I Finally Erased RailWorks

I do not think TADD usus the Internet. I can run with the Internet disconnected. I am guessing that it is purely a separate program to handle requests to the DLS for data and then queue that to the main program or one of its threads depending on how the request was made.

I think you are correct. That is the conclusion I have come to.
 
Might be something as simple as this;

88859981.jpg


Got an unknown file extension, by default windows wants to search the internet instead of looking on the local hard disk?! Efficiency in programming. :hehe: Might be the same thing, TADDaemon looks on the download station first, then checks the local database to see if the one installed is obsolete or something. Can't find the asset on the DLS it just grabs the installed one, but is programmed to always look for the filename on the DLS first? Dunno. Reporting it to the devs is useless due to the lead motorcycle factor. TADDaemon is pondering imponderables, suddenly decided it wants to look at three 250kB files - joggles the CPU's elbow, "Hey get me these files." The CPU stops what it's doing and searches the hard drive, finds the files and hands them to the Daemon, then goes back to dividing pi by zero.

With a really fast CPU all that takes half a nanosecond, so you'll never notice ANY interruption since it's a zillion times faster than the proverbial blink of an eye. Got a slower CPU and THEN you'll see it even if you're blinking. Trouble is people who program for a living don't have slow CPUs, which makes sense since if you're working all day you want the best equipment. Then they blow the dust off an old clunker in the store room, plug it in and load the program, runs for 10 seconds without crashing so that's the minimum system specs. The marketing guy then crosses his fingers and adjusts the numbers lower to get more sales.
 
Might be something as simple as this;

88859981.jpg


Got an unknown file extension, by default windows wants to search the internet instead of looking on the local hard disk?! Efficiency in programming. :hehe: Might be the same thing, TADDaemon looks on the download station first, then checks the local database to see if the one installed is obsolete or something. Can't find the asset on the DLS it just grabs the installed one, but is programmed to always look for the filename on the DLS first? Dunno. Reporting it to the devs is useless due to the lead motorcycle factor. TADDaemon is pondering imponderables, suddenly decided it wants to look at three 250kB files - joggles the CPU's elbow, "Hey get me these files." The CPU stops what it's doing and searches the hard drive, finds the files and hands them to the Daemon, then goes back to dividing pi by zero.

With a really fast CPU all that takes half a nanosecond, so you'll never notice ANY interruption since it's a zillion times faster than the proverbial blink of an eye. Got a slower CPU and THEN you'll see it even if you're blinking. Trouble is people who program for a living don't have slow CPUs, which makes sense since if you're working all day you want the best equipment. Then they blow the dust off an old clunker in the store room, plug it in and load the program, runs for 10 seconds without crashing so that's the minimum system specs. The marketing guy then crosses his fingers and adjusts the numbers lower to get more sales.

Sir, I think there is something wrong with your install and you are seeing things and getting symptoms that are not typical of users of TS12. If I have a program that thousands of people are running with zero problems, and on my PC, it is a train wreck ( no pun intended), then I have to think that blaming the software or it's creators, is probably not the direction that I should focus my troubleshooting attention in. It seems that you don't want to hear this , but some times a dose of reality is a good thing.
 
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OK enough!
In the interests of experimentation I have just spent 10 minutes testing but online

my results
CPU usage for TADD 0.0 Memory for TADD 189
CPU Usage for TS12 27% memory for TS12 1125 (Probably due to the excessive amount of SpeedTrees)

No CPU spikes, no network activity (used Networx to monitor the lan for internet traffic only) and no difference other than a few k over 10 minutes.

OK that's here but some are seemingly having TADD phoning home?

What's the difference, I can think of one maybe and that is I have never used or loaded any multiplayer routes or for that matter used ichat as I'm not interested, but suppose the Multiplayer rule which presumably is a script is cached in the libraries cache, which seemingly is never emptied or mine isn't. Might it be possible that once it's been loaded, it's getting loaded every time you start driver and trying to establish a connection?
 
I love Trainz, since 1.3 i've been using it. I have also got Railworks however, and with quite a bit of payware (all in sales of course). Railworks excels when it comes to the lighting, sound, and general immersion in cab. Other than that Trainz is better to me.

