windows 7 and TS2009 issue

[darkpuddle]

hi, since ive installed windows 7, trainz has blocked frequently when loading up the game or when im in the surveyor-everything freezes and it takes numerous times to get the surveyor up again. this didnt happen when i had windows xp. is there a patch or a fix for this?

thx

 

[JCitron]

hi, since ive installed windows 7, trainz has blocked frequently when loading up the game or when im in the surveyor-everything freezes and it takes numerous times to get the surveyor up again. this didnt happen when i had windows xp. is there a patch or a fix for this?

thx

There are some things to consider.

Have you installed the latest drivers for your system? There are special drivers for Windows 7, and if you don't have the right ones installed, your system will operate poorly. The manufacturer of your video card, for example has written optimized drivers for the hardware. The video card may work okay for some things with the driver supplied by Microsoft , but this is not as efficient.

The other issue is things running in the background? I had an issue with Office 2007, which installed Windows Search. This caused my system to freeze often when I was doing things. My hard drive was constantly being accessed as the program built a database of what I was doing. In Trainz many files are opened as the program runs, particularly in Driver. This search program was constantly cataloging every file that was opened. In order to fix this problem, I had to look for it in the Services (Control Panel, Administrator Tools, Services), and disable it from operating. Searching for documents takes me a whole few seconds more, but the performance overall on my machine is a whole lot better.

Have you done a system scan recently for spyware and other malware? These things running in the background can kill any machine, and something such as Trainz, which requires a lot of system to operate, can feel the impact of these background tasks.

Defrag your hard drive! This I found to be extremely helpful for performance.

Disable I-Chat if you don't use it. I found that even with a high-speed internet service, this little applet is constantly "looking" on the network for clients. This is one more thing that isn't necessary if you're not using it.

Also, what kind of hardware are your running? The machine specs are quite helpful for us to remotely troubleshoot for you.

John

 

[darkpuddle]

2gb RAM
windows 7 ultimate 32bit
AMD64 x2 processor
ASrock video card (i think)

and how do you disable i-chat?

 

[pcas1986]

My TS2009 system is stable in W7 64 bit. Way more stable than TS2010 at present. I agree with JCitron about the Windows indexing program but, in theory, its supposed to make itself dormant when you are doing something. There are a couple of other programs that like to scan (innocently) through your hard disks. Nero has an indexing utility as well.

You could bring up the task manager to see what is running in the background.

 

[JCitron]

My TS2009 system is stable in W7 64 bit. Way more stable than TS2010 at present. I agree with JCitron about the Windows indexing program but, in theory, its supposed to make itself dormant when you are doing something. There are a couple of other programs that like to scan (innocently) through your hard disks. Nero has an indexing utility as well.

You could bring up the task manager to see what is running in the background.

I thought so too regarding the Windows Indexing tool. This innocent applet gets steroids when Office 2007 is installed. It loves to index every file that gets opened! I found the service called Windows Search, which according to the description:

"Provides content indexing, property caching, and search results for files, e-mail, and other content."

Does just that with each and every file that gets opened to so to help with additional searches later...

Another scanner that caused problems for me was Diskeeper's I-Faast, which is used for on-the-fly disk defragmentation. This maybe okay on a workstation that doesn't need to constantly hash data, but a program like Trainz makes this go crazy because it stops and starts every time a file is opened.


DP - What is an ASRock Video card? An off-branded ATI? Also check your disk space and see if you can possibly increase your memory or if not your swap file.

To disable i-Chat, look in the upper right corner of the Trainz interface. There's a little icon there to turn it on and off.

John