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crazyflounder (7 posts)
Jul-15-01, 08:47 AM (EST) "Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hello everyone,
First of all this game is excellent,however I do have a little problem which is slightly irritating on the eye.My system specs are:Intel Pentium 3 850MHZ
256 MB SDRAM
GeForce 2 MX 32MB
Soundblaster PCI 128
10.2 Gigabyte Hard driveI think thats everything.Ok I do realise that this game does require alot of power to run smoothly. The specs above I have had only a short time,that is apart from the hard drive which is fairly getting on a bit (please anyone who should reply to this,don't tell me I need a new Hard drive as I can afford no more upgrading for quite a while now.)The problem that I have is that when I get the train moving I get a very brief intermittant pause,now I have tried all sorts of things to remedy this and no joy,I also get quite a long hard drive access when I approach a quite heavily built up area,this I can understand and accept,the bit that does bother me is this brief pause-ing business,can anyone help please?My graphics card is actually a Winfast GeForce 2 MX but I'm using Nvidia 12.41 drivers,not sure whether this is correct.
Someone did tell me that I should'nt get the Nvidia drivers with my Leadtek Winfast card because it can cause problems.Trouble is that I have absolutely no idea as to where to go to get the proper drivers for my card. And in any case I really don't think that that would solve the problem as I have tried countless drivers.Before I forget I am running DirectX8I better leave it at that although I no that I will have forgotton to put other important info in.I would appreciate any help that any of you may be able to give me.Thanks in advance
Crazy.PS. If there is anyone else who has the same problem,please get in touch and let me know whether I should just play the game and not worry about it. Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-15-01 1 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... crazyflounder Jul-15-01 2 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-15-01 3 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-15-01 4 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... bandwidth Jul-15-01 5 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-15-01 6 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... kmcquarters Jul-16-01 7 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... crazyflounder Jul-16-01 8 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-16-01 9 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-18-01 15 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... lightbg Jul-16-01 10 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... sniper297 Jul-17-01 11 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-17-01 12 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... sniper297 Jul-17-01 13 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-17-01 14 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... sniper297 Jul-18-01 16 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-19-01 17 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... netmasteroc3 Jul-19-01 18 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-19-01 19 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... Eggy Jul-19-01 20 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-19-01 21 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... sniper297 Jul-20-01 22 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-20-01 23 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... sniper297 Jul-22-01 24 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-22-01 25 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... sniper297 Jul-23-01 26 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... sniper297 Jul-23-01 27 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... ergobob Jul-24-01 28 RE: Hope someone can maybe help ple... crazyflounder Jul-24-01 29

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ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-15-01, 10:21 AM (EST) 1. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Any of the nvidia drivers will work for you - 12.41 is probably good but some people go up or down to try out another one. So you could use the one on your cdrom or go up to 12.90.You can also go into MSTS and decrease the sliders under Options.Without changing hardware, you have to play with the Options in MSTS or the videocard (up or down)drivers.You might also see what your swap file is doing and let us know.Hope this helps a bit.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
crazyflounder (7 posts)
Jul-15-01, 11:22 AM (EST) 2. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Thank you for your response Bob.I'm not very good at technical stuff,but if I'm right about the swap file,is that where the computer says "let windows manage,bla bla bla then it currently says C:/Hard disk 7512 MB free.I have tried various drivers,and the only reason I still have 12.41 in there is because I used to have Black and White,and I just could'nt be bothered to get rid of them.Honestly I must spend more time messing around with settings then I do actually playing games,which is why I bought the PC in the first place)I have turned every slider right down to nothing and still I get these very slight pauses,it really is annoying after a while!!!I've got a little program called NVMAX which I downloaded sometime ago and I've messsed around with that but it does'nt seem to do anything,another program I have is Cacheman and again I can't stop this little problem from cropping up in my games.The framerates I don't suppose have anything to do with the pausing,but on the northeast corridor run I start at around 28-30 and it then goes as low as 12-15 and then increases a little more back into the 20's.I also tried for arguments sake I think it was the Marias Pass with the steam engine and half a dozen or so cars attached and the framerate started around 41-44 and dropped a little but not to much, so I think its obvious to say that the more built up a route is the lower the framerate but again that does'nt seem to prevent the pausing.Cheers
