Podrobny Tweak FS2004 od BIOSU pres WinXP services a registry, az po samotnou FSku.
Nemam moznost umistit na web, kdyz tak smazte nebo presunte.
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Hello and welcome to my FS2004 and Windows XP Tweaking Guide. Hopefully there will be some tips you find useful in here. I have doubts as to whether going through this guide will gain you much performance. But, if every little bit helps, then hey, it can’t hurt to try as most everything I have in here is an optimization in some way or another, even if it’s affect on performance is so small that you can’t hardly notice it. If you have already tweaked your FS2004 to the nines you might not find much useful in here, if anything. But if you haven’t tweaked you Windows XP much you may find a few ones in here that you might at least find interesting. You are of course welcome to, and going to I’m sure, use as many or few of the I tweaks list here. My idea here was to make a document that has a lot of tweaks in it so that I can just open it up and copy and paste reply’s into forum posts from this doc as much as to help folks who are new to FS2004 tweak their systems. In other words, this doc is as much for me as it is you!
Jim
Disclaimer:
There are many items in here that some people might consider dangerous, especially for a newbie to be doing. But I encourage someone even if they feel they are a newbie to go for it. While I have used all these tweaks for a considerable amount of time and have had no problem I must say:
I am not responsible for anything that goes wrong that arises from using this guide including but not limited to, your system becoming unstable, you having to reinstall everything from scratch including your OS, your system blowing up into a million itsy bitsy pieces.
Now on with my guide.
First, I want to say that with the filesystem fragmentation that goes on within the partition (volume) that you have your OS installed onto, I recommend installing FS2004 onto it’s own partition or at least one separate from the one you have your OS installed on. Also, I highly recommend that you have 1 GB or more of RAM to run FS2004. It can certainly be run with 512 or 768 MB’s though, but I don’t think you’ll have as smooth of an experience.
BIOS Tweaking Section:
Whether you have a new computer or not, you should make sure you have the latest BIOS installed. If this is a really new type of motherboard you may need to report problems to the manufacturer so they can uncover these problems and work on making a newer BIOS to cure the problems. BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System. It is very low level instructions for devices that are in your computer thus allowing it to boot up. Usually to get into your system\'s BIOS configuration you press (tap) the \'Delete\' button while your system is rebooting. It is different with some systems; it might be the F8, F10, or F12 key, maybe even the Esc or some other key. Find out how to get into your BIOS and find out what version of it you have installed. Usually you can see the version of the BIOS listed when the computer is going through its POST cycle (booting up). Although on some systems this is hidden behind a splash screen. With some systems you can disable this splash screen by changing a setting in the BIOS if you can manage to get into the BIOS configuration. Before changing your system’s BIOS settings you might want to consider writing down the settings before you change them in case there is a problem. Then you can put the setting back to what it was before you changed it in order to get rid of the problem created by changing it. BIOS settings explanations can be found by searching the web or you can check out the following site that has most but not all of them…
http://www.rojackpot.com
Once you have gotten into the BIOS here are some settings I recommend. Different systems have different settings available and some have them going by a slightly different name. You may not have a number of the BIOS settings I cover here. And some settings will yield different results on different systems. A number of these settings are done according to personal preferences too. I am not going to be covering all available BIOS settings. Just select ones that I have picked out. Lastly, many of these settings may very well already be set in your BIOS the way that I am recommending to set them here.
• If you have at least 1 GB of RAM I recommend turning up your AGP Graphics Aperture Size in the BIOS to 256. For 768 MB’s of RAM you’ll probably find that 128 is the best. And for 512 MB’s try 64. Feel welcome to play with this setting to see what results you get. If you have over 1 GB of RAM I doubt you’ll see much difference by turning the Aperture up to 512 (that is if you have the option to go that high).
• Try and make sure you have AGP 4x/8x Enabled and not 2x. (you may not have this setting in your BIOS, I don’t. See ‘Windows XP Tweaking Section’)
• Check that ‘Video BIOS Shadowing’ is Disabled if your BIOS has this option.
• If your Video Card supports ‘USWC’ mode then you can Enable it if you want. Not too much is gained by enabling it but there may be a slight performance improvement by using it. There are some cases where it has been said to degrade performance. System stability is said to be better with it set to ‘UC’ but I always run my system with it set at USWC and have never had a problem. It’s up to you, and your card has to support this. I suppose most all modern day cards do but I really don’t know for sure. You can probably search the web or your video card manufacturer’s web site for info on your card to find out.
• Check that ‘PCI/VGA Palette Snoop’ is Disabled.
• Check that ‘Memory Hole At 15M – 16M’ is Disabled.
• If your Sound Card is a PCI add-in card then Disable ‘Onboard AC97 Audio Controller’.
• If your modem is an ISA or PCI add-in card or you are using a LAN card and not using the onboard modem then Disable ‘Onboard AC97 Modem Controller’.
