Shutting Down Background Programs

[mounty]

Hi All,

Have a question that no doubt has been asked before!! What programs are there that will shut down all programs except the ones you need to run the system and FS? Trying to improve my frame rates with all the airport sceneries and thought about shutting down unnecessary programs and having them start up on exiting FS.

Many Thanks

Rob

[AndyT]

There is one called FSAutoStart, but I do not know much about it.

[Kennair]

Rob,

I use to use FSAutostart by Ken Salter to shutdown all unwanted services, however there is much conjecture on Avsim forums as to the real benefit of this. I thought I got better framerates using it, but I've stopped using it for some time now and noticed no difference in framerate. You can get similar results from just shutting down anti-virus programs and extra things manually. Better still get AV's and Firewall's that have a small resources footprint.

There can be lots of services and programs running in the background of a typical system and unless you really know what you are doing, you can get into trouble turning some of them off. Having said that FSAutostart does give you a tip on each known service and advises whether to turn it off or not. It's free so no harm to give it a try. It will also restart all services once you've finished simming if you want.

Honestly I got the best improvement from a good third party defragger like Ultimate Defrag.

Hope this helps,

Ken.

[Deesystems]

Rob,
Ive used the information at http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/OSguides.htm

he has all of the sevices listed and what they do for different OS's

General Information
Red Hat 8.0
Windows 2000 Professional and Server
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server
Windows Me
Windows Vista
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Professional

Shutting down unused services will free up system memory and cpu usage in msfs it will bring up fps.

Dee

[Michael Carter]

Thanks! That's what I was looking for.

Now if I could get these computers to talk to one another.

[AndyT]

It may not give more FPS but it will help get rid of stutters.

[JBaymore]

I've already talked to Bob about posting this link on here and got the "OK"....... I don't nornally "pimp" my main flight sim home, Simviation, here.... but the following link is one of the most worthwhile "tweeking" postings on setting up a machine for flight simming on Windows that you will find anywhere on the net.

Can't go into all the details but the poster of this great info, NickN, (formerly Nick N) has a really heavy background in computers, does testing work for hardware manufacturers, and is/was a consultant on FS projects for MS. He knows his stuff and he very generously shares that expertise with folks on the SimV forums. This extensive posting is just one of his offerings.

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/ya...028653;start=0

The forum posting above is listed for FSