I have upgraded my memory from 512M to 1 Gb RAM. From what I have heard 512M is to little for FS9 (also my experience) and 1 Gb is more than enough (not certain). If so is there any need to close down background task? If I understand things correctly these task don't load the CPU or does it very little by just being loaded into memory. In addition to common background task like for example antivirusprogram I also might be running Active Sky and sometimes I have a Excel spreadsheet active at the same time I run FS (with a lot of addon scenery and planes.If 1 Gb isn't more than enough how much is?

I have 1 GB and my motto is , " you never have too much memory". I use FS Auto start and it gets me about another 110-150 Meg of memory , on average, when I run it.

Those of you using FSAutostart might have noticed that upon running it a second time you will pick up another 80 or so meg of memory. Ken is looking into this to see why. What I can tell you is when running really CPU intense aircraft like the Flight1 ATR 72 or Feelthere ERJ-145 I do notice an increase in framerates and smoothness between running FSAutostart and not running it, and also running it that second time will pick up just a little extra for those FPS killer aircraft.ZanePS. What I mean by running it a second time is after shutting down FS2004 and FSAutostart exits, reloading FSAutostart to start FS2004 a second time.

FS Autostart useful with 1 gig of RAM? Absolutely! You obviously might not need to worry about defragging the memory, but even with 1 gig or RAM, I get a noticable increase in performance with FS Autostart.

Each task (process, thread) that runs does use some CPU unless they are in a completely suspended state - for example, if a process is waiting on a semaphore or mutex or critical section. The hard part is that we don't know.If a task is simply running a friendly little loop looking for a certain condition to appear and calling Sleep() statements to yield back to the OS, this still requires context switching. Most GUI programs that present a window to you are not in a suspended state, but are waiting for messages to appear in their queue (mouse moves, left click, etc.)Now, will this affect Flight Sim or other games?Also, when do you know a program will decide to popup on the screen during a flight - like an instant messenger program for example.I cannot give you a definitive yes/no...just try it out and see.

IMNSHO, one GB is certainly enough, but that's not the sole consideration. Much depends on the speed and overall balance of the system and how both it and the sim are configured. As an example, I see no performance difference at all when shutting down the "unnecessary" background processes. No FPS change, no change in texture loading times, and no change is "smoothness". I always have all of the OS-initialized processes active and also leave the firewall (Outpost), AV (NOD32), and trojan detector (Tauscan) running right along with FS2004. I'm also running with all the sliders right, ActiveSky 4.5, Ultimate Traffic, and flying either the LDS 763 or the RealAir 260. And on a long flight I usually watch a movie (DVD) on the second monitor (that does cost me a couple of FPS though). WinXP does a very good job of managing idle tasks and I think the impact of leaving them running, especially on faster systems, is often overstated. But all mileage is, of course, variable and the only way to tell what works for you is to try it both ways.DougP4 3.0C SL6WK @ 3.510 (1.600 VCore - 234 FSB) | Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (BIOS 1019) | 2x512MB Corsair TWINX CXM3700 (3-4-4-8) | 4x120GB WD 7200 IDE) | Hercules 9800 Pro (128MB @ 410/360) | A-Open 1648 AAP | Plextor 708A | Enermax 431W PSU | Inwin Case | Stock Intel HSF

I have 2 gb of ram and I still always use FSAutostart. Can't hurt! In fact, I believe it still important for me to use every time I fly to help insure the best performance I can get.KP

I tried defraging the memory and FS ran extremely slow, like 5 FPS. Not sure why but I haven't tried it since. Any theories?

'Each task (process, thread) that runs does use some CPU unless they are in a completely suspended state...'And that, in a nutshell, says it all.Any high end game will be very demanding on any system --- whether the computer is current state of the art or not. Suspending all but absolutely required processes (for any specific game) is critical for such things as performance and smoothness of the simulation.Every gamer should be using an app like FSAutoStart (though I will confess to being biased toward Ken's creation :-) ).Greg

One question. After FSAutostart does it's thing, Flight Sim starts up and Autostart remains running in the background. Can you then shut it down?Found my answer. If I don't want services to restart then I can shut FSAutostart down.JimCYWG