Railworks is great for real world routes andactivities, this is something Trainz seems to lack. I only use Railworks for driving activities, I have never even bothered to attempt to use the editor, it doesn't appeal to me because I know I won't get to set up tons of AI and enjoy my route like I can in Trainz. So for me and where Railworks excels is for driving. 90% of the time in Railworks i'm in the cab, driving a timetable. It works out of the box, you have activities to do and every route comes with them (Granted not many) but trainz doesn't seem to have this side of it where scenarios are created..

If the Trainz Jet Engine could be overhauled giving us decent dynamic lighting, a sense of scale, decent cab sway and better audio it would top RW for me and many others.
The problem I fear, is due to Steam (Which I love, Valve is possibly the best game company in the world), RW has a great great great share of the Train Sim market, with new addons popping up all the time. Most people have never heard of Trainz but have heard of Railworks.
Can't be good for Trainz and the Trainz developers. I think the Railworks guys must be doing quite well with regards to income.

Oh another thing I like about Railworks, as its a UK based company we get a lot of UK content which is rather good!

Pros cons Pros cons Pros cons Pros cons etc.
 
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Might be something as simple as this;

Got an unknown file extension, by default windows wants to search the internet instead of looking on the local hard disk?! Efficiency in programming. :hehe: Might be the same thing, TADDaemon looks on the download station first, then checks the local database to see if the one installed is obsolete or something. Can't find the asset on the DLS it just grabs the installed one, but is programmed to always look for the filename on the DLS first? Dunno. Reporting it to the devs is useless due to the lead motorcycle factor. TADDaemon is pondering imponderables, suddenly decided it wants to look at three 250kB files - joggles the CPU's elbow, "Hey get me these files." The CPU stops what it's doing and searches the hard drive, finds the files and hands them to the Daemon, then goes back to dividing pi by zero.

With a really fast CPU all that takes half a nanosecond, so you'll never notice ANY interruption since it's a zillion times faster than the proverbial blink of an eye. Got a slower CPU and THEN you'll see it even if you're blinking. Trouble is people who program for a living don't have slow CPUs, which makes sense since if you're working all day you want the best equipment. Then they blow the dust off an old clunker in the store room, plug it in and load the program, runs for 10 seconds without crashing so that's the minimum system specs. The marketing guy then crosses his fingers and adjusts the numbers lower to get more sales.

OH God of Coconuts WHY?

i can assure you without being one of the motorcycle designers nothing you mentioned above is going on at all!

check your jetlog.txt in the trainz bin folder, it should have a log of what tadd did. see if anything is failing or some other error is logged. if all you see it is delete the occasional cache file on startup and log you in to planet auran (usually within in the first 20 seconds or so) then it is behaving normally.
 
O.K., riddle me this. I've been running Trainz on a six year old Mac book pro. I've been through all of the versions listed in my time line including TRS2004 which I never registered. TRS2006 and TC, smooth as glass, no burps or hesitations running full screen all sliders set to max. Along comes TRS2009, TS12 and the Mac version. Have to run windowed, draw distances set low and if it wasn't for Otto's Speedtree waving fix, I would get a slide show. I thought all this new fangled content was supposed to run better. That is what everyone here always says.*
Same hardware, consistent performance fall off using only the supposed best and rehabbed content out there with each release of the program. Sorry, I'm back to TRS2004 and Windows as much as I hate the reboot thing. Please don't play the "buy a new computer to get better performance thing". I thought all these changes in content were for that. Nothing like you'll get better performance now if you just buy better equipment. I don't buy into it. I had full screen, 5000 meter draw distance well before these new releases came out. Now, it's buy more computer to get what you had back when buy more computer to get more out of what you had.*
I'll stay with TC and below and enjoy the Trainz experience. At least it was full screen with no burps, hesitations or lock ups. I couldn't care less about the DLS, new content or anything else. I have a DVD of some great content backed up on several discs and a hard drive. All this talk is pretty useless if you're milking performance out of new hardware and content just to be where you were several years ago.
I run trains in a plausible environment. Even the old CP/CN Geeps are a hoot. Never once thought how bad they look sitting at a red signal as another tooled by. Shame, all my JointedRail stuff is sitting on a disc. As sweet as those payware and freeware locos are, just not worth the hassle of trying to get them to run in game. No fault of JointedRail, all in the Jet engine N3V continues to try and milk. At some point you have to say, "I'm getting off this ride".*
As far as Railworks, I jumped off that ride when Steam was dumped on us. RailSimulator looked great. Not great enough to play the Steam game, though.*
I guess I'm not buying into the rehashed commercialism from ALL of these programs anymore. I didn't like Spiderman 1, I'm not paying to see Spiderman 3, TRS2006 runs like a dream, I'm not dumping cash into TRS??????? and the computer to run it anymore. Especially over those cheesy spline switches past ugly SpeedTrees I guess were introduced to make me forget about them. Same rehabbed game. The new signaling is great, the 5M grid would be cool if it didn't trash performance so much. The rest isn't worth squat.
 