CrazyPS. Thanks for explaining about the file extensions Bob ) Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-15-01, 06:43 PM (EST) 3. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Your frame rates are good and have nothing to do with the pauses. Everyone sees frame rates drop all the way down to 8 in very dense places and I have a Geforce 3. But I have no pauses even on the rare occasion when it drops to 8 fps. Usually, I am getting around 15 -20 fps.You have windows handling your swap file and that is good. It is what I was thinking. Some people go to the trouble of putting their swap file on a different drive or partition so it has less distance to travel when being accessed. I never did that.How about your sound card driver? Have you updated that lately?7 mb of hard drive available is light. I wonder if that may be the problem? I am not an expert but someone might know.You will solve this eventually.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-15-01, 06:44 PM (EST) 4. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" LAST EDITED ON Jul-15-01 AT 06:48 PM (EST)By the way, what operating system are you using? Not WinMe I hope. I am on Win98 SE just for flight and train sims.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
bandwidth (16 posts)
Jul-15-01, 06:49 PM (EST) 5. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Just wonder how many programs you have running in the background that is causeing your system to use all the ram and go to the swap file. Do a ctrl-alt-delete and see what is running
All you need is systray an exployer running. That might help a little Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-15-01, 07:00 PM (EST) 6. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" I was just going to add background programs. You can use ctrl/alt/del or download the free program End It All from the Fan site or from www.zdnet.com . Works great.Also, you might run a scan disk and defrag first and a reboot before running MSTS.Try these first since they are a must anyway and easy to mess with.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
kmcquarters (4 posts)
Jul-16-01, 12:17 PM (EST) 7. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hi all,I've found that "Startup Cop" available from www.zdnet.com to be a little more useable then "KillIt". Use thier search function to locate the download, it's freeware. Startup Cop has profiles that you can set up for different situations. I have one profile that runs a clean system, one for Norton Antivirus only, and one for MSTS that only loads up "CacheMan". Startup Cop releases all system resources better then KillIt. On the MSTS profile I can get the available system resources all the way up to 95-98%.Just a thought,
Kevin Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
crazyflounder (7 posts)
Jul-16-01, 03:38 PM (EST) 8. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hello again all,
Thank you for all of your comments.My operating system is W98 it maybe the SE although I'm not certain for sure.Bob if you read this can you tell me where I can get the 12.90 drivers as I've looked on the Nvidia site and they don't appear there.As for what everyone else has said,well I've been there done it and got the t-shirt!!!!!!I really don't see how I'm ever going to get to the root of this problem.I just hope that someone out there can help me sort it)Cheers
Crazy (Chris)
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ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-16-01, 03:50 PM (EST) 9. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Here is one place to get them. Look down on the page:http://www.guru3d.com/download/nvidia.shtmlbob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-18-01, 09:45 AM (EST) 15. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hello Kevin,I downloaded Startup Cop and gave it a shot. You are right that if you boot with minimum programs, you have more resources available than if terminate already booted programs as with EndItAll.However, I can not make a shortcut that works with Startup Cop. I can restart the computer from Startup Cop but when I make a shortcut with the &R, I get an error when I hit that shortcut. It says that it does not have the &R or &L in the command line.Do you know the secret of creating a shortcut in Startup Cop that will make it reboot from a shortcut?Thanks a lot,bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
lightbg (62 posts)
Jul-16-01, 04:09 PM (EST) 10. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Try hitting F8.......the switch aid uses a lot of cycles at times Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (52 posts)
