This is weird (framerates)

[beaky]

Not exactly sure when the trouble began, but it was after a recent FS9.cfg  deletion (all planes were banking right for some reason)...
Deleting the cfg fixed that problem, but lately, no matter what plane or where in the world I'm flying- even over open ocean- with all scenery/wx sliders at 30-70% and fps locked at about 30 (which used to yield a solid 26-30fps in sparse areas) I keep seeing a cyclical slowing-down of fps to as low as 10, every few seconds. Doesn't matter what view, etc... the average drop is about 10fps, and it just keeps on doing it.  It's annoying as hell, and I've tried reducing values one at a time to find the fps-eater... to no avail.  Default planes, default weather: all the same. Over the ocean I see it drop down to around 20, and over cities or some add-on sceneries, it practically stops, as I can barely get 20 fps max in those areas (probably another problem altogether...).
It sucks: I used to lock at 42 and see low 20s minimum with everything the same as it is now, as far as I can recall. And if the fps was low, it was steady at least, not surging and falling back like it is now.
I've added some more planes and sceneries to the library, but that should only slow down the startup speed of the sim, right?

 Obviously it'd be a job to figure out precisely what's wrong, but I'm wondering  if anyone else has  ever seen this kind of "stutter", and what success, if any, they've had in eliminating it.

[JBaymore]

rottydaddy,

First thing I'd be suspecting is spyware or a virus.  One I was sure that it was NOT that..... I'd look elsewhere.

best,

.................john

[eno]

Check what else is running ...... its more likely to be something you've installed recently running in the background.

[JBaymore]

Look at the "processes" screen of the task manager that pops up when you press CTRL/ALT/DELETE in Win XP.  Anything there that you don;t expect?

Flip over to the processor usage graph part of that window.  What is happening there?  Does processor usage "pulse" the same way?

best,

....................john

[Brett_Henderson]

Hey Rotty..

[garymbuska]

SPYWARE REMOVER PROGRAMS are almost allways running in the back ground and if you have any kind of weather program running like WHEATHER BUG or something else it is always updating information. Even NORTON can cause some problems because it is allways looking for updates. I always shut these programs off and turn the auto update off on norton.
Just a thought hope you find the problem.

[Moach]

i would suggest you check your hardware... see if your graphics card or processor is not overheating...

when they get too hot, they may start to decrease performance and eventually lock down completely

just an idea...

Moach

[beaky]

Thanks to all for responding-
Probably not infected , but I might need to do a scan with something more thorough than Spybot in the near future.
Could be the stupid "Updater" that's part of my digital camera software; I set it for "manual", but it still starts up automatically... but I've seen this fps-hit problem when i know it's off. Got Norton but never installed it- Firefox protects me well enough online, as i don't download much except FS stuff.
Hardware: just cleaned the guts of my rig recently, and have never seen crazy temps in there, even in the summer. But this card is over a year old; who knows?
Brett's theory seems most likely, as I did recently defrag (which caused the loss of a bunch of default gauges that are used by almost every plane!)... maybe things are still spread out too much.
I'll check the HD light next time I test...

Man, it's really bad! I said -10 fps average, but last night I was just cruising along at 10,000 in the Twin Bonanza, and it was dropping 20 fps at a time, so briefly it was hard to see on the counter, but very obvious-and annoying- to the eye...  When it's not dropping big chunks of frames like that, it hits my fps-lock setting just fine...

[ATI_7500]

If you still have a virus scanner running in the background, switch it off.
Other than that, maybe a defrag would help,too.

[beaky]

If you still have a virus scanner running in the background, switch it off.
Other than that, maybe a defrag would help,too.

I'm running almost nothing in the background; I do all that sort of stuff manually.
I have discovered the "xerox' thing has found it's way into my machine, however... from what i've heard, it doesn't seem to do any harm.
But if anyone has figured out how to remove that sucker, let   me know!
As for a defrag: this problem cropped up after my last defrag, which coincidentally also wiped out a bunch of .gau files...
Maybe another defrag is in order; hard to say. i guess i should at least do an analysis to see if XP thinks it's needed.