O.K., riddle me this. I've been running Trainz on a six year old Mac book pro. I've been through all of the versions listed in my time line including TRS2004 which I never registered. TRS2006 and TC, smooth as glass, no burps or hesitations running full screen all sliders set to max. Along comes TRS2009, TS12 and the Mac version. Have to run windowed, draw distances set low and if it wasn't for Otto's Speedtree waving fix, I would get a slide show. I thought all this new fangled content was supposed to run better. That is what everyone here always says.*
Same hardware, consistent performance fall off using only the supposed best and rehabbed content out there with each release of the program. Sorry, I'm back to TRS2004 and Windows as much as I hate the reboot thing. Please don't play the "buy a new computer to get better performance thing". I thought all these changes in content were for that. Nothing like you'll get better performance now if you just buy better equipment. I don't buy into it. I had full screen, 5000 meter draw distance well before these new releases came out. Now, it's buy more computer to get what you had back when buy more computer to get more out of what you had.*
I'll stay with TC and below and enjoy the Trainz experience. At least it was full screen with no burps, hesitations or lock ups. I couldn't care less about the DLS, new content or anything else. I have a DVD of some great content backed up on several discs and a hard drive. All this talk is pretty useless if you're milking performance out of new hardware and content just to be where you were several years ago.
I run trains in a plausible environment. Even the old CP/CN Geeps are a hoot. Never once thought how bad they look sitting at a red signal as another tooled by. Shame, all my JointedRail stuff is sitting on a disc. As sweet as those payware and freeware locos are, just not worth the hassle of trying to get them to run in game. No fault of JointedRail, all in the Jet engine N3V continues to try and milk. At some point you have to say, "I'm getting off this ride".*
As far as Railworks, I jumped off that ride when Steam was dumped on us. RailSimulator looked great. Not great enough to play the Steam game, though.*
I guess I'm not buying into the rehashed commercialism from ALL of these programs anymore. I didn't like Spiderman 1, I'm not paying to see Spiderman 3, TRS2006 runs like a dream, I'm not dumping cash into TRS??????? and the computer to run it anymore. Especially over those cheesy spline switches past ugly SpeedTrees I guess were introduced to make me forget about them. Same rehabbed game. The new signaling is great, the 5M grid would be cool if it didn't trash performance so much. The rest isn't worth squat.
]

It's really simple. You are trying to run current software on an antique. That's it. If you have a 6 year old PC, it will run 6 year old software with no problem. Well it's not 2006 any more, and PC's and programs are totally different today. The software developers have to design software that runs on today's machines, not on yesterdays antiques. If they don't, nobody will buy it. There are smart phones today that have more processing power than some of the computers that folks are trying to run railroad sims on. I have been running sim programs for well over 20 years, and to stay current, a new PC every 2-3 years is a minimum to keep up with the software. People want more functionality, more bells and whistles, more eye candy, more AI, better weather, etc. etc. and they try to run it on a computer that was designed to run software that was created almost a decade ago. It's not going to work.
 
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Sparky, you should get Marc Nelson started on JET sometime, lotsa fun. :hehe: Robert, no. I spent two years throwing money at the problem, along with uninstalling and reinstalling XNA and .NET Framework and every driver possible, completely uninstalled the antivirus to see if that was a suspect - in short, yes I DID consider the problem might be on my end, which is why I spent money I couldn't afford to upgrade to minimum (CPU) or better (everything else) trying to overpower the problem. Next step, not showing in my station stops because it's registered in my son's account, I bought TRS2009. Why?

