installed and working well. FSX loads quick enough and the UI is responsive within seconds (instead of minutes). It's the addons that need to be installed at this point.

[christinebur 0]

why not tried a virtual machine with fs2004 and a os like windows ?if you have windows 7 professional just get windows xp modehave you compressed your harddrive.

[virtuali 4,419]

why not tried a virtual machine with fs2004 and a os like windows ?if you have windows 7 professional just get windows xp mode

I sometimes launch FS9 or FSX under a Virtual Machine on a Mac, when I'm inside OSX and are too lazy to reboot in Windows, both sims work, but they are unplayably slow, because the *emulated* video card it's a lowly S3 with 256MB, which is probably the bare minimum to run DX9. And Mac's Parallels workstation is considered to be the fast Virtual machine for games, I can run older PC games like Quake 3 at 200 fps inside an OSX window, but FS9/FSX are simply too much to be used under a virtualized environment. FS9 is not so bad (about half the normal fps, so it's still usable, although image quality it's worse than on a real 3d card), but FSX it's a slideshow.

[Squishy 0]

And people mock me when I say FSX is badly coded.. or that the CTD board here doesn't really have that many topics.I observed the MS FSX board this week and noticed at least 5 new CTD topics with people getting really frustrated

[WotanUK 289]

And people mock me when I say FSX is badly coded.. or that the CTD board here doesn't really have that many topics.I observed the MS FSX board this week and noticed at least 5 new CTD topics with people getting really frustrated

I think that's a little unfair. If it was "badly coded" then everybody (or the majority) would have the issue. I can only speak from personal experience but i find FSX more stable than FS9; within FS9 i could generally only do a single flight with a complex aircraft the second flight would crash, under FSX and using the PMDG J41 i can use it pretty much all day with no issues and no rebooting.

[trisager 2]

And people mock me when I say FSX is badly coded.. or that the CTD board here doesn't really have that many topics.

Nah, people mock you for hijacking treads and for repeating your disdain for the Aces Team ad nauseam.Back on topic:1) I'd go with the tweaks in Nick's guide initially, then post again if there are specific problems that you need fixed. Don't make more than one tweak at a time, or you will never know what helped and what didn't.2) Not sure I can help here, I ran FSX and FS2004 in parallel for the longest time without any problems. (FS2004 was installed after FSX, and FSX was installed outside of the default location).3) I would not install flightsim files to a compressed drive, unless you are desperately short of HDD space and you cannot afford a larger drive. Every file you load from a compressed drive requires on-the-fly decompression = CPU and memory usage.

[Benjamin J 751]

People, let's please notget into a debate how good FSX is. I have three questions that I would like answered, so if we could concentrate on that for now, then we can start fighting about the quality of FSX later, yes? As I said in the OP, I did not start this thread to complain, but to ask questions.Just to reply to the virtual machine comment: I actually don't understrand how this is relevant to the topic at hand. How is a virtual machine an answer to any of the three questions I asked?EDIT: trisager, THANK YOU. That's the kind of spirit we need here, thanks for staying on topic.1) Okay, but does he also include stuff that Bojote found out about?2) So, installing FSX addons should not be a problem?3) Hm. So it's better not to compress any FSX files? Note that I did not compress the entire HD, just FSX's directory.

[Dean_EGTC 57]

There's no doubt; they are getting worse. From almost never seeing one, to this month when I've had at least six.Whether it's that last major set of Windows updates, or the increasing complex add-ons that's pushing the code that is FSX to its limit, summit' appears to be conspiring against us :(

[meshman 109]

1) Okay, but does he also include stuff that Bojote found out about?2) So, installing FSX addons should not be a problem?3) Hm. So it's better not to compress any FSX files? Note that I did not compress the entire HD, just FSX's directory.

1. Uh... you can work with one guide but better not expect any recognition from the producer of that guide of any other tweaks, fixes, etc that may come from elsewhere in the community. Treading really carefully here... :( 2. Early on there were problems mentioned about dual installs of FS9 and FSX. I've never run into that. I have a pristine install of FS9 zipped up and burnt to a DVD. All I ever need to do is unzip and then use something like the Flight1 registry tool to set the FS9 location. I really couldn't imagine how or why a FSX add on would conflict with a FS9 install, but there have been past surprises.3. Any savings in disk space by compressing the folder introduces system overhead while FSX is running to uncompress the files. As a lot of FSX overhead is centered around drawcalls (getting textures), the last thing I would want to do is slow that aspect down even by a tiny amount.

[RudiJG1 172]

Like trisager said:1) NickN's guide is definately the best starting place, and pay attention to every step before tweaking in any other way. I've had to employ NickN's guide several times, and it's always done right by me. THEN, apply Bogote's tweaks via his tuning website (FSX tweaking site) ...they are minimal and a backup of your original fsx.cfg is kept. THEN, fly around and test how it's working for you. I used to go much further with the tweaking but have decided that what I've just described works best for me. For the record, I'm having no problems with FSX but I do rein myself in in terms of the autogen and AI traffic settings. YMMV...3) As other have said, stay away from compressing your FSX drive...too much work to uncompress them during flight.

[mmann 72]

There's no doubt; they are getting worse. From almost never seeing one, to this month when I've had at least six.

Interesting that FSX seems to be getting less stable the closer we get to the arrival of Flight; which would point to a dramatic increase in sales for Flight. I wonder if it is just a coincidence?Myself I have never had a problem with FSX and FS9 residing on the same computer; although I have recently removed FS9 because I was hardly ever using it after the arrival of Orbx FTX PNW.My flight sim computer is not hooked up to the internet and I am running it with a very slimmed down version of Windows XP Pro SP2 with no updates (and no problems).I would highly suggest not compressing any files/folders except for archive only material.Regards, Mike Mann

[Benjamin J 751]

There's no doubt; they are getting worse. From almost never seeing one, to this month when I've had at least six.Whether it's that last major set of Windows updates, or the increasing complex add-ons that's pushing the code that is FSX to its limit, summit' appears to be conspiring against us :(

Meh, I've been having problems all along. This is nothing new, or recent at all for me.1) Okay, thanks guys. I'll go back to Nick's tweaking guide.2) Well, from what I heard, installing FSX could potentially mess up the registry keys of FS2004. I can't think of anything but installing FSX that could otherwise mess up FS2004 so badly. Anywho, I'll proceed to install FS2004 then.3) Thanks guys, I just never quite knew how much the performance impact might be of compressing files. I'm decompressing them now as we speak. As a matter of fact, it might explain the sudden drop of FPS I always saw in FSX that I could not link to any addon whatsoever. So, thanks on that account too! Off to continue installing stuff now.