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Please Help Me Get FS9 Working Right...

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Guest Caveman

I have a peculiar performance problem that I was hoping one of the FS9 gurus on this board could help me with. See signature for new rig specs... I'm using the KSEA default airport (winter, dawn, 7:00 am, active runway) as my "benchmark". I'm at the point where I'm out of ideas about how to cure my problem. If I don't find an easier solution, I will be forced to reinstall the OS and FS9 and there is no guarantee that will solve the problem. Problem: When running the benchmark above (assumption is that problem would occur at other areas too), the sim will freeze for 3-5 seconds. The freeze can occur within 15 seconds of starting the flight although it is typically several minutes after take off and flying through about 1/2 of a standard right pattern. The best way to describe the freeze is that the scenery stops rolling by and the sound continues for another 2 seconds or so while the screen is frozen. Then the sound comes back at the same time the video starts moving again. It seems like once the freeze occurs it comes back again and again with smaller intervals between freezes (at one point, the freezes occurred nearly back to back). The sim runs great when it's not frozen... Avg is low-mid 30's fps on the runway and mid 40's in the air (close to the airport), can go up in the 60's-80's. Settings: Most setting are maxed or just slightly off max (the two autogen sliders are "very dense" and the clouds are 60 miles visibility, 60 miles draw distance, 100% coverage, and max detail). The FS9 config file has been tweaked to make the approach, runway lights, etc, smaller scalar values, brake light indicator off, and the terrain radius is 4.5000 (extended terrain is 9.5000). As I understand, these are minor, "standard" tweaks... Intermittency: Here's the crazy part: the problem doesn't occur all the time. At one point, I was able to do about 10 flights around the pattern with no freezes. And... there doesn't seem to be any correlation with drivers or other "global" settings on the PC like pagefile, etc... I've tried backing off my sound acceleration in dxdiag. I've also tried running with the default XP services as well as those recommended for gaming at www.blackviper.com Even with only 70 MB "running in the background" (from 1 Gig), still get the freeze.I can't believe I'm at the limits of my hardware (scaling back didn't help problem)... It's a stout rig, I would not expect the freezing phenomenon... Out of ideas. Any comments appreciated...

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Guest uncle owen

Try FSautostart available on this site to defrag memory and shut down programs and services also make sure no virus software is auto scanning while your using FS and look for spy ware as well that can course major problems

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Guest Caveman

Anymore ideas before I reformat/reinstall?

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Caveman,Do you have the Bremerton addon scenery installed? Try disabling it in the Scenery menu, restart, and fly the pattern again.Ken

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Guest Caveman

No, no add-ons aside from Flight One 172R... This is driving me absolutely insane... A system like this should not be barfing... It really seems to be random... Sometimes it happens while just ditting there on the active runway, other times it occurs after a few minutes of flying. Sometimes it will do it once and then not again for 3-5 minutes, other times it will happen 3 times in a row.To describe the problem again: Flying along and then the screen freezes, but the sound keeps going for another 2-3 seconds. Then it sounds like some of the sound channels drop out leaving just a "hum", and then it goes dead silent. Then after another 2-3 seconds sound and moving picture come back. This may immediately repeat or go away for several minutes until the next time as described above.I fly Pacific Fighters (IL-2 series) and don't notice anything strange there. This seems like a problem confined to FS9.HELP! I'm going insane!

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Guest firehawk44

I would upgrade your DirectX to 9.0c and see if that helps. You never mentioned your display settings for your video card (AF/AA). That could have some impact. Turn off vertical sync in your display driver settings. That will give you a few extra framerates (it gave me around 15 more FPS!). You never mentioned how much AI you have flying either. 100%? If so, back it off to between 70 and 80. I have a system similar to yours and run into occasional freezes like yours so believe it's just the video card drivers which are having a hard time rendering for certain games. Jim

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Guest Caveman

I've tried every permutation of FS9 settings and driver settings... By default I use 1600 x 1200 at 2XQ with no AF. But as I said lower resolutions/different levels of AA and AF don't change the performance...No change in other graphical settings seems to help/hurt the freeze problem. No change in airtraffic or weather setting help/hurts either.Same with dxdiag and backing off the sound - no difference...Many run with DX9b with no problem. In fact, I'm using b because of problems I saw many have when they went to c...FPS are fine and dandy and smooth. Problem is 5 second freezes. I don't believe it's a hardware limitation.

