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Schitzn (19 posts)
May-06-02, 09:52 AM (EDT) "Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" Okay, I've really had the worst case of Karma today. I believe it must exist now, after experiencing this weekend.I can't get Microsoft Train Simulator to work on my Windows XP. I've searched the database for all posts regarding WinXP and MSTS, but none have helped me. So, I post another WinXP problem posting. However, this one's got a bit of karma mixed into it, so it might not be as easy to solve.Okay, being a fool, I decided to upgrade to Windows XP, from Windows ME. I was using MSTS on Windows ME without a problem, running it both with & w/out the version patch. I have a Intel i740 compatible AGP card which MS states is won't work with MSTS unless you install DirectX 8 (thus XP comes with it), and I also have a Voodoo2 with non-verified XP drivers because the jackass 3DFx closed down on me (thus, I found out today).Installing XP was one pain in the butt, I ended up having to reboot the PC about 15 times while the xp setup-reboot installation process decided to lock up without saying "if pretty xp screen decides to ##### itself without hd activity, reboot pc and setup booter will ignore the driver next time round".Now XP was on my computer. I decide to install MSTS for XP, and run the setup program. Sweet, shes away, and the percentage bar is moving, until 9%, and on "setupenu.dll", she decides to sneakily freeze the cursor then reboot the computer on me. 5 times lator, I fondle the idea that my lazy disc laying on the ground activity had probably wrecked the cd, thus making the files unreadable on the drive. So, back to WinME, cranked up the setup program, and she installs MSTS without a problem. I go back to WinXP, and try again, same problem.By this stage, Im getting real pissed. It had to be an incompatibility with the MSTS setup program. I have a wonder on the program compatibility settings for shortcuts, and set it to not use "skins" and set it to run with compatibility for "windows me". Run the installer, and the progress bar ticks away, 7, 8, 9%, 10%, and she goes on, until she asks for Disc 2. Ahah! Got it, I think to myself, until WHAAAM! "Sucker!" XP screams at me, displaying some bullshit msg relating to a file not being able to be read. Okay, by this stage, I was getting really &*#Q$$#%!So, I went back to WINME, exported the Registry settings for MSTS, and imported them into WINXP. Now, I just ran the installed version from WINME, without worrying about the stupid bloody installation CD. "Hardware Acceleration Required", she spat at me, or "Your not getting away that easy". So, I looked into my device manager, and yup, my 3D Accelerator decides to be not installed. So, I find the appropriate Voodoo2 XP/2000 compatible drivers, and install em, run GLQuake to test it, no problem. Start MSTS, screen flicks a few times in resolution, then the trusty old MS-BUG Report window.Okay, I decided to run MSTS with program compatibility, No skins, Windows 95 support, and the same thing.Okay, imagine how I feel by this stage.Finally, I decide to Reinstall XP, and Install MSTS from the CD's again, after giving them a wash under water, and wiping them with a special non-fluff cloth, to make em all nice and shiny, clear of any defective surface gunk and mould (and perhaps left over snacks). Put the CD in, start installing, and then it tells me its unable to install DirectX. After this, I change the folder to where I put it on my earlier attempts and wammo, get a load of this message.
Okay, so, wtf is going on now?Anyone else had this karma before? I have no troubles with WINME running MSTS, none whatsoever. My CDROM works fine with any other setup program, RCT, TIBERIAN SUN, so its not the CDROM or its drivers. baahhhh!Calling it a day, I decide to hop into bed, carefully, without touching the walls within my bedroom to ensure they don't cave in on me.
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Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... Stumbl May-06-02 1 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... HAC May-06-02 2 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... dhammerman2003 May-06-02 3 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... jleslie May-07-02 4 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... Schitzn May-08-02 5 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... MrFuzzums May-08-02 6 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... autonerd May-09-02 7 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... autonerd May-09-02 8 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... Schitzn May-09-02 9 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... Baldwinbob May-10-02 10 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... Maxgee1212 May-10-02 11 RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS... CharlieB May-10-02 12

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Stumbl (99 posts)
May-06-02, 10:12 AM (EDT) 1. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" Any time windows gets upgraded , it is HIGHLY recomended you do a clean install of everything !
I have never managed to upgrade to either 2K or XP without multiple issues like this..
