Frequent, extended pauses, then textures refresh ...

[Dark Moment 0]

I know we've been down this road before but - on a different computer - I am having a repeat of an earlier issue; that is, frequent, extended pauses (of ten to fifteen seconds) and then a texture refresh as the sim gets going again. I run FS9.I have searched the FAQ and other threads but don't find anything definitive. Any ideas? All was running well enough before. I have a P4 1.8GHZ, 768MB RAM (200GHZ), GeForce4 Ti 4800 card with 77.77 drivers. Hard disk is about 80% full. Regularly defragment, antivirus, antispyware. Windows Messenger disabled, as are other invasive background processes.I do have loads of add-ons ... way too many to list ... but can't think of anything particular that might have predicated this. It happens in all regions, with most aircraft I think. I lock FPS at 20 and they're usually bouncing around at that level.Can anyone help? Thanks, if you can.Mark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

[JackD 0]

"Can anyone help? Thanks, if you can."Hi MarkDoubt if this is going to be much help, worth a try.Have you changed your Pan Rate? Set mine at 900 and it gets stutters on 1st pan when scenery changes for any reason. I haven't restored default setting of 400 because I can live it as long as I know what's causing it, and I enjoy effect.Also, I had trouble with an old ti4800 when I tried to upgrade drivers and got the stutters. Rolled back to older drivers and all was well. No, I can't remember ID of good drivers.As I said. . .worth a try.Hope this helps,JackD

[Dark Moment 0]

Hi JackDI have experimented before with the 900 pan rate but as changing it causes some problems in FS (can't remember what offhand, but I know there is an issue of some kind) and I find I can pan very quickly using Active Camera in any case, I am back to the default 400 in the FS9.CFG file.However, your mention of driver issues might be pertinent. I did upgrade to 77.77 fairly recently. As that probably gave me little benefit anyway with my older card, I see no harm in rolling back. I'll try that, thanks.Mark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

[Guest JimC1702]

Mark, I've read about others having issues with the 77.77 drivers. As you say, your older card would probably be much happier with older drivers.Jim

[Guest NetBoyz]

Hi Mark - I posted the following in a thread about AEU7 several months ago, after chasing an issue with the same symptoms for a long time. Forget the mentions of AEU7, but the AGP Fast Write setting could be relevant to you perhaps:---------------------------------------Something important I just learned on my system, maybe addresses the long pauses seen by some contributors to this thread. I too have cut down texture sizes, but still experienced 10 sec random pauses.This has driven me nuts for the past 4 months or so, and was not limited to being at an airport, so it wasn't AEU7. I discovered earlier that a 128MB card may experience texture update issues causing blurry resolution, and I fixed this with a 256MB video card. But even with that I still saw long pauses that I couldn't eliminate.I have a GeForce 6800 Ultra video card, 256MB (from MSI), and the mainboard is an MSI Neo2 Platinum running an Athlon64-FX53 with 4GB memory. A big system, shouldn't have pauses for almost anything. But I discovered there's a lot about this topic on the MSI forum, and after trying new drivers and BIOS and FS texture sizes without result, I found that turning OFF AGP Fast Write (using the BIOS interface at boot) eliminates the pauses. There is no obvious performance effect, other than elimination of the pauses. (Disclaimers: Of course this may not be the case for other system configs or manufacturers, and if you're not comfortable with your BIOS for heaven's sake please ignore this.)I post here because there may be several causes of large pauses. So this is something you might try if all the texture tweaks don't eliminate the pauses, and if the pauses you see are for many seconds. Sorry if this seems like a hardware post, it's about the BIOS which is software, tho, and seemed maybe relevant to the problem attributed to textures...Regards -- Dick Bixler

[Guest goon]

I too have been having massive pauses using 77.77 but with a 6800GT. I'm currently uninstalling and stepping back one version. I ONLY see this issue with FS, all other games are fine. FS just quit with a blue screen citing nv4disp.dll as the culprit, and I' had other odd moments where FS has quit and I get 'You're display driver has stopped working etc....'Haven't had a blue screen in FS in years.