Jul-17-01, 00:47 AM (EST) 11. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" One thing I found was the deer hazards. Even with detail turned down and no deer actually showing up on the tracks, I think the program runs through all the calculations about where the deer are (or would be if they were visible) and the chances of having them show up at this location, time of day, and all that. I went into the route editor and just cruised down the line deleting deer hazards, spotter hazards, those tall yellow sound region posts with the chirping crickets or birds or whatever they are, and don't get the slowdown any more. I have an 800MHZ T-BIRD with an annihilator2, and was getting 57FPS at 1024x768 - and then I would come to one of those spots where you see all the deer standing on the track in the editor, and even with no deer in the game it would still drop to 5FPS for a couple seconds. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-17-01, 09:28 AM (EST) 12. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hummmmm, I have never seen 57 fps. I get 15 - 30 fps max with about 20 the usual. This is with an Athlon 1100, Geforce 3, 512 mb Ram, Win98 SE, all sliders on full, and running at 1680x1024x32.Don't complain about 57. That's great.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (52 posts)
Jul-17-01, 01:34 PM (EST) 13. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" You answered your own question, ergobob, you got a faster system and a better video card, but again I compromise on detail to get speed. I'm running at 16 because the quality doesn't improve that much at 32, and all my FSAA options are disabled because again not enough difference to justify the FPS loss. What we're really talking about here isn't really frame rate though - I get 50 to 60, occasionally dropping to 40, but like all microsoft games (flightsim, CFS 1&2, Midtown 1&2, etc.) the shift-Z turns on FPS reporting which gives you the AVERAGE frame rate, but Either doesn't sample often enough or maybe fast enough to pick up those momentary hesitations - they are VERY obvious to the eye, but glance down in the lower right corner and it still says 60FPS. I'm still working on this from the sound angle (Soundblaster 512PCI) but there doesn't seem to be a quality slider to change the khz sampling rate. Turning the quantity slider down seems to reduce the number and length of the hesitations, but their still there. I tried turning the hardware acceleration down in the playback section of the multimedia control (all this crap being microsoft it's all tied together with direct sound and directplay) but no noticable difference. That reminds me, I've been slamming microsoft for all their screwups in this game, but did anyone notice they finally did something right? NO COPY PROTECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At last I can put the disks in a safe place and not have to worry about them getting scratched up! Way to go, Gates! Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-17-01, 03:10 PM (EST) 14. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Yup, got you Sniper. I am all maxed-out but I also don't get pauses or hesitations. I wonder if the 512 mb Ram is helping there? Hope you solve your problem with the pauses. That can be annoying.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (52 posts)
Jul-18-01, 11:21 PM (EST) 16. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Might as well continue this thread, anybody else having hesitation problems. Bob got me thinking, and at the time I first saw this topic I was working on a custom route based on Settle & Carlise for my youngest son, who is a Thomas the tank engine fanatic. (Every episode you can guarantee that SOMETHING is going to leave the rails in a spectacular crash, so what the hell does he care about frame rates?) So I started doing some experimenting today (needed a break from the route editor anyway) and discovered we need a benchmark - FPS is highly dependent on what route you're on too. So I fired up Marias Pass, explore route, GP38x2, no train, starting Whitefish. Whoa! 20 to 30 FPS instead of 60! Oddly enough, the Annihilator2 doesn't seem to care about resolution or 16/32 bits, which is odd when you consider that at 1280X1024 it has 1.3 million pixels to paint, and 1024X768 only 786 thousand or so. The 32 bit with full detail does make the hesitations more obvious, tho, so apparently the card is working harder, and it does - sometimes - make it show on the frame counter when I get the jerks. And by the way, the technogeeks are real fond of pointing out that all you need is 24FPS, because the human eye does not register anything displayed for less than 1/24th of a second, and that's true. But when you're looking for SMOOTHNESS, more is usually better, the notorious exceptions being games from microsoftheads. I've seen smoothness of animation as low as 15FPS as long as it's consistently 15 and doesn't jerk around from 10 to 20 and back again.
So I set all the sliders to full detail, and went hunting for a benchmark, and found a good one. At about milepost 1214, save activity. there is a signal ahead at 1214.9. and a pickup truck on the left side at 2.1 miles short of the signal. When the track monitor says 2.2 miles to the signal, you can seee the truck pretty close up - and then there is a sudden "jerk" as if the train had momentarily hit something. Exit, all sliders to off - no detail, no objects, no shadows, no shrt no shoes no service. Load saved activity, 500 (meters, I assume - another thing they didn't document very well was what all their numbers mean) visibility. Only the tracks and flat green plain. And no pickup truck. Watching the track monitor, 2.4 miles, 2.3, JERK! - 2.2.