• For the ‘Primary VGA BIOS’ I set mine to AGP VGA Card. All this does is allow the card to be detected a little faster. There is no performance gain. If you have more than one Video Card in your system you might have some reason to select the PCI Card as the Primary card, but for FS2004 I doubt it.
• Enable ‘CPU Level 1 Cache’ and ‘CPU Level 2 Cache’.
• Enable ‘Delay(ed) Transaction’. This only needs to be Disabled for older devices that are not PCI 2.1 compliant. Most ALL modern PCI devices are PCI 2.1 compliant. If there is a problem with some device of yours (unlikely) just go back in and Disable it, of course. Setting this to ‘Enabled’ will allow more efficient use of an instruction buffer available on the PCI bus.
• Lastly, I’ll mention that you could play around with another setting in your BIOS called \'PCI Latency Timer\'. Normally at a default value of 32. You could try turning this value up. Turning it up would allow a device to have a hold of the PCI bus for a longer period of time. For instance, turning it up from the default of 32 milliseconds to 64 milliseconds would allow your video card to have a hold of the bus for 32 milliseconds longer. But this comes at the price of other devices having to wait that much longer to get their turn on PCI bus.
Windows XP Tweaking Section:
If at some point in time you run into a problem with Windows XP you can try using its Troubleshooting Boot menu option. To get to it you need to start pressing (tap) the ‘F8’ key while the system is cycling during a reboot. From the menu choose to go into ‘Safe Mode’ and see if you can repair the problem in that mode. You can also choose the ‘Restore From Last Know Good Configuration’ but I recommend only using it as a last resort. Of course if you use the ‘System Restore’ option in Windows XP you can create Restore Point(s). I know a lot of Windows XP Tweaks (and I’m sure there’s many many more out that there that I don’t know) but I won’t be covering all the ones that I know and do to my own system (for instance to make my system more secure), a just a number of select ones.
- System Services -
Many Services can be started and or stopped on-the-fly (without rebooting). But I have seen a few that do not like it when you do this and just hang there trying to start or stop. But if you make changes to the ‘Startup Type’ then the next time you reboot your changes will have taken. Adjusting Services may not be something you want to do if you are not comfortable with the possibility of having to play around with setting some back to Automatic, after having put it on Manual or Disabled (when you don’t know what it does), and then find you need to put it back on ‘Automatic’. The reason for this is there are some things here that will vary from system to system. There may be some services you have on your system that I or others don’t have due to applications and/or drivers that you have installed. If you want to know which Windows XP Default Services are ok to put on Manual or Disabled then please use a search engine on the Web.
Or check this excellent web page out (recommended)…
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
Otherwise you are welcome to try out my quick and dirty guide below.
Turning off all unnecessary services…
Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Services
I believe the following are required to be on automatic.
• Computer Browser
• Cryptographic Services
• DHCP Client
• Distributed Link Tracking Client
• DNS Client (can be put on Manual but not recommended)
• Error Reporting Service
• Event Log
• Logical Disk Manager
• Protected Storage
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• Secondary Logon
• Security Accounts Manager
• Server
• Shell Hardware Detection
• Windows Audio
• Windows Management Instrumentation
• Workstation
I completely ‘Disable’ the following services…
• Human Interface Device Access
• Messenger
• Remote Registry
• Routing and Remote Access
• SSDP Discovery Service
The rest of the Services I have are set on ‘Manual’, and then there are some I left on Automatic that are not required to be on Automatic (like ‘Print Spooler’) due to my own personal preference. You may have your own personal preferences, like a reason to want to leave Human Interface Device Access turned on, for example.
- Startup Programs -
I prefer using the following methods to tweak my system over using the ‘msconfig’ utility. Use msconfig if that is what you prefer.
Programs that start up automatically with your OS can come from numerous places and many of them are unnecessary. First check your ‘Startup’ folders.
• C:\\Documents and Settings\\Your_Username\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup
• C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup
Move anything thing in there that is deemed unnecessary to Starting up with Windows to a Temp folder, or delete them altogether. Of course, leave anything that you want starting up with Windows due to personal preference in there.
Next, check a few areas in the Registry. To pull up the registry editor go to…
• Start --> Run --> (type in) regedit --> Click ‘OK’
• In the registry editor navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE --> SOFTWARE --> Microsoft --> Windows --> Current Version --> Run
• Now with the ‘Run’ key highlighted in the left pane of the Registry Editor do the following in the upper menu… File --> Export --> Type in a filename --> Navigate to where you want the file saved --> Press ‘Save’. If later on you have found that you have deleted a value in this section of the Windows Registry, you can restore this section back to what it was prior to you deleting anything by double clicking on the file you just saved.