[shermank 170]

I suggest those of you using the 77.77 upgrade to the beta 80.40 at www.guru3d.com or wwww.tweaksrus.comalso, I have found it prudent to do all my external view scans before even starting my engines...I think of it as pre flight prep...and by doing pre loading, your OS will more quickly fetch the sceneries and views when you need them with minimal or no lag, depending, of course, on individual systems...Sherm

[Guest goon]

Hi Sherm,I also force FS to prefetch the textures at start of flight. I was still getting random locks and extended pauses. I'll investigate the 80.40 driver set. I'm not sure if I tried them and they would lock FS solid on undocking a window to my second monitor. Thanks for the pointer though.Gareth Evans

[Dark Moment 0]

Agree on panning the textures, Sherm, I do that myself.Checked out the 80.40 drivers you recommend:<<<>>>Er ... no thanks! Call me old and not bold, but I have too much invested to take a gamble with that kind of rider.I'll go back, I think. I just tried 66.93 and now I have TOTALLY OUT OF FOCUS TEXTURES altogether ... even in the selection screen .... but only in FS. Hmmmmm..... maybe I need to go back further. Summat's up, for sure.MarkMark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

[Guest goon]

Mark,I went back to 77.56, and none of the symptoms of before. Sadly, didn't seem as smooth as 77.77, but what can you do?!

[barryward12345 0]

Hard disk is about 80% full. >Regularly defragment,Hi MarkIt sounds to me that you may well be experiencing what I have been experiencing lately -- and I am starting to suspect that I have too much on my hard-drive. I also am now at 80% full and recently I got to only 17% left on my HDD . I noticed that the Defragger was not completely defragging the HDD -- having deleted some stuff off the HDD back to 20% free, I have now been able to completely defrag the HDD, but only after several runs at it .I noticed sometime ago that my system seemed to have slowed down quite a bit -- I really do suspect that there is insufficient space left on the HDD - even though there is 7 GIG left . It seems that the % capacity left is an important number.Barry

[Dark Moment 0]

I'm not having fun. I've gone back through three drivers; I have no idea whether I still have the pausing or not, yet, as I have a brand new problem; ultra low quality textures that don't sharpen up. This occcurs right from the selection screen and into the sim. The entire 2D panel is fine in this default 172, funnily, as are the gauges in VC, but everything else is either untextured or just 'orrible. And yes, I've rebooted and restarted several times.I'm back up to 66.93 now which I was running for a long time before without problem. What have I done here? The display and graphics sections in the FS9.CFG look to be fine, and compare well with others to be found in the Tips and Tricks section.Mods, I need to show these so that people can see what I'm talking about ... please don't send me off to screenshots, this is a technical issue. Thanks.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/125754.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/125755.jpgHelp!MarkMark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

[shermank 170]

I've never seen anything quite like that one, Mark...I know that you have helped me with a few things at dca, and tho I am no techie, maybe I can help brainstorm this issue. First, have you ever used the detonator destroyer software at www.guru3d.com. I wonder whether you have some lingering mixes of various nvidia driver files. After making sure that all driver elements are gone, and that you are at basic 640*480 screen resolution, then go ahead and reinstall whichever was the last driver with which you had some success. Someone else may recognize this better than do I am and come up with something more concrete, but for now, that's my suggestion. btw, if you are using WXP maybe you can simply roll back to an earlier driver. Shermdca662

[shermank 170]

One other note about system maintenance. I have used a freeware program called pagedefrag which keeps my registry compact and clean as a whistle. It starts on bootup, goes thru its routine and then continues to allow the full bootup into xp. As I say, I am no techie, but I think I do recognize something like this that keeps my system running well. Think of it as tums for the computer...:-)http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.htmlSherm

[Dark Moment 0]

BazzaFor sure, it's not good when the HD starts to get crowded. There'll come a point where you can't defrag at all. I am watching for that too.ShermThanks for the suggestions but after headscratching, all is now well. I'm glad, because I'm not techie either. In earlier days I tried all those Destroyers and various gizmos and spent more time trying to rebuild my software than flying, so now I leave it well alone if I can.Turns out the reason the textures were displaying like that was because I was viewing FS on my Monitor 3, which is run by an old GeForce2 32MB MX400 which I only use for FSNav and other such stuff. Seems it simply wouldn't run the FS landscape or aircraft textures; gauges were fine. When this occurred to me, I simply dragged FS over to another monitor and Hey Presto! Textures reappeared. You learn something new every day. But thanks for the offer of assistance.Now to get back to where I started, by running tests on earlier drivers to see if the pauses have now gone .... I'm on 66.93 right now. I'll post any findings.Phew! I was worried I'd never be able to do (for which, read 'see') another repaint!MarkMark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]