[h=2]Specification[/h] Minimum Specification
OS: Windows XP SP3
Memory: 1GB
Graphics: 64 MB 3D Graphics Card
Processor: Pentium 4 - 2.2Ghz
Hard Drive: 3GB Free Space

Recomended Specification
OS: Windows Vista
Memory: 1.5GB
Graphics: 128 MB 3D Graphics Card
Processor: Pentium 4 - 2.2Ghz
Hard Drive: 4GB Free Space

I beat the pants off of those specs even before throwing all that money at hardware, no idea if it would have performed better because all the versions up to and including service pack 3 were so hopelessly screwed up there was no point even trying to run performance tests - and service pack 4 was the original spawning of the Daemon. Is it on my end? Dunno, I also copied other graphics intensive games to the SSD to test, they all run perfectly. By rights 2009 should run reasonably well on a P4 2.2 because that's what it says on the box - a Pentium D is way faster than a P4, so it should run like a dream instead of waddling like a crippled pregnant turtle. Why it doesn't I have no idea, why three versions of Trainz run so badly while all my other video games run great I have no idea, what exactly TADDaemon is supposed to be doing or not doing I don't care, I've seen it on task manager and I have used internet port monitors, along with memory tests and CPU and GPU temperature monitors, whatever it is I'm tired of troubleshooting after two years, I just wanna play the blasted game and have it work. On this system, which however old it is meets or exceeds specifications for the game. If it was designed to require win 7 64 and an i7 CPU it should have said that on the label.
 
Sparky, you should get Marc Nelson started on JET sometime, lotsa fun. :hehe: Robert, no. I spent two years throwing money at the problem, along with uninstalling and reinstalling XNA and .NET Framework and every driver possible, completely uninstalled the antivirus to see if that was a suspect - in short, yes I DID consider the problem might be on my end, which is why I spent money I couldn't afford to upgrade to minimum (CPU) or better (everything else) trying to overpower the problem. Next step, not showing in my station stops because it's registered in my son's account, I bought TRS2009. Why?

Specification

Minimum Specification
OS: Windows XP SP3
Memory: 1GB
Graphics: 64 MB 3D Graphics Card
Processor: Pentium 4 - 2.2Ghz
Hard Drive: 3GB Free Space

Recomended Specification
OS: Windows Vista
Memory: 1.5GB
Graphics: 128 MB 3D Graphics Card
Processor: Pentium 4 - 2.2Ghz
Hard Drive: 4GB Free Space

I beat the pants off of those specs even before throwing all that money at hardware, no idea if it would have performed better because all the versions up to and including service pack 3 were so hopelessly screwed up there was no point even trying to run performance tests - and service pack 4 was the original spawning of the Daemon. Is it on my end? Dunno, I also copied other graphics intensive games to the SSD to test, they all run perfectly. By rights 2009 should run reasonably well on a P4 2.2 because that's what it says on the box - a Pentium D is way faster than a P4, so it should run like a dream instead of waddling like a crippled pregnant turtle. Why it doesn't I have no idea, why three versions of Trainz run so badly while all my other video games run great I have no idea, what exactly TADDaemon is supposed to be doing or not doing I don't care, I've seen it on task manager and I have used internet port monitors, along with memory tests and CPU and GPU temperature monitors, whatever it is I'm tired of troubleshooting after two years, I just wanna play the blasted game and have it work. On this system, which however old it is meets or exceeds specifications for the game. If it was designed to require win 7 64 and an i7 CPU it should have said that on the label.

Well I have a low end current desktop PC, and TS12 runs great on mine. No stutters, I had frame rates today on S & C that were approaching 70 FPS. Noww either the good fairy is hovering over my home and that is why TS12 runs so well on my rig, or it is because I have windows 7 ( current OS) , 6 gigs of Ram, ( current recommended amount of ram to run today's gaming software as a minimum), and I use Game Booster to shut down unnecessary services prior to starting TS12. So just from an entire career of troubleshooting analog and digital circuitry, that tells me that there is nothing wrong with the TS12 software. If I had to have a $2,000 desktop to make it run well, than I would say that the software has some serious issues, but that is not the case. So if someone tells me that it doesn't run well on their PC, it is obvious to me, that the issue is with their PC , period. It''s not just the processor, it is the data busses, and a host of motherboard design issues than can affect the way a PC behaves. That's why people buy new PC's today rather than throwing new parts at an old unit. You can put a 2012 engine in a 2004 car, and guess what, it is going to run and feel like a 2004 car.

If you get a current PC, with a decent GPU, lots of memory, and a decent hard drive, and put TS12 on it, it will run like a dream. Plain and simple.
 
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Well, Robert. This new content and software was to enhance performance. Are you saying that this more efficient content would run much better if only I bought new hardware? If only I bought a new computer, the new program would run just as well as the old on my antique system?*
Kind of talking in circles, both of us.*
Those Nikos CSX repaints run great in TRS2006. If they were more efficient and I updated my hardware, they would run just as good in TS12. See what I'm after here? It's like a dog chasing it's tail.*
As far as my antique, it runs every program I NEED it to run, including video editing, all day long without a hiccup. Why would I drop coin for an amusement? Especially when I have versions of that amusement that run very well. DLS access or new releases from other third party creators? Sorry, not enough. When the other 99% of the programs I need require an upgrade or this machine dies, I'll go there. Considering the first Mac I bought in 2001 is still humming and crunching programs I need, it will be a while.*
I don't even like CSX, but, those units Nikos repainted look great and run sweet past Trunda's trees. Even all those favorite rules I used in TS12 and the Mac version are carrying 2.4 builds on them. I give credit for the new signaling, but, I make due very well with the old scripts and rules.*
I've been around a long time as well, my friend. You don't need a new PC every 2-3 years unless you're buying into the commercialism game or a piece of software becomes outdated for your use. Especially in this train game. Choo choos go around the track in TRS2004 and TS12. Not much difference except for supposed new content, DLS access and old content hidden in JA files to avoid the error checker. Same stuff, new rules, buy new to keep up. My 8 year old G5 dual 2.0 running Final Cut Studio 5.0 eats every bit of video I throw at it. The software and hardware are more than adequate for my uses. When the machine dies or the codecs for video changes and obsolete my set up, I'll upgrade. Same with Trainz.*
 
Sniper (Jim),

I think your biggest bottleneck is you CPU and RAM on your system.

Pentium D 2.8 / Pentium D 3.4
1gb RAM / 2gb RAM

The Pentium D, no matter how fast they made the chip, does not have the bus width or the cache to handle the information it is supposed to process. Now adding in a smaller amount of system memory at 1-2GB you're seeing a system that is going to cache a lot of its programs to disk. This causes a much bigger drop in performance as now the disk is kicking in too often. If you could bump up your RAM to 4.0 GB, you'd see better performance, but not a super, super increase because that Pentium D still doesn't have a wide enough bus or cache to handle the huge amount of data it is being fed.

On my current system, which has 3 regular 7200 RPM drives from Seagate, I have an i7 - 2.6 and now 24GB of RAM. Heck I did the RAM thing when I got my tax return back in March. The upgrade only cost me $350 bucks at Best Buy. Anyway, with my system, I see little or no stutters in Surveyor or even Driver. After reading your post last night regarding this issue, I ran Process Explorer XP from Sysinternals. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653 . I'm not sure if you are familiar with this program, but it's a remake of the famous Task Manager you find in Windows. With ProcXP, you can actually see what items are using memory when viewing the performance graphs, and see how much (in percentage) they are using overall. The amount of memory used is also broken down nicely too as the program shows who is using what as well as what memory heaps are being used. On my system, the performance is listed at > 0.10% of the total CPU when TADD does its thing. I'm sure for others their mileage may vary.

I'm not saying that the way programs are written today is a good thing, but this is what it is and we have to do what we can in order to enjoy the programs we have. Because systems have more resources, the programmers have more leeway to write with more fluent code. The higher OOPs languages are a far cry from Assembler and C++ of so many years ago. Heck I am for using programs that can fit in the old "small memory space" model of 32k versus 64k large memory space compiled programs. I remember doing this when I did some Z-80 Assembler and compiled BASIC programming 30 years ago. It's quite amazing how efficient we could work and still make the programs work they way they did with the limited resources.