AFter you get xp installed the next steps are to go to the windows update site (tools > windows update when in XP) and get it current , including driver updates that it offers
Once windows is updated ( still not having installed anything else!) defrag it! this is important. I have seen clean installs that were 50% fragged up , which is more of a performance hit ( or can be ) than a 200 car consist!just to let you know that you are not alone , I have been trying for quite some time to get an upgraded version of XP (from 98SE) to work with DSL , no joy yet , lolwhile a lot of this is simplified , I have a feeling it may help you out quite a bit.no matter what microsoft says , upgrading an OS is a gassy operation , and I have yet to find medicine to make it smell any better.....hope I was able to help a littleMake a Mess!!
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HAC (651 posts)
May-06-02, 10:25 AM (EDT) 2. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" Without knowing your exact hardware setup, its hard to make a diagnosis, but it sounds like you have an incompatible low-level driver or and unsupported bit of hardware in there.
Hints for XP..
- never upgrade, clean install. Although I have seen XP do some pretty amazing stuff, (like the time I took an XP drive from on older machine and dropped it into a new Dell, just to see what it would do, and it found all the new HW, installed it and deleted the old HW profile, even installed the correct HAL for dual processors), a clean install on a formatted drive is best.
- Always run the XP upgrade advisor tool from:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp
That should detect any problems with hardware/software before you install
- Back up everything, just in case. dont forget things like mail files (especially in outlook), name and adress books, bookmarks, any thing custom to your system. Record network settings for your ISP. Personally I use a combination of CDR and tape.
- check to see if your video card manufacturer has XP drivers. Native XP drivers do not have OpenGL support.
- Consider using NTFS instead of FAT32, while it may not be the best filesystme for your needs, it is definietly more robust.
- download any "special" drivers before hand if you have a device that may not have native XP support..
- Did I mention BACKUP?
- upgrade your RAM, 512Mb is a reasonable amount for XP.
- have enough space for the OS. my boot drive is 4GB and tends to run around 1Gb free.. I do not install apps to that drive. OS only.I know thats not helping you right now, but perhaps those suggestions will help someone else. Personally, I;ve been running XP Pro since it came out, and have never had a problem at all. MSTS runs just fine on my system. I have found XP to be
very stable, and a decent performer, if you have the system to run it.cheers
Harold

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dhammerman2003 (14 posts)
May-06-02, 12:29 PM (EDT) 3. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" I got MSTS to work perfectly on both my WIN98 and XP computers w/o any errors. for XP I installed in on a seperate drive and so far so good. I don't know what could be wrong, but try uninstalling and re-insatlling MSTS also try the upgrade to. Hope this fixes your porblem.Dave Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jleslie (191 posts)
May-07-02, 07:10 AM (EDT) 4. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" I think your problems are more the exception than the rule with XP, there were some threads going a few weeks ago and it appears that most users of XP are quite happy with it. I myself upgraded, and I just did the upgraded install instead of the full and I have had no problems with it.You might want to check Microsoft's Hardware Compatability List to see if your hardware is compatible with XP, it sounds like you have some older stuff that might not like XP. 3DfX has been out of the biz for a while now, seems to me I heard that last year. Get rid of the Voodoo2, you can get a Geforce2 GTS card now which is a fine low-budget card for about $65. Hate to put it this way, but I had a Voodoo 2 with my 486 back in the day....far as I'm concerned a Voodoo2 these days should only be used as a coaster....Jeff Leslie Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Schitzn (19 posts)
May-08-02, 05:56 PM (EDT) 5. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" Thanks for the replies so far.I have done a clean install on Windows XP about 4 times now to try and get the installer working. I came to the conclusion it must of been something with the CDROM drivers. So, I whipped out an old 4x CDR and chucked it in, after wiping the five years of dust off it. Turned the power on, and she saw the light of day once more, installed it from the 4x CDR and she had no troubles.Im guessing it must be a problem with my CD Burner drivers, making Windows reboot while installing from the MSTS CD.Im back to another problem, which is, whenever I go to play the damn game, it tells me I need "Hardware Acceleration". I have my Voodoo2, and an Intel 740 Compatible AGP Video card. It works fine with Windows 95. I've tried running MSTS with both the original CD version and with the Version Upgrade Patch from MS. Any idea's why MSTS wont let pick up Hardware Acceleration on WINXP but it does on WINME?
