I wonder......

[Guest BobL]

if anyone is having a problem with XP conflicting with FS or am I just not living right?If you followed my disaster last weekend, you'll recall I had a near catastrophic loss of data when I tried to relocate a hard drive. Well, thanks to Elrond, I managed to recover everything except my FS Traffic tracks (some 60 of them!!)...not backed up of course.As part of the HD movement, I upgraded to XP and now half my software won't even reinstall, and the other half (including FS) has issues when running. To the point...FS2000 does either of two things right after Takeoff. About the point of a left turn out in a general aviation airplane, it will either 'cannot write to the address at gobldygook' or it crashes to the desktop. FS2002 won't even get to the runway before it crashes to the desktop and if you start on the runway, it crashes as soon as the aircraft starts to roll. At this point in my reconstruction, I have all the add-on utilities reinstalled (FS NAV, FS Meteo, Radar Contact...) but the only add-on aircraft I've gotten reinstalled are Carenado's C152 and C172. But it doesn't seem to matter...The C182 does it. The C182RG does it. The C152 does it. The C172 does it.My system...Gateway P2.4, OEM MOBO formated to NTFS with 20GB free space on a FS partition.1 MB RAMGE4 4600Ti VideoAudigy SoundWin XP HomeNo Antivirus or Firewall running the backgroundNone of the background systems terminated, no EnditALl or anything like that. Left it all alone except for Nortons and Zonealarm.Before I un-install XP and go back to ME, does anyone have any suggestions for making this work?Thanks in advance, BobL

[Guest]

Bob - Did you do an upgrade of an older OS (Win98, ME, etc) or did you install XP "clean", i.e, on a freshly formatted drive. The symptoms you describe are similar to those many have encountered after an upgrade. If you haven't done so, you may want to consider a complete reformat an reinstall of XP. Trip

[Guest BobL]

Actually, it's a new machine so I am assuming that Gateway installed XP clean but on the older machine, where Empire Earth is crashing after two minutes, that one was upgraded. I sent Sierra an email on that one tonight but the EE problem, and the FS problem are two different computers.I don't think that the FS is the install sequence of Windows.BobL

[Guest]

Hi,That's not the same as a "clean" full-retail or OEM installation. I had a lot of problems last year with a 98SE build supplied pre-loaded on 40 or so Compaq Armada M700's. We ended up formatting the disk and installing 2000 licences. If they make any modifications or "mistakes" in the build, you can get all sorts of problems.I'm not saying this is what you've got in your case but it was one thing that came to mind. The machine I run FS2k2 on has XP Pro and while it was a tad slower when first "upgraded" from 98SE, it was not unstable in any way, shape or form.Best of luck with getting it sorted,Neil

[Guest BobL]

If I'm staring at re-format seven days out of the box, I think that I would like to create a dual boot system...just in case... with my old copy of ME on one side and XP on the other. Could you tell me how to do this? I've seen this mentioned here in the forum and haven't paid much attention to it since ME wasn't giving me any trouble at all.And assume that I'm not real proficient in such things.BobL

[Guest]

I missed the part about it being a new machine. I thought FS was on an upgraded OS. Got it straight now. What you can, or cannot, do with a reformat will depend on what software Gateway supplied with the machine. You may have "restore" discs rather than a full copy of XP and, if so, that will limit the possibilities. In any event, I wouldn't do anything until I talked it through with Gateway.Trip

[wsieffert 0]

Bob,Did you mean 1GB of RAM vice 1MB of RAM? If so, do you have two 512MB RAM modules? If you do, remove one of the modules and see if it corrects your problems.I have two Soyo Dragon+ MOBO's that have problems with three sticks of memory, i.e., 3 x 256 = 768MB. They run solidly with only two sticks or 512MB of memory.

[wsieffert 0]

http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/reviews/winxp/ - just follow the directions carefully.

[Guest BobL]

Yes. I apologize for the mis-type. It should say 1GB RAM. I don't recall how many sticks were inside the box. If I understand you right that despite the advertisement that XP can handle 1GB of RAM, in reality it can't?I don't intend to open the case until this weekend, I'll give it a try then.ThxxBobL

[wsieffert 0]

No, I am not saying WinXP can't handle it! It may be a problem with my Soyo MOBO, the particular RAM I am using, AMD Athlon XP+, or contentions with other peripherals, such as, graphics adapters.Several other people have had problems with Memory above 512MB using other MOBOs, mostly with AMD Athlon's. It would be interesting to see if your problems were solved by removing 1/2 of your memory.

[Guest BobL]

Actually, I've found another potential culprit. I happened to visit Carenado last night just to see what they might be working on, and I noticed they had an FS2002 patch for XP. The link said that this patch fixes the XP crashing with FS2002. Sound familiar??Well, since I'm still using FS2000, there is also a link there to email them for FS2000. I'm still waiting for a reply (it really hasn't been long enough - they probably should have through the weekend). I'll let you know. If they don't come through, then I guess I'll have to create a dual boot for sure, Win ME for FS2000 and XP for everything else.BobL

[Dewey 0]

Bob, as with any version of Windows, there are folks out there having great luck with XP, so they sing its praises and recommend it to everyone. However, I can tell you that there are a ton of folks also having all kinds of problems with it, and not just with flightsim. Many other apps won't load, won't run, lock up after a short time, etc. It seems that Microsoft has again released a version of its operating system that isn't even compatible with its own applications. Amazing.Good luck.Dewey

[Guest BobL]

yea, I'm realizing that also. I have another thread going over at Sierra for Empire Earth. My son uses that game a lot and it's locking up big time. I'm blaming XP right now until someone proves me wrong. It's another one that was running just fine before the upgrade to XP and now, well..it's another story.BobL

[Guest]

Posted by Dewey on May-24-02 at 01:46 PM Bob, as with any version of Windows, there are folks out there having great luck with XP, so they sing its praises and recommend it to everyone. However, I can tell you that there are a ton of folks also having all kinds of problems with it, and not just with flightsim. Many other apps won't load, won't run, lock up after a short time, etc. It seems that Microsoft has again released a version of its operating system that isn't even compatible with its own applications. Amazing.Good luck.Dewey Heres the lowdown and scoop on things. If you have old hardware, stick to Windows ME. If you got brand new hardware and none of your software is older than 2 years XP should work good for you.Seems like most of the people having problems with XP have them with old software, or using old hardware. Always install Windows from scratch on a cleanly formatted drive. Going the upgrade route is just asking for hair pulling and headaches.A tip on XP. Sometimes while working XP will just reboot itself with no error message at all. I don't know what is causing this but it only happens when both of my firewalls are disabled. If I have the windows xp firewall or zone alarm pro up when running flight simulator 2002 pro locally this reboot and crash problem in FS2002 does not occur. However if no firewalls are in use the computer will sometimes reboot on its own, or FS2002 will crash.