John
 
Well, Robert. This new content and software was to enhance performance. Are you saying that this more efficient content would run much better if only I bought new hardware? If only I bought a new computer, the new program would run just as well as the old on my antique system?*
Kind of talking in circles, both of us.*
Those Nikos CSX repaints run great in TRS2006. If they were more efficient and I updated my hardware, they would run just as good in TS12. See what I'm after here? It's like a dog chasing it's tail.*
As far as my antique, it runs every program I NEED it to run, including video editing, all day long without a hiccup. Why would I drop coin for an amusement? Especially when I have versions of that amusement that run very well. DLS access or new releases from other third party creators? Sorry, not enough. When the other 99% of the programs I need require an upgrade or this machine dies, I'll go there. Considering the first Mac I bought in 2001 is still humming and crunching programs I need, it will be a while.*
I don't even like CSX, but, those units Nikos repainted look great and run sweet past Trunda's trees. Even all those favorite rules I used in TS12 and the Mac version are carrying 2.4 builds on them. I give credit for the new signaling, but, I make due very well with the old scripts and rules.*
I've been around a long time as well, my friend. You don't need a new PC every 2-3 years unless you're buying into the commercialism game or a piece of software becomes outdated for your use. Especially in this train game. Choo choos go around the track in TRS2004 and TS12. Not much difference except for supposed new content, DLS access and old content hidden in JA files to avoid the error checker. Same stuff, new rules, buy new to keep up. My 8 year old G5 dual 2.0 running Final Cut Studio 5.0 eats every bit of video I throw at it. The software and hardware are more than adequate for my uses. When the machine dies or the codecs for video changes and obsolete my set up, I'll upgrade. Same with Trainz.*

Frankly I can't believe that I am reading these comments on a forum dedicated to simulator programs. Go out and read the threads on this forum and the other forums dedicated to both Flight Sims and Railroad Sims. People are constantly complaining that they want more bells and whistles in their sim programs. They don't want the bells and whistles they had 8 years ago to run faster, they want the bells and whistles of today and tomorrow to run faster, and in order to do that you can't run today's software on yesterdays equipment, with an outdated processor, insufficient ram, a slow data buss, and a 500 meg GPU. If you want to run old software that was designed in 2004, then a 2004 PC will work fine. Just don't buy any new software, and you will be able to run it forever, or at least until your PC dies.
 
Frankly I can't believe that I am reading these comments on a forum dedicated to simulator programs. Go out and read the threads on this forum and the other forums dedicated to both Flight Sims and Railroad Sims. People are constantly complaining that they want more bells and whistles in their sim programs. They don't want the bells and whistles they had 8 years ago to run faster, they want the bells and whistles of today and tomorrow to run faster, and in order to do that you can't run today's software on yesterdays equipment, with an outdated processor, insufficient ram, a slow data buss, and a 500 meg GPU. If you want to run old software that was designed in 2004, then a 2004 PC will work fine. Just don't buy any new software, and you will be able to run it forever, or at least until your PC dies.

Robert,

This argument has gone around these forums before. It's like screaming at a wall. :)

I agree with you on this and also come from the same background. I used to be a hardware technician many decades ago and now support nearly 700 desktop and laptop users who all seem to get virus infections on Mondays!

John
 
"low end current desktop", Dell Inspiron 620, I5, GTX 550 TI. I might call that midrange, but I wouldn't call it "low end", especially considering TS12 calls for a Pentium D 3.4GHz and a GeForce 7200.

John, it's not using all the RAM available, the CPU rarely hits 100%, the most common thing I see during the "pauses" is trainz.exe dropping to 0, TADDaemon.exe popping up from 0 to 10%, 20%, or even 60% for a few seconds before dropping back to zero - at which point trainz.exe pops back up to the usual 30% to 80% and it starts running again. Seeing those symptoms time after time what would YOU conclude about TADDaemon cause and effect? And it does the same thing on all three, 2009, 2010, and 12. What else could I have installed that might be interfering? Got Silent Hunter IV and Deus EX 2 and 3 installed, so probably have DRM like Starforce and Securom, but those aren't showing up in the processes tab. "I use Game Booster to shut down unnecessary services" I don't, I don't need it - when I boot up I have no unnecessary processes running in the first place, no google chrome or java automatic update garbage because I get rid of all that when it tries to set itself to automatic startup. Right now I have 32 processes total running with Firefox and content manager, one explorer window and one notepad window and of course task manager itself. It's already about as streamlined as XP gets so enditall or gamebooster don't have anything to do except add one more process.
 