Ok, so it's not loading scenery if there ain't any, so what the hell is it doing? I have tried: defragging, changing sound and video card settings, UNtweaking my system to windows defaults - worse instead of better, going into the route editor and deleting sound regions, changing the tiles so they all have the same texture, deleting deer hazards, you name it. I already had my system set up for the max speed without overclocking, (www.dailyradar.com, how to tweak for games) but the disk caches and read ahead buffers can't do much if the files it's trying to acess are disorganized, which I suspect is the case here. Bob, you say you don't have this problem, and I suspect it has more to do with disk access and memory usage than anything to do with video hardware, so give us the dope on your hard drive setup. ATA100? SCSI? Are you using a ramdisk? Check out the pickup truck at 1214.9, and see if you can detect what we're talking about. Spacebo. Merci. Gracias. Bitte. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-19-01, 00:13 AM (EST) 17. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hi Bitte,I see a hesitation every now and again but not regularly. My frame rates vary greatly from 8 on occasion to 30 with 19-20 being typical but no stutter even at 8 fps and that only lasts for a moment or two with heavy AI scenery. I wonder if my Geforce 3 card is the key. I am running with all sliders maxed out at 1280x1024x32 and I use End It All to close all background programs and defrag and scandisk once per month or more. The hard drives are a couple of years old now but seem to be doing the trick. I was having problems with frame rates in FS2000 with my old P3-500, Voodoo 3000.I have not tried your test yet but I upgraded my system as follows:System:A7V Motherboard with 4in1 drivers Version 4.29
Athlon 1100 with Bios 1007
512 mb RAM (Crucial PC133)
Win98SE running DX8a
Visiontek Geforce 3 (driver version 12 -- 4.13.01.12)
Two IBM GXL 20 gig 7200 rpm hard drives
SB Live Value
Creative 56K Modem
3Com USB Cable Modem
Adaptec SCSI for CDROM and Zip Drive
Internal Zip 250, Floppy, & Plextar 40X cdrom
Alpha top of line cpu fan plus 2 case fans in front over hard drives and 1 fan out the back in a Full Tower
300W AMD Approved power supply
Viewsonic 815 21" monitor
MS FF Joy Stick with 3.0 Software PCI
Logitech FF Wheel & Pedals USB
cpu = 47C, mb = 31C under load
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netmasteroc3 (8 posts)
Jul-19-01, 00:14 AM (EST) 18. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" I think I remeber reading in another thread, perhaps an old one since I have a tendency to go back to the beginning and start again reading topics when Im bored. Anyway, someone mentioned something about there being a pause at pointes where the game loads a new section. I think what they were describing is that the game loads the relevent senic detail in sections as they are needed. When you approach this location, the game has to hit the CPU and disk to get the data for whats just over the hill so to speak. Like I said, this could be the reason, or I could be going crazy... Either way I sounds good though.
Narrow rails breed narrow minds, who's thirst can only be quenched with coal and water. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-19-01, 09:29 AM (EST) 19. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" I think that is correct. But the question is what can you do with your system to reduce the time to access the new scenery and thus reduce hesitation.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Eggy (3 posts)
Jul-19-01, 07:15 PM (EST) 20. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" I am enjoying reading this forum more than playing MSTS at present.I have a high end machine and can get 40+fps but have the annoynig stutters.I have tried every thing mentioned on this forum so far without much improvement in the stutters.My query is that I am considering the drastic step of replacing Windows ME with Windows 98SE and starting all over again to see if this helps.Is there anyone out there who has both Windows 98SE and WindowsME on the same computer or has done this.
As a preliminary experiment, I loaded MSTS on a friends laptop(wiped it off afterwards of course)and it was running Windows 98SE.It was giving frame rates <20fps at low resolution but it was very smooth and I think I enjoyed MSTS more than on my high end machine with everything maxed out and 30-40fps but jerky.