• Now in the right hand pane of the Registry Editor look at the ‘Data’ column to determine what you want to keep from starting up with Windows. Then highlight them in the ‘Name’ column, then right-click with your mouse and then click delete in that menu. If you don’t know what something is or does in there then consider leaving it. Or, there is a site or two on the web that covers what you will find in this section of the Windows Registry. Sorry, I don’t have a link handy for you though.
• Do the same process as above for the Registry Key HKEY_CURRENT_USER --> Software --> Microsoft --> Windows --> Current Version --> Run
• Disable Windows Filesystem ‘Boot Optimization. This feature can cause more filesystem defragmentation that it’s worth and is actually better left to just doing a good defrag of your hard drive by a good defrag program. Using the Registry Editor navigate to the following key… HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE --> SOFTWARE --> Microsoft --> DFRG --> BootOptimizeFunction Change the registry entries as follows by double-clicking on their names… ‘Enable’ to N, ‘LcnEndLocation’ to 0, and ‘LcnStartLocation’ to 0. If you ever want to re-enable this feature then change ‘Enable’ back to Y. To read more about this feature check out the following web page.
•
http://www.execsoft.com/eletter/previou ... 031901.htm
• Turn off ‘Windows Indexing Service’. Pull up ‘Windows Explorer’. Right-click on your hard drive letter(C:\\). Click on ‘Properties’ in the context menu. At the bottom, uncheck ‘Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching’. Click ‘Apply’. Now click ‘OK’. If necessary, click ‘Ignore All’. Let it finish. Do this for all your hard drive letters. If you want to fully delete the Indexing Service Catalogs that were created by the service you can do the following. Right Click ‘My Computer’ --> Manage --> Services and Applications --> Indexing Service --> Right-click ‘delete’ everything in the right-hand pane.
• Disable ‘Last File Access Stamping’. By default, every time Windows XP reads a file, its stamps the file with the date and time of last access. Whilst it can serve a purpose, it is generally not required for everyday computer use. It hogs resources by writing to a file each time it is accessed. So every read operation is also accompanied by a write operation of a few bytes. To disable it pull up a ‘Command Prompt’. Start --> Run --> (type in) cmd --> Click ‘OK’. Type in the following command in the Command Prompt window… FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 1 …then press Enter. This will take effect the next time you reboot. This same thing can be accomplished by editing a value in the Windows Registry but this is how I disable this Filesystem feature.
• Find out if there is a driver for you monitor, usually it comes in the form of an .inf file. You should be able to find it at the manufacturers’ website. If you can\'t find one then you\'ll just be using the \'Plug and Play\' monitor driver built into WinXP. Look at the manual for your monitor and find out what resolution and refresh rate is recommended for it. My NEC 21” monitor recommended 1600x1200 at 85 Hz.
• After installing the driver (I reboot after installing it, just to be sure) and finding the recommended resolution and refresh rate set it in the following place... (right-click on your desktop) Desktop \'Properties\' --> Settings button --> Advanced button --> Adapter Tab --> \'List All Modes\' button. Now go to the ‘Troubleshoot’ Tab. Make sure the ‘Hardware Acceleration’ slider is full right and the ‘Enable write combining’ checkbox is checked. Now go to the ‘SmartGart’ Tab(I am an ATI Video card user) and make sure ‘Current AGP Speed’ is set to 4x or 8x. Now go to the \'Direct3D’ Tab (several things to be done here). Uncheck \'Application Preference\' for ‘Anti-Aliasing’ and ‘Anisotropic Filtering’. Then set the sliders to your preferred amount and click the ‘Performance’ or ‘Quality’ bullet for the Anisotropic Filtering. Then set the ‘Texture Preference’ and ‘Mipmap Detail level’ sliders to ‘High Quality’ or your preference. I recommend setting the ‘Wait for Vertical Synch’ slider to Always Off’ in here, although some others may say differently. I set the ‘TRUFORM’ slider to ‘Always Off’. Click ‘Apply’ and then click ‘OK’, then click ‘OK’ again.
• Make sure you have DirectX 9.0b installed. You can get it at the download section of
www.microsoft.com Then run DxDiag... \'Start\' button --> Run --> (type in) DxDiag --> Click \'OK\'. Go through all the Tabs and make sure no problems are found. Run the tests. Go to... \'More Help Tab\' --> \'Override’ button --> Click the \'Override Value’ bullet --> (type in) the Refresh rate you selected in the \'List All Modes\' (see above).
