Is there a key to the holy grail of performance in FSX? I belive there is providing you have realistic expectations as to what can be achived based upon the performance of your system and future patching by Microsoft.I have just walked through the door into my holy grail of flight simulator performance, the only problem is that I cannot say how I managed to unlock the door because I made several changes to my system before a fresh install which has resulted in a significant performance increase with this simulator on my noisy but trusted workhorse of a Dell Dimension 8300 3Ghz with 1gig of RAM and a 6800GT graphics card. I believe there may be a problem with the set-up installer within FSX, it might well require specific services to running at the time of install, some of which may need to be forced on.It started two days ago, I was attempting to tweak my driver on my 6800GT graphics card. The result of my tweaking, using a well known tweak utility, caused a blue screen of death while starting a flying session within the simulator. I reset my display drivers using RivaTuner, (I point out this is not the utility that caused my problem in the first place). I managed to get the sim up and running again, alas I now had a warning that FSX may not be registered properly. The simulator shut down after a short flying session with the warning that my demo period had now expired. This is not a demo, but the standard version of FSX!. I did some research and found a Microsoft tool to reset settings within the Windows XP registry, (I think it does that) it requires input at the command prompt after running a small program, (reference Microsoft Bulletin KB928080. Several attempts to install the simulator failed towards the end of the set-up program, the warnings given during the failed install appeared to point towards the Windows installer which is a service within Windows XP, perhaps this service was not running on my machine? at the time of install. The error message 1722 lead me to the KB928080 fix. After applying the KB928080 fix, I opened up the Windows XP services and FORCE started the Windows Installer. I also forced on .Net Runtime Optomisation. Perhaps less relevant, and blindly, I forced started ASP Net State Service and Network Location Awarness.I started my install of FSX, this time more configurations took place near the end of the install. DirectX installed, I am not sure why as I have applied the latest DirectX and SDK etc. The Installer played an intro video, I never saw all this with my previous two installs.I started up FSX at Stansted using Garry Summons New Extream Scenery Demo of Stansted. My Frame rates had jumped significantly! Previously I has struggled to get 14 frames with low scenery settings and all the applied texture and configuration tweaks that you can find on this forum and others like it. I now had 30 FPS ,(default 747) with scenery on similar detail and graphics settings as in my previous install but without any tweaks applied to the sim with the exception of the fibre frame rate tweak, (mine is set to .23) and the buffer pools size tweak. I hope you are reading this post with an open mind, some of you computer and flight sim pundits may be able to piece together the events that lead me to find my holy grail of performance. My conclusion is that the FSX installer may need to have the Windows Installer forced started on some machines or that the FSX installer may require some other services to be running in order to install properly. Perhaps Windows Installer is required during install, perhaps the FSX installer program fails to initiate the Windows Installer?If you install FSX again, try forcing on the Windows Installer and see what happens. I now have a few extra services running in the back ground related to the Networking Services, I leave them running now as they do not seem to effect my performance in FSX. Having removed and backed-up the default XML from the autogen folder, (it was removed before in the old installations) I can now push my sliders much further to the right with the exception of high AI Traffic and Light Bloom, enjoy lot's of autogen and water effects, 100 percent road traffic and with no texture replacements and just a few cfg tweaks, (fibre frame rate, buffer pools, the cfg tweaks that you will find in this forum).I hope there is something here that will help you all. I am sure there is a problem at FSX install and that it may be due to a problem with the Windows Installer service, perhaps not running or even a problem with .Net Runtime Service. I am no computer pundit, I may be talking a load of twaddle! Something good has happened here for me, I am not sure how but I am now going to enjoy my new FSX experience!Yours aye.Chas Forsyth

Well, if this puppy could emulate Windows XP then we would all be happy.http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/MetaC...ages/CM5_lg.jpg

Actually, XP is not sophisticated enough to run on that machine.I would like to think maybe he is onto something here but.....Windows installer runs by default. .Net and the others are running by default too once .net is installed. Maybe he disabled them somewhere before trying to get more out of FSX? Still, glad it works for Chas, every system is different.Rodney

That's a possibility Rodney. I do not recall trying to forcefully close these services. Maybe I have just discovered the performance that I should be getting with my system.........Cheers!Chas

I posted something similar a few days ago after I re-installed FSX from scratch. Before the re-install, my fps stalled somewhere in the mid to lower 10s WITH most of the published tweaks. After the re-install, I am getting 20-30fps with default normal autogen, scenery complexity dense and most other settings on "Medium High", plus 40% MyTrafficX ...and without the same two fsx.cfg tweaks (fiber frame and buffer pools). The rest is all stock. I love my FSX setup now!

Then maybe FSX uninstall is leaving something behind, and that helps. Hmm, should I? Maybe, if I get bored.Rodney

That's interesting, perhaps there is a problem with the installer then. It's something to think about. I hope someone with more experience and knowledge of Windows and Flight Sim can shed some light.The only additional thing I can say, is that I installed the old .Net Run Time about a week ago in addition to the latest version that I have on my computer, the later being version 2 I believe.Chas

I thought about that or that some looped post activation process has been still running on the inital installation. I really can't put my finger on it, but I have read now several post where users have reported a good performance increase after uninstalling and re-installing from an initial install.Oh, and my case I noticed that I also had the FSX Demo still installed. I uninstalled it as well before the re-install.

Services are either set to Disable, Auto, or Manual. I am sure Windows Installer is never set to disabled or manual. While it is on auto, it is stopped by default on my machine, (as I suspect it is set to Auto on other XP machines too). I always thought this was the case until it was started by Windows Update or until required by another set-up program. If anyone Installs FSX again, try manually starting the Windows Installer first as I did, (if not already started). Anything is worth a try no matter how trivial. I never have problems using Windows Update with my Windows Installer set to Auto, it must start automatically at the request of an update package, least that's how I see it.Chas