This sim has great potential if this great community continues to sort out the problems for Microsoft. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-19-01, 07:34 PM (EST) 21. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Eggy, when I first upgraded I installed WinMe but this was with MSFS2000. I had nothing but trouble with MSFS and other things as well. I then removed WinME and put Win98 SE on the system. It has been perfect for MSFS, MSTS, and other things as well.I think it is worth a shot. Of course XT is coming out shortly and that is another possibility. You can download that you know?Hope this helps,bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (52 posts)
Jul-20-01, 00:05 AM (EST) 22. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Update,19july2001, 2240 CST. Idownloaded cacheman from zdnet last night & installed, untweaked my system to let cacheman run it, slows everything down without getting rid of the pauses. I only had 64mb of ram when fs98 first came out, but I remember my brother had just built a new screamer system, and had all the scenery files running off a ramdrive. I used to know how to set up a ramdrive with DOS, but I dunno if its even possible with windows. BTW, I am running win98se, never tried ME, but again this is a problem specific to microsoft games - I had my system tweaked for other flightsim games, set up to make windows use ALL of the ram before it started screwing around with swapping in and out of virtual memory, and it cured all the jerkiness with Falcon4.0 and all the other flightsims except the ones from microsoft. I had a rather slow 24x cdrom until recently, so I manually copied all the wave files from Longbow 2 onto the disk - before I did that, everytime I got a radio message the display would jerk and momentarily stop. Having the program read the files off the hard disk cured that, but that's not the problem here - if you do a full install you don't even need the CD in the drive to play it. Ergobob: thanks for the specs, killer machine - I got a WD30gig with the ultra ata100 thingie, but it don't seem to make any difference. I also tried turning the sliders all the way down, same jerks in same places. Just for grins I tried turning it all the way up to 1280x1024 - awesome eye candy, no real change in performance, but I have a 17 inch gateway crystalscan, and I'm also a grandfather, and trying to squint at the little text through a pair of bifocals is a little too much. Until I started playing with the editor on this thing, I used to keep my desktop at 800x600 just so I could see the icons better.
Actually, I don't think this is something that is going to be solved by configuration, I still think the memory calls on this POS need a serious patch. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-20-01, 01:14 AM (EST) 23. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hi Again Sniper,I recall posts on the flight sim groups that suggested to not use cashman and to let windows handle the swap file. This was for FS2000.With regard to the small type there is a fix. Check this newsgroup and you will see a post on how to make the headsup display, fps, etc. larger. It was about a week ago.Have you updated your sound card drivers? Also, you might try the new 12.90 video drivers.How about DirectX. Have you run dxdiag? You might also try re-installing directX. I recall someone said that worked once. Also, there is an MSTS Troubleshooter that has fixed some problems. Finally, sometimes older drivers work better than newer ones in certain situations. That could be another try but I have not used it. My suspicion is the PCI sound card that you have or its drivers.Just some thoughts.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (52 posts)
Jul-22-01, 00:04 AM (EST) 24. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Update again, still haven't found a fix. Downloaded the latest version of DX8, altho it seems to be almost identical to the version I installed in december. Ran DXdiag just to see what was different, got the fatal error screen. I just love it when you get "explorer.exe caused an invalid page fault in runtime32.dll, if the problem persists, contact the program vendor". The program vendor, in both cases, being microstufft. Uninstalled cacheman, because I had a number of lockups and crashes, and reset to my original configuration, with one minor difference. From the May 2001 issue of PC Gamer, PG 48,tweaks and tips, they reccomend setting your own swap file instead of letting windows manage it, and setting it to 2.5 times your RAM. Well, I read somewhere else you should set it to exactly the size of your ram and no more, so I comprimised. I have 128mb, set the swap file to 256mb. If I get overflows I'll set it back to the 320mb I had it at before, but with ram so cheap these days I think I'm going to buy another stick anyway. The other item is in the performance tab on "my computer", file system, where it says typical use of this computer it defaults to desktop computer, and that setting uses a 4k cache to store names and paths of frequently accessed files. Don't affect MSTS hesitations, but the article reccomends setting this to "network server" even if it's not one, because that setting uses a 16k cache fo names & paths. Also already did the soundblaster driver updates, screwed around with the sampling rates, etc. I'm going to checkthis out on my own routes when I get time, to see if I can figure out exactly WHAT it is that it's loading! Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-22-01, 00:26 AM (EST) 25. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hi Again,Well I know about the 2.5X Ram which was discussed at length on the flight sim forums and the folks in the know said let windows handle it for flight sim. There is a difference between games and simulations.I gather that you are getting these errors in Windows prior to trying to run MSTS? Can you boot into Safe Mode without problems? If so, it could be a driver conflict. Anything running in the background (loading on startup)? You could remove programs from starting and add them back one at a time.If not, run the MSTS Troubleshooter? That may be an answer if it is a MSTS issueI wish I knew more about computers to be more helpful. It sounds as though you have tried a lot of things. I wonder if you might have an IRQ conflict.Some things to think about from a novice.Hope you solve this,bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (52 posts)
Jul-23-01, 00:42 AM (EST) 26. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Nope and Yep. Before MSTS the way my system was set up it was fast, stable, and plenty of power. I haven't tried overclocking since I sh*tcanned the voodoo4 about 6 months ago for the annihilator, because the performance increase was so astounding on the Nvidia chip. But after resetting the default windows stuff and installing cacheman, I tried the presets for 3D games and multimedia and power user and played with the settings individually, and it actually slowed me down some and caused crashes in other programs, like Corel 4.0 opening multiple images. After dumping cacheman and resetting everything back to the original, everything works fine. Except the jerks are still there in MSTS, but only on the precanned routes. On the routes I have created myself (don't ask me to post, none are anywhere near a finished project) I don't have the problem, regardless of how many objects, terrain features, sound regions, traffic, whatever. Like I said, I keep loading more junk into the scenery trying to figure out what exactly the damn thing is trying to load. I do not have this kind of problem with any other game. BTW, I consider myself a novice too - I was a US Navy electronics tech 20 years ago, had a heathkit, TRS 80, Tandy 1000, then a couple 386 and 486 before I started buliding Pentiums, so the hardware is no mystery to me, and I guess you could have called me a DOS guru (started with MSDOS 3.1, upgraded a bunch of times, folled around with Linux & DRDOS) but this windows 95-98 stuff is a slow learning process, primarily because the "manuals" they're writing these days are scarcely worthy of the name - more like pamphlets. User's Digest?
Anyway, The game shows a lot of promise, still needs a lot of patching, but let's keep plugging away. We'll get it sooner or later. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (52 posts)
Jul-23-01, 10:08 PM (EST) 27. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Geez, crazyflounder, look what you started!
Well, I went out and bought 256 megs of ram today - cheap, only 30 bucks, so now instead of 128 mb I have 384. Tried the trainsim, marias pass thing I talked about earlier, the hesitation is still in the same spot, but the FPS is slightly increased and the jerk seems to be a little diminished. So I went into my CMOS and bumped the AGP aperture up to 128 MB, ran the marias test again, no noticable change. One of the problems when you're trying to troubleshoot something like this is the lack of a consistent benchmark - The FPS display is too imprecise, so I fired up 3DMARK2000 to check it against the last test. 6645 3dmarks, VS 6168 with the previous ram and settings. An increase, altho the percentage is so small it's almost insignificant. For those of you who are familiar with the benchmark (MADONION.COM for those who aren't), in the "adventure game two" there's a part near the beginning where the viewpoint moves sideways out of the open courtyard, thru a door, into a shed with gray wooden walls, before going out to the harbor. My current video card is a lot faster than my previous ones, but if I watch closely there is a slight hesitation on the last run-thru, the high detail one, as it passes thru the door, with the sudden change in T&L. On the Voodoo4 it was a definite jerk, even in low detail.