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Guest Caveman

Isolating one variable at a time... Did a virus scan and there were none...

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Guest nigelb

Does this happen with different aircraft? How about with the default MS aircraft?One other thing which I am sure you have checked - do you have the Autosave module installed? I can occasionaly detect when mine is doing a save but it is just a very small delay/pause.

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Guest Kingair315

If the Registry is filled with Invalid links. It takes time going through all the invalid links searching, so can cause problems or slow things down.Each time you _delete_ something from your HD, it can leave an invalid registry link. Even something as simple as deleting a picture you no longer want, leaves an invalid shortcut. Over time, invalid registry entries can slow your system to a crawl, if FS pauses _too_ long, it even causes errors. Software demo's or payware which give you a free trial, leave links in the registry, to prevent you from using it over, and over. They also may leave folders with junk in them, which you need to remove manually. You can get RegCleaner free, I've used it with W98, ME, XP.You might search for: RegCleaner 4.2 by Jouni Vuorio.HOWEVER... both my wife's and my computer have been slowing down drastically over the past year, and even have had a few "blue screen errors." Pages which used to load in 4-5 seconds, have been taking 16-20 on DSL! Windows has a program "RegClean" available, but it does not work anywhere near as well as this one.A friend told me to check this link for an even better program http://www.registryfix.com/ Decided to try it. It found 275 errors which the above programs have _never_ found. It Fixed 37 which helped, to fix the rest you need a registered copy, which costs $29.95 . . . .. Decided to buy it, ran it to delete the others, and rebooted. Now all webpages which Ive tried, load in _one_second_ or less and the FS runs much better! Unlike the other registry programs, it searches the Classes, Program ID, Add Remove Programs, Application Paths, Windows Fonts, Shared Program FIles, Help Files, Startup Programs, System Services, VXD Section, File Assoc, Sounds, Registry Integrity, and for Invalid Shortcuts or entire drive for orphaned files or links and missing shortcuts, et. al. Finds all errors and then fixes them. One person I told about Registryfix, found 309 errors on his first search, another found 1273! Windows has a program "RegClean" available, but it does not work anywhere near as well as this one.I'd removed norton and some other programs _months_ ago, it found six links still existing to norton. If not using Ad-aware, and Spybot, (freeware) its a good idea to begin. They can get rid of a LOT of programs which tell companies where you are surfing, and more. Each time they do, it uses bandwidth. If there are hundreds of them on your system, the time they use is significant. Cleaning your Registry and getting rid of Spyware, makes your operating system work the way it should.There are so many causes of problems, in FS which are caused from invalid links in the Registry, its not possible to list all of them. Every time I have a problem with the FS, _first_ thing I do is clean the system.As it is the easiest to use, and Fast,I highly recommend you at least check out the demo at: http://www.registryfix.com/ Bob

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That description is similar to problems I've encountered in FS9 after overclocking my videocard too far. The screen freezes, sound goes on for a bit, then it changes to a hum. In my case however, FS9 never "comes back." Instead, I have to do a hard reboot.This would usually happen about 15 minutes into the flight, at a graphically complex moment such as flying through heavy cloud formations.I think it was due to heat build up. My CPU and m/b temp readings were ok but I could definately smell something running hot. I reigned in the videocard clocking a little bit and the problem went away.

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A dying joystick caused similar intermittent problems for me.Peter Sydney Australia

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Guest Caveman

Joystick: Good thought but I ruled this out after getting the freeze during keyboard playing after disabling my Thrustmaster "Cougar".The problem occurs with the default aircraft as well...This is a new machine and the registry is virtually empty. I try to run my machines as lean and mean as possible. I run Adaware and Spybot as a habit just the same and I have no spyware (Firefox user).This is the craziest problem...

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Download Hijack this--scan and post the log results here. Even if there's no spyware, you may have a process running that's causing the issues--even more suspect if you've ruled everything else out.-JohnP.S.Send me a PM once you've posted the log to this thread, since I tend to forget about some threads after they move off of page "1"

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