Make sure you have the latest \'chipset\' drivers installed in the OS for your system. Try visiting the motherboard manufacturer\'s (or system manufacturer\'s) website to find these drivers. I recommend that you defrag all your hard disk volumes with whatever defrag program you prefer, even if it’s the built-in Windows one. I use the best (and probably most expensive) defrag program called ‘Diskeeper’ by Executive Software. It’s available at
http://www.execsoft.com/
FS2004 Tweaking:
I feel most of FS2004 is doneFinally on to the sim itself! by setting sliders, and what you can do with the sliders is dependent on what system you have, what resolution you use, how much AA (Anti-Aliasing) and AF (Anisotropic Filtering) you use, and so I think slider settings are going to vary widely and have to be played with by you. In order to get an explanation of what the sliders settings do and what system resources they use go to the Avsim library and get the following file…
http://library.avsim.net/extsearch.php
Search for the Filename ‘reality_xp_fs2k4_tweaker.zip’.
Your FS9.cfg file is located in the following place in WinXP…
C:\\Documents and Settings\\Your_Username\\Application Data\\Microsoft\\FS9
There are quite a lot of tweaks for it. I am only going to show you the relevant portion of my file so you can see how I have mine set. You may very well need to play with some of the settings compared to how I have mine to get the best performance on your system. These FS9.cfg file settings (and more), and explanations of them can be found in the following forum thread…
http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az= ... _id=129218
I will tell you about a couple of settings that have been found to be best set a certain way in FS2004.
• In the Hardware Tab in the Display settings of FS2004 (Settings --> Display --> Hardware Tab) you should check the \'Transform and lighting\' (T&L) checkbox. The ‘Mip mapping quality’ slider should be set at 4, or 5 at the most. Too high of a setting can visually cause ‘shimmering’. Set the ‘Hardware-rendered lights’ to 8. You should uncheck the ‘Anti-Aliasing’ checkbox. The reason for this is it has been found that performance is MUCH better if you let your video card driver control the Anti-Aliasing and not FS2004 (see the Windows XP Tweaking Section). On this same tab I recommend that you use set the FS2004 resolution to the same as you do for your Desktop, it’s just a recommendation, not a requirement.
• Get the latest Chris Willis cloud fix for FPS performance from
http://fsw.simflight.com/ The latest version as of this time is on the following page…
http://fsw.simflight.com/FSWFs2k4fix.html
• There are many who feel there is a bug in the Autogen rendering engine in FS2004. Whether you notice the bug or not depends on how and where you fly. You can find many (probably hundreds of posts) about it on the Avsim forum for Microsoft Flight Simulator General Discussion Forum. Look there if you want to try and find an explanation of it. It may not be a bug at all, I am not certain. But personally, I think it is a bug, and I have done Beta Testing for a living before (only for a short time) and have used an OS for a considerable time called Debian Sid (also known as ‘unstable’). With that said, it’s up to you to make your own determination whether or not to implement a fix found to help alleviate it. The fix is to rename a file with the name ‘default.xml’ in the following folder… H:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Games\\Flight Simulator 9\\Autogen. You can rename it to ‘default.xml.orig’ for example. Unfortunately doing this eliminates some Autogen objects, including Red Barns and Silos seen on farmland. You can get a file that will allow you to have the rural area objects back and some others, but won’t alleviate the Autogen bug as much as just renaming the ‘default.xml’ file. That file is available in the Avsim library and the filename is ‘fs9xml.zip’. I have a link above earlier in the guide to the Avsim library.
Here is a portion of my FS9.cfg file. Feel free to use the settings to the parameters contained in it that I do. One notable setting that you may need to play with to find what suits your system best is the following parameter… TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=XXX
The value of 0 is used in my RenderToTexture= parameter because I use an add-on called WeatherCenter. Your value will be set to 1 if you check the ‘Render to Texture’ checkbox in the Hardware Tab of the Display settings in FS2004.
If you have 512 MB’s of RAM then you may want to try adding the following parameter…
PanelAsTexture=0
under the {DISPLAY.Device.RADEON 9700 PRO.0} section.
The {SOUND} section is courtesy of FFX/SGA other than I figured out to use a 4 for my 5.1 speaker setup.
{SOUND}
SOUND=1
SOUND_FADER1=0.500000
SOUND_FADER2=0.460000
SOUND_FADER3=0.620000
SOUND_FADER4=0.800000
SOUND_FADER5=0.810000
SOUND_FADER6=1.000000
SOUND_QUALITY=2
Channels=4 Properties --> Advanced Tab --> Performance Settings button --> Advanced Tab --> Memory Usage --> Ensure that the ‘Programs’ bullet is checked.
About posting for help:
When posting to companies and on forums about problems list detailed info about your system specs including, the Operating System you are using, amount of RAM and type, video card, sound card, and video card driver version. If either video or sound is an onboard card please state this in your specs. By onboard I mean a card that is on the motherboard as opposed to an add-in PCI slot based card. I only mention this because I see a LOT of people who post asking for help but don’t list there system specs when they would be of considerable help to have.
I hope you enjoyed my optimization guide and maybe even find that your Windows and FS2004 is running better than ever!
Sincerely,
Jimmy ‘OneTinSoldier’ Richards
linuxrh@comcast.net
