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Re: Venting off.....!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: 25 Jul 2008, 12:56
by petermcleland
Just a thought Jim...You have installed the whole of FS9 to your Hard drive haven't you? ...This avoids all sorts of Cacheing :think:

Re: Venting off.....!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: 25 Jul 2008, 13:07
by forthbridge
Yep, everything's on. I've just had a mooch around PAMA. Real weather, HS748, 1000 feet - up Russell Fjord and a reversal where it widens just before Nunatak fjord, downwind (and rain) and a TD on 31. I'd taken out all the payload so it was easily flying at 100kts. Apart from a couple of bits where there was a strange 'blackout flicker' in the scenery for a split second, it was smooth and after landing FS shut down as normal. There's always a slight delay whenswitching view (for example the panel textures) - but not a real problem. I'll watch what I'm doing with Time compression and limit my transcontinental flying for the time being and take short hops :flying:

Re: Venting off.....!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: 25 Jul 2008, 16:08
by nigelb
Just for kicks you ought to try that Reykjavik to Gander flight again - at normal speed. Start the flight and then read the newspaper or watch telly until your close to Gander. Then you proably should return so you can contact the control tower and land. If all goes well, you have your answer. If not, let us know and we can see if there are any other ideas.

OFFTOPIC

I had my own little problem earlier - white boxes in the scenery that would appear and disapear at random intervals. I suspected some autogen malfunction because it only happened near ground level while the buildings were visible. Well, to make a long story short, I had recently done some scenery texture twidiling - removing duplicates, that sort of thing. My white boxes looked strangely like places where trees should be. :doho: Hmm, found I was missing just five tree textures from treex for FS9 (FSX trees that work in FS9 that someone had suggested as part of a scenery install.) They were there, but in the Addon\Texture folder rather than the main texture folder. I must have moved them by mistake. :brick: I put them back and now everything is fine.

Apart from STUPID I guess the moral of this diatribe is if it ain't broke......

Re: Venting off.....!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: 25 Jul 2008, 19:29
by forthbridge
HI Nige

I'll give that Gander trip another go at normal speed - but with my weekend duties etc, I seriously doubt I'll have the time to let it run the full distance - I'll have a go perhaps on Sunday....... that's really the only reason I use compression - I really struggle to get more than about an hour at a time without some task or other cropping up :roll:

I've not actually fiddled with anything except installing what I had in previously - a lot less at the moment than I did have - it would be interesting to hear if anyone else has had issues after a defrag, as I'm pretty sure that's what the problem is...

Re: Venting off.....!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: 25 Jul 2008, 21:03
by nigelb
Yea, I can understand the time problem, anyway it was just a thought. I would do that disk check though. The only reason I can think that a defrag would mess anything up is if there were bad sectors, corrupt index files or other files on the drive. Everything is probably alright, but if you run a disk check and it is ok then you can eliminate that as a source of any problems.

One other very remote possibility is to check the disk drive properties in the Device Manager. On my system at least, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers there is a primary and a secondary IDE channel listed. If you select one and check properties, there is an advanced settings tab and selecting that tells you what transfer mode the drive is using. The transfer mode should be "DMA if available" rather than "PIO only". Your system may be different, etc. Oh, I am running WinXP.

A while ago, my transfer mode somehow changed to PIO and I had heaps of problems with my drive - every time I ran disk check I got a lot of errors. I noticed slow boots, slow FS and slow just about everything. A lot of googling and I found that windows will sometimes change this parameter. PIO is a lot slower than DMA but windows will fall back to the slower transfer method if it thinks it is having problems. PLEASE NOTE, I am in way over my head with this stuff, but once I discoverd the problem and changed the transfer method (easier said than done, if I recall) all the drive problems went away, speeds were back to normal and I got no more errors when running a disk check. Take all this as offered, this may not be true at all in your case and as I said at the start, it is a very remote possibility but apparently does happen on rare occasions.

Re: Venting off.....!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: 25 Jul 2008, 22:54
by forthbridge
Well, just turned X-ray India off for a good night's sleep. BIRK-CYQX - and I ran 2x compression. 17% fuel remaining, and a bumpy ride in real weather for the last hundred miles or so. FS performed perfectly, with 100% AI traffic, and real weather. A nice view of the 'Northern lights' as takeoff was at Dawn.

FS shut down promptly (although the HDD churned a bit before I could get the net up afterward). I'll have a mooch around over your other suggestion - cheers Nige :)