It is becoming increasingly obvious to myself and others in our group that,the longer FS9 is run, the slower it gets!To bear out our findings, uninstall FS9, re-boot and load the program again?Without disturbing your FILES.Now execute FS9 and see the differences in performance!How many others have noticed this, and is this a promotion for us all to get the next FS '10' as soon as it comes out? (Not that we won't anyway eh?).EDIT: I meant, the longer you have it on your HDD.Dave T. .........On the Devon Riviera and active 'FlightSim User's Group' member at http://www.flightsimgrpuk.free-online.co.uk/

Maybe just defragmenting the drive will help.

Dave,With all due respect, I think you will find the same response if you simply delete the fs9.cfg file and let it rebuild a new one. The reason is those sliders tend to creep up over time and we turn on new options and learn to live with the impact. I'm tempted to try it, however, as I've tweaked and modified FS9 so much that performance is now almost unacceptable. In fact, I'm finding I just don't use the sim much anymore and I have a fairly new highend system (P4 3.6mhz, ATI 800XT PE). The stuttering as I get close to airports is just horrible and started somewhere along the way of adding Ultimate Terrain, Birdseye View, USA Roads, and Ultimate Traffic (after trying other AI addons as well). It now takes a good 4 minutes to even start FS. The thought of reloading everything is not very appealing either but I have a bunch of time off for the holidays so why not.David

Try FS Autostart, kill all unnecessary background tasks. http://www.kensalter.com/fsautostart/fs9 performance should not degrade over time (ie be worse at the end of the flight), unless you have a problem. Perhaps an addon causing a memory leak? Do you have the fs9 9.1 patch?

I don't think he means that it gets worse during the course of a flight (although I do have that problem with certain planes in certain situations). I think he means over a longer period of time you tend to lose your "sweet spot". I use Enditall and have the patch. I've followed just about every piece of advice that I've seen in this forum except reinstalling but I think I've mucked things up so badly with addons that it's probably timeDavid

>I don't think he means that it gets worse during the course>of a flight (although I do have that problem with certain>planes in certain situations). I think he means over a longer>period of time you tend to lose your "sweet spot". I use>Enditall and have the patch. I've followed just about every>piece of advice that I've seen in this forum except>reinstalling but I think I've mucked things up so badly with>addons that it's probably time>DavidAhh yes, over time we keep installing more and more addons and "weigh" the sim down. A reinstall never hurts (other than the huge time commitment...)

My performance has been consistent over the time I've had the sim. I've been light on add-ons, sticking with aircraft add-ons and a few landclass add-ons I've created myself. I certainly wouldn't suggest people go out and uninstall/reinstall to prove or disprove the theory. That may cause more trouble than its worth. All I can offer is my experience differs.-John

Maybe it gets slower loading etc. But I always have the FPS counter up and bascially maintain the same FPS. One thing I have is a saved flight called FPS which I periodically load and make note of the frame rates from different spot views. This has never changed unexpectly or degraded over time, unless I load up new clouds, change my graphic settings etc. Every now and then a new addon may cause problems because it's not configured right or something. I notice right away because I know what FPS I should be seeing usually.Load times do slowly degrade over time, (I think) but I don't have a way of measuring it so I don't really know. Loading times don't really bother me awayway, not like frame rates do. Shudders are always aggressively eliminated as soon as they show up, but that's almost always due to some add on.I also have Doom 3 which I have notes on it's max frame rate too, which is where I usually find problems introduced by a new video driver.Over time installing programs seem to create some problems. Usually this is in the form of some service that gets installed and started. These can also cause shudders. If I don't know what it is, I kill it. I'll only bring it back if something stops working. I have an idea that DRM is also becoming a big threat, but so far I haven't checked it out much.So, I've used the same FS installation for at least 2 years at a time, no problem. Except for the stuff I mentioned above.

Strange though this sounds, I have to agree 100%I personally hate having to re-install and had my original FS9 install in place until a couple of months ago. I did regularly delete the fs9.cfg file, but that was about all I did. Anyway, FS got in a bit of mess with scenery that had been added and didn't un-install right and just couldn't be bothered trying to get to the bottom of the problem.....so I bit the bullet.I have to say, after re-installing FS, a couple of add-ons including mesh and settings the sliders to where they normally were, well FS just ran like a different program.Why? Well that's anyones guess.http://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...BANNER_PAUL.jpg

David you must have something out of what besides sheer volume! I run all those things and then some and I do not have stuttering, even with PMDG 747 & 737 (man these are nice), and I run pretty hard right as in sliders, except for cloud density which I run at high, instead of maximum. I also have cloud draw distance at 50m, 100% 3D and 70m visibility. 1600x1200x32 at 4xAA/8xAF (sometimes 16xAF if I am running lighter aircraft). I too believe rebuilding the .cfg file seems to yield measureable results most of the time if not always. Anyway I wonder is something else isn't amiss in your set up.Noel

I agree also. I got a laptop this summer -put a stock fs on and it ran like a dream.My desktop with all the addons-takes 3-4 minutes to load and runs very slow. Looks great-slide show for much....Laptop-not quite as great-but very fluid.Maybe I'll just put the Dreamfleet Baron on and nothing else-and enjoy myself greatly....http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

>I'm tempted to try it, however, as I've tweaked and modified>FS9 so much that performance is now almost unacceptable. In>fact, I'm finding I just don't use the sim much anymore and I>have a fairly new highend system (P4 3.6mhz, ATI 800XT PE).>The stuttering as I get close to airports is just horrible and>started somewhere along the way of adding Ultimate Terrain,>Birdseye View, USA Roads, and Ultimate Traffic (after trying>other AI addons as well). It now takes a good 4 minutes to>even start FS. The thought of reloading everything is not very>appealing either but I have a bunch of time off for the>holidays so why not.>DavidYou may be experiencing a slowdown due to other factors, especially if like me, you try things, then uninstall them, etc.... Each time we do, entries are added to the registry, which are -not- always removed. It leaves the FS to search for them each time it has to access the registry. If correct, windows may even go thru it several times.There are several registry cleaners available, some freeware, others payware, and usually the payware have additional features. First time I ran RegCleaner it removed 287 invalid lines from the registry. Doing so speeded up the FS ... This or a similar program should be included in Windows, or windows itself should do a better job of cleaning out files when uninstalling them. Many even leave unused folders, etc, that need to be removed manually.

P.S. even deleting things like photos, leave a link in the registry long after they are removed.

Well. My FS installation is from July 14th 2003. And I do not have the slightest problem with it. And I could not think of one reason why FS should slow down by itself after a certain amount of time. I guess it all comes down to proper system maintenance. Permanently adding and uninstalling various ad-ons and not keeping track of them usually doesn't help. I guess for example one of the reasons as to why this happens is that we install myriads sceneries and add-on planes that we never use later on. FS has to read all this stuff. Than on reinstall one only activates what one really uses. Thus the speed effect. If you really install everything you had installed before FS won't be a tad faster after the reinstall.Alex