I'm curious about your card, Bob, I think you mentioned a GEFORCE 3 - I was under the impression that it was the latest and the greatest, but I saw a force 2 ultra for 200 bucks next to a geforce 3 for 150 or something on pricewatch.com. Was that a misprint, or do they have some kind of lamed down version of the 3 out? I'm a recent 3DFX convert (the last couple voodoo cards left a bad taste in everyone's mouth) and I'm still confused over some of their numbering logic. According to the pamphlet (I don't care what THEY call it, it's NOT a "manual" unless it has 800 pages with schematics and you need two men and a boy to lift it) "The 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 is an exciting 2D/3D video accelerator that uses the ultimate GEFORCE2 GTS 256-bit 3D processor from NVIDIA." I bought it after the 2 ultra came out, because you can generally get a good price on the second best right after something new comes out. But I know there was also an MMX model that was considerably cheaper, I assume because it was a slower card. I still don't understand all the ins and outs of some of this new stuff - the specs say the card won't work unless the AGP aperture is set to 8MB or more, one guru says set it to the size of the ram on the card, another says set it to the same size as your system ram. (I haven't tried video bios shadow, because in 15 years of screwing around with CMOS settings I never saw shadow ram do any good.) With my previous setup I tried setting it to 128, but that actually slowed it down, and I found the fastest was when I set it at 32. 800MHZ processor, 200MHZ front side bus, 133MHZ ram, 64 megs of 333MHZ DDR on the video card, 350MHZ RAMDAC. Does anybody know how fast we're really going? Could I hook up a speedometer to this thing? BTW, someone sent me an email advising me to not run programs in the background, and to check the FAQ's. I always read the FAQ's, because I get a good laugh out of them. Did you ever notice that FAQ's are out the same day the product hits the shelves? I think one tech support weenie thinks up a question that he already knows the answer to, and has another weenie ask him the same question 20 times, which qualifies it as "frequently asked"! "I have a minimum specs system running a super duper desktop theme with metallic bugs crawling over the desktop, and all my icons are dancing and singing songs. I also am running 5 screensavers simultaneously, and it's a race to see which one pops up first if I don't touch the keys for 30 seconds. When I try to run two copies of Quake 3 in their own windows while multitasking on a spread sheet, I keep getting "Out of memory" error messages! What sould I do?" Let's get real here,folks, there isn't a gamer alive that doesn't know to get rid of every TSR possible before running a game. I'm assuming that anyone I try to help has already done the basics.
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ergobob (222 posts)
Jul-24-01, 10:32 AM (EST) 28. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" Hi Spider, Yes, I am using a Geforce 3 which is the latest and greatest. The Geforce 2 64mb (best version of the Geofrce 2 - not the 32 mb version) will give you very similar performance as the Geforce 3. I upgraded from a Voodoo 3000 and figured I would go all the way. You would not make a mistake getting a Geforce 2 Optima 64 or something like that. The price is probably right at about $200 - $250 with the Geforce 3 being $300 or so. By the way, all the Geforce cards are about the same regardless of manufacturer.There are no games optimized for the Geforce 3 yet and it only has 64 mb. like the Geforce 2 Optima But there are other features that make existing games look great. You can go either way depending on finances and not be disappointed.You must upgrade your Voodoo though to one of the Geforce cards. Hurts me to say that but it is true. Nvidia that makes the Geforce chips bought Voodoo which is no longer in business.bob Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
crazyflounder (7 posts)
Jul-24-01, 04:40 PM (EST) 29. "RE: Hope someone can maybe help please :o)" So sorry guys,
Did'nt mean to be rude and not join in its just that I have to monitor my internet time (sorry)(What i've really come on to say was that when I frist complained about the pausing I had Cacheman running my system and I mainly had it because Black and White kept on being jerky and it did seem to calm down after a while,so I left it in,then a couple of days ago I went and bought a double pack of games:Cutthroats and Braveheart (anyone remember them!!!!!) anyway Braveheart would not run at all and it said on a certain site that it works best with Directx 6.1,(please bear with me,I'm not to good with words)
anyway 6.1,well I did'nt fancy putting 6.1 in so instead i uninstalled 8 and put 7 in instead and low and behold Braveheart worked.Now getting back to the train sim,I tried to install a couple of locos and other addons and sadly the program kept saying it could'nt read from the train databse,so I had to uninstall and reinstall,I did this completely forgetting that it overwrited directx7 with 8,however and this I found weird,Braveheart now works on directx 8 (afterall it is an old game now)!!!!!!My main point here though is that ever since I got rid of Cacheman and now let windows deal with everything the pausing although still there is quite alot improved,and now I can play the sim on 1024/768 and all options max apart from shadows all off.I've learned alot through all this and that is to never give up on a game if you either can't get it to work/or it works but has problems.My Motto isersevere!!!!!!! )
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