FS 2004

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Member for

17 years 7 months

Posts: 5

Hi all, I am new to this forum and new to flight sims. I bought flight sim 2002 a few months ago and tried my hand at flying. Recently I bought the latest 2004 version and found it was a bit slow on my Athlon 2.4 with a Radeon 9600 and 512m mem and plenty of hard drive space. I decided to build myself another computer. An MSI KN8 neo 4 sli, with a 3.7g Athlon 64. 1g of mem 250g maxtor HD and X700 graphics card, 550W aspire PSU and an Aspire case and Win XP home. It runs all programs perfectly except for FS2004 which goes to a black screen between 1 min and about 20mins is the longest its run. The sound then locks up about 20secs after the black screen. I have reinstalled it 3 times, all the drivers are up to date. It works fine on my old machine be it a bit slow, but won't on my new one. I have even run it with virtually no background progs running but still it locks up. I rather think it is something to do with the Graphics card. I am going to save up and get a decent one for the forthcoming FSX. Can anybody work out what the problem is, and can I set it up differently to test it.

Original post

Member for

18 years 8 months

Posts: 563

That's very strange, I have a 1.8 GHz Sempron, 128mb video and 512mb RAM. It runs great on this laptop and even with the detailed payware aircraft.

There's a update for FS2004, you could try to download that and install it.
http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulator/downloads.asp

Good luck
Rick

Member for

17 years 7 months

Posts: 5

FS2004

Thanks for the info about the patch but have already tried that. I am now contemplating buying a Samsung 400G HD with 16 meg cache and will put the FS2004 on before anything else.

Member for

18 years 8 months

Posts: 563

I think a new harddrive doesn't change anything. This is my 3rd (!) harddisk in my laptop and FS2k4 has worked on all 3 (I had a couple of rotten harddisks). They were all 40GB and now I have a 60GB with a 250GB external.

FS2004 also worked on my old pc - 1GHz, 384mb RAM, 4mb video and 10GB HD.

Anyway, good luck with finding a solution.

Member for

18 years 10 months

Posts: 221

FS2004 also worked on my old pc - 1GHz, 384mb RAM, 4mb video and 10GB HD.

4MB Video??? That must have struggled.

Surley you mean 64MB?

Member for

20 years 8 months

Posts: 1,381

it may be, as you said, something to do with the graphics card. the motherboard, being an 'SLI' (i.e. designed to take two graphics cards) may not like the single x700 card that you have.

its annoying that your old graphics card (the 9600) is an 'AGP' card - if it was PCI-Express (which your new card is, and which your new motherboard accepts) then you could test your old card on your new motherboard. that would have been the solution - or atleast it would have highlighted the problem.

i would suggest looking into a new graphics card but be careful on your choice, ensuring that the new card likes your new motherboard and vice versa - look on the net (try computer hardware forums) to see which cards are known to work well with your 'MSI KN8 neo 4 sli' board, and cards which are not. but do your research to avoid making an expensive mistake.

on top of that, i don't think that your hard drive is the problem - being the size that it is (250gb) it suggests that its a fairly new drive (model), and most certainly should not have problems running FS.

hope that helps :)

Member for

18 years 8 months

Posts: 563

4MB Video??? That must have struggled.

Surley you mean 64MB?

Nope, I really had 4MB. It dit work, quite well. Scenery was the lowest settings possible and the aircraft had the highest settings possible. It still ran at 30-40 fps :cool:

Member for

17 years 7 months

Posts: 5

Hi and thanks for the advice you have been trying to help me with, A new Graphics card is on my list especially when MSX is released as I am looking forward to the improved scenery and planes. I am still messing about with FS 2002 which seems to run fine on both machines and still learning to fly as best as can. I think I am going to re-install 2004 on again and try the very lowest settings and see what that happens there. I was looking at the GFX cards that was recomended in the PC Pilot mag but the prices are a bit steep even for me at the moment. I can never seem to get as good detail on the screen as seen in the magazines. Although I usually get ATI cards I think I might try an Nvidia next time. I will also try removing the MS Joystick and see what that does.

Member for

17 years 7 months

Posts: 5

Hi to those who have been trying to help me with my computer freezing on 2004 problem, I think I have found out why it does it. I have done a complete re-install of the program and let the installation set the default setting for my machine and sure enought it froze within a minute. I took all the graphic settings down to the absolute minimum and so far it has been going for over 4 hours with no proglems. So I am now increasing it in steps to find out where I can get the best settings without locking up. Now to learn how to fly the thing.
Cheers.