Frankly I can't believe that I am reading these comments on a forum dedicated to simulator programs. Go out and read the threads on this forum and the other forums dedicated to both Flight Sims and Railroad Sims. People are constantly complaining that they want more bells and whistles in their sim programs. They don't want the bells and whistles they had 8 years ago to run faster, they want the bells and whistles of today and tomorrow to run faster, and in order to do that you can't run today's software on yesterdays equipment, with an outdated processor, insufficient ram, a slow data buss, and a 500 meg GPU. If you want to run old software that was designed in 2004, then a 2004 PC will work fine. Just don't buy any new software, and you will be able to run it forever, or at least until your PC dies.

Frankly, I can't believe you're commenting on how we need to throw more computer at a simulator that hasn't changed a whole lot in ten years. Same content, same hokey tracks, just now we have SpeedTrees and if you want to access the DLS, deal with it. No different than RailWorks reselling older content if you buy new. For the record, Flight Sim"s Decade of Flight 2004 holds it's own against Flight Sim X or whatever it's called and I'll run Mac Falcon 4.0 on my iMac G3 500 mhz over either of them. I don't need threads on forums to tell me which is better or what I should buy.
 
"low end current desktop", Dell Inspiron 620, I5, GTX 550 TI. I might call that midrange, but I wouldn't call it "low end", especially considering TS12 calls for a Pentium D 3.4GHz and a GeForce 7200.

John, it's not using all the RAM available, the CPU rarely hits 100%, the most common thing I see during the "pauses" is trainz.exe dropping to 0, TADDaemon.exe popping up from 0 to 10%, 20%, or even 60% for a few seconds before dropping back to zero - at which point trainz.exe pops back up to the usual 30% to 80% and it starts running again. Seeing those symptoms time after time what would YOU conclude about TADDaemon cause and effect? And it does the same thing on all three, 2009, 2010, and 12. What else could I have installed that might be interfering? Got Silent Hunter IV and Deus EX 2 and 3 installed, so probably have DRM like Starforce and Securom, but those aren't showing up in the processes tab. "I use Game Booster to shut down unnecessary services" I don't, I don't need it - when I boot up I have no unnecessary processes running in the first place, no google chrome or java automatic update garbage because I get rid of all that when it tries to set itself to automatic startup. Right now I have 32 processes total running with Firefox and content manager, one explorer window and one notepad window and of course task manager itself. It's already about as streamlined as XP gets so enditall or gamebooster don't have anything to do except add one more process.

Jim,

You definitely have something going wrong here then. With only 32 processes running, which is really awesome, your system should run quite nicely, although a bit more RAM would be nice. I too have eliminated many startups on my super machine and have brought it down to 54 which includes my antivirus and some system monitoring tools which I have stopped when I don't need them. Without these items, my total load is about 46 processes which is unheard of in most systems with Windows 7. :)

Anyway try http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653 - Systinternals Process Explorer XP. With this program, you can break out who is doing what in the operating system including the ability to look at the subitems within the Service Hosts (svchosts) which are so nicely lumped together in Task Manager. I have actually found viruses or malware that hide themselves in processes in the svchosts. With this utility, you can also stop or even pause processes which can help you eliminate who may be the culprit.

John
 
Jim,

You definitely have something going wrong here then. With only 32 processes running, which is really awesome, your system should run quite nicely, although a bit more RAM would be nice. I too have eliminated many startups on my super machine and have brought it down to 54 which includes my antivirus and some system monitoring tools which I have stopped when I don't need them. Without these items, my total load is about 46 processes which is unheard of in most systems with Windows 7. :)

Anyway try http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653 - Systinternals Process Explorer XP. With this program, you can break out who is doing what in the operating system including the ability to look at the subitems within the Service Hosts (svchosts) which are so nicely lumped together in Task Manager. I have actually found viruses or malware that hide themselves in processes in the svchosts. With this utility, you can also stop or even pause processes which can help you eliminate who may be the culprit.

John

I shut down all that unnecessary activity when I run sim programs. It's really easy today with programs like Game booster. http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html
 
Hee-hee, are you even paying attention? I don't have unnecessary activity to shut down, look at your processes with gamebooster running and tell me how many are left.

John, carrying this over to a new thread so we can continue trashing Don'tWorks in this one - which last time I tried it LOOKED better and RAN smoother than Trainz, but doesn't have anything else going for it or I would be there instead of here. New troubleshooting thread for those who do get these pauses and lockups;

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...mance-and-pauses-sometimes-quot-freezing-quot
 
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