[JBaymore]

rottydaddy,

If all of this "suddenly" started... then all the general use "speed up" thoughts are not likely the cause.  The word "suddenly" is the key to the problem.  For example, if you had antivirus running in the background before when you were flying...... that would not account for the sudden change...... UNLESS the antivirus update cause a screwup.

Something happened at the point everything changed.  

One thing that happend was that you did a de-frag.  But were then ANY other things that YOU also did?  Anything?  It is easy to make cause and effect connections through "assumption" and then find out later there was somethjing ELSE involved.  You also come to the stuff the someone ELSE might have done that you don't know about.

You mentioned you had Norton but did not have it installed.  Does this mean that you have NO antivirus program active all the time and are depending on using Firefox to protect you online?  What type of connection do you have....... broadband or dialup?  

BTW>.. what is the 'xerox thing" you mention?  Haven't heard about that yet.  If that is a "harmless virus"......... you can think of it as a "marker smell" to tell you that there may also be other stuff installed that you don't know about (yet).

When you look at the hard drive, do a surface scan ad see if you have some bad sectors on it.  THAT could account for the performance problems and maybe the missing gauges too.  It is possible that the defrag wrote data onto sectors that were bad.

best,

..................john

PS:  I strongly recommend the free version of the AVG antivirus software over either Norton or McAfee.

[beaky]

Connection: broadband (cable)
Protection: Mozilla and XP's default stuff
as for any other changes, after defrag I did  install a different water texture and a couple of new aircraft (also deleted some), and of course restored the missing .gaus from my backup folder.
I think you're on to something with the bad sector thing; i'll check that.
'xerox' is apparently a new file (dll?) that shows no properties including "weight", can't be found in the registry, and can't  be deleted. It's the first invader I've seen on my rig since i built it, other than the easily-zapped DSO Exploit.
I looked at a bunch of sites discussing it; can't offer a link to the best, because it's mostly Greek to me. If you're curious, google it... i'd be interested in your take on it.
The consensus seems to be that it doesn't do anything (detrimental), but i'm skeptical. why bother to create this beastie and disseminate it if it does nothing?

[JBaymore]

rottydaddy,

OK....maybe I am misunderstanding this.........

are you saying that you have absolutely NO antivirus software installed AND you are on a highspeed connection?  

If that is the case I'd be pretty amazed if you didn;'t have a passel of bad stuff in there.

By "XP's default stuff" I am assuming you mean the service pack II firewall and the miocrosoft antispyware beta program?

I agree that I can't believe that something that installs itself was done so that it can sit there and do nothing.  My gusee is that people have just not found out WHAT yet.  Wonder if it is a "timebomb" type program.... on such and such a date/time..... it kills your machine?

best,

.....john

[beaky]

Hmmm...a "time bomb"... that's encouraging... I think it may be a good time to backup.
I need to look again at what my firewall consists of exactly; been a while since i set that up.
As for "xerox", I'll see if I can find a link to an explanation... I think I need to research it more anyway.

Well, that didn't take long; here's something. Read pslh's post... apparently, it's just some crap that comes with XP; not spyware at all. Just coincidence that I finally saw it right after noticing this new framerate problem...

http://www.wintrouble.net/cgi-bin/ubb/u ... 2;t=000096

I'll take a little time this evening to gather details of my firewall setup- pretty sure I'm well-protected, but there may be a clue there as to what's going on with FS9 in my system.

[beaky]

JB:
Yes, only using the SP2 firewall; no MS anti-spyware, as i find Spybot does a great job with spy- and adware w/o running in the background.
I haven't flown or gamed online, and rarely download media streams or much of anything at all except FS add-ons.
Maybe I should disable all my add-on scenery and see if that helps...