I have a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro that has worked almsot flawlessly since 1998. :-) Until yesterday. :-( After doing some unrelated troubleshooting in my system the joystick wasn't recognised. I managed to add it through the Control Panel, but now the force feedback causes severe frame rate drops in FS2004. My framerate is usually pinned at 25, but goes down to 9 when having any of the forces enabled (except "crash effects", "stick shaker" and "retractable gear thumps" - they don't seem to have any adverse effect). If I have the "ground bumps" force enabled the framerate even goes down to 1 when moving on the ground, so the sim becomes totally unusable. If I disable the forces, the framerate goes back up to 25, but I've grown so accustomed to the forces that I find it hard to fly without them!There must be some way to make it work I think, because it has worked without problems on this computer for a few weeks, and before that on another computer for over a year, both systems using Windows XP (and earlier it has worked fine with Windows ME, 98, and 95)Any ideas?Martin767 fetishistIt's a lot like life and that's what's appealing

MartinI always get this problem if I perform a scan disk procedure on my C drive (where all my operating system stuff is housed, together with my joystick software). The only way is to completely uninstall the joystick and then do a new install. Now I will never do a scan disk on that drive again as it always knock something out. Last time it was my broadband software. It seems to removes the last one or two installed programmes, no idea why though. Colin

>I always get this problem if I perform a scan disk procedure>on my C driveThat's what I did, guided by a tech support guy on the phone. It was in order to try to fix a boot-up problem (my system only boots properly if there is a valid boot CD in the drive - it doesn't want to boot from the HDD...).Can you tell me how I can "completely uninstall" the stick? I've removed it from the Control Panel and added it back several times, and it didn't help.Thanks for your time.Martin767 fetishistIt's a lot like life and that's what's appealing

Well removing it from the control panel is the first step. There is a folder created when it is installed that you need to manually remove as this contains profiles. When I reinstalled, it took a few goes as it did not go on properly at least 2 times. It may be a painful case of just keep trying until it works I'm afraid.Incidentally, my problems arose when I took my pc in for a health check and they ran the Norton virus scanner over it and that conflicted with my EZtrust AV software. I ended up having to reformat and lost all my stuff. I was not impressed I can tell you.Colin

>There is a folder created when it is installed that you need>to manually remove as this contains profiles.And how do I find this folder?>I ended up having to reformat and lost all my stuff. I was not impressed I can tell you.I'm trying to avoid that! Even though I've only used this computer for a few weeks, I've already loaded it with lots of FS stuff, and I don't want to go through installing all of it again... So now I'm thinking "if it's broke but it works, don't mess with it". And the system runs fine as long as I have a boot CD in the drive when I start it, so I don't want to risk losing everything just to cure that "little" problem.Martin767 fetishistIt's a lot like life and that's what's appealing

>>There is a folder created when it is installed that you>need>>to manually remove as this contains profiles.>>And how do I find this folder?I still haven't found this folder. Can anyone help me out?Thanks,Martin767 fetishistIt's a lot like life and that's what's appealing