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MrFuzzums (56 posts)
May-08-02, 06:55 PM (EDT) 6. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" I gotta second the above comments about WinXP install advice, and especially the part about checking the hardware compatibility--I've never had a single problem installing/reinstalling MSTS on my WinXP Pro machine. I'd be highly suspicious of the video cards -- neither card ever had decent drivers beyond DirectX 7, and aside from anything MS might supply with the OS both are pretty much dead as far as support goes. Give 'em both a proper burial and spring for at least a GF4 MX (basically a GF2 with a hopped-up memory controller) when you've got the moola. The install advice is all sound--even if you just have the WinXP Upgrade you can still do a ground-up clean install of XP; either boot from the CD or with a Win9x boot disk, and the installer will prompt at the right time to see your Win9x CD to verify upgrade eligibility. Take the time to partition and install XP to its own space.As far as the readability from the CD burner, IIRC there was an issue early on with some drives having difficulty reading discs with the type of copy-protection MS uses, and there should be a patch available; try searching the MS Knowledge Base or check on Windows Update.Mr. F Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
autonerd (14 posts)
May-09-02, 12:57 PM (EDT) 7. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" FWIW, I was able to install MSTS on WinXP, but I found a curious problem: after installing a couple of routes and activities, the clock ran too slow! I couldn't figure out why 60 MPH seemed so slow, then I watched the clock on the "F10" station list window - and sure enough, time had slowed down! The system clock was fine.I took the easy way out: I partitioned my hard drive, dedicating 5 MB (not quite enough, btw) to a Windows ME installation, the rest of the drive is XP. I used Partition Magic 7 to switch between bootable partitions (it hides/unhides so they don't see each other) while a second physical HD shows up in both OS's. Not the most elegant solution, but now I know that no matter how much I "hose" my XP system, I can always boot up WinME and play MSTS! You gotta have priorities!! HTH
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autonerd (14 posts)
May-09-02, 01:01 PM (EDT) 8. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" Oh, I forgot, if anyone is curious, my system is:Athlon XP 1600 (1.4 GHz), MSI MB w/ KT133a chipset
256MB memory (PC133 SDRAM)
32MB GEForce-2 GTS video
60MB ATA100 7200RPM hard drive (Western Digital)
10MB ATA66 5400 RPM hard drive (Quantum, I think)At 1024x768x16 and all the sliders to the right except terrain error threshold (one notch from right) and everything but specular lighting and high detail shadows enabled, I get acceptable performance, FPS in the mid 20s to mid 30s. Less if things get busy. I'm happy with it.
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Schitzn (19 posts)
May-09-02, 05:45 PM (EDT) 9. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" Pretty small Hard Drive specs dude. Im sure you mean't Gb.Anyways, thanks again for all the info. I've decided to upgrade to a GF2+, seeming my unsupported 3Dfx Card and AGP Video card seem to have reached its life in this day and age.God, its almost impossible not to go a hole year without having to upgrade something in your computer.Thanks again guys.=============================

TrainPlug Project Leader
Email: trainplug@schitzn.cjb.netTrainPlug Website
www.trainplug.schitzn.cjb.net
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Baldwinbob (36 posts)
May-10-02, 07:37 AM (EDT) 10. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" I couldn't
>figure out why 60 MPH
>seemed so slow, then I
>watched the clock on the
>"F10" station list window -
>and sure enough, time had
>slowed down! The system
>clock was fine. A while back someone mentioned you could speed up the simulation time by hitting Ctr+T or slow the time down with Ctr+Sft+T.Haven't tried this myself.Bob
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Maxgee1212 (11 posts)
May-10-02, 08:46 AM (EDT) 11. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" If you did an upgrade from ME and you'd un-installed MSTS before hand there are still MSTS files on your HDD. You must wipe out ALL old MSTS files and folders. So check in the Program Files/Microsoft Games/Train Simulator bet there's still files in there after you do an un-install. You Must Delete ALL references to MSTS on your system, EVERYTHING! Do a Disk Clean too it's your XP Accessories menu. Once you've cleaned the old MSTS off then RE-install.MAX Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
CharlieB (4 posts)
May-10-02, 08:49 PM (EDT) 12. "RE: Getting WinXP to work with MSTS?" Can't help with your problem, but...for those who might be considering XP...I bought a new computer and installed XP specifically so I could run TS without "issues". Both were clean installs, as it is a new computer. Everything works fine and I am very pleased overall with XP's performance, compared with the Win98 still running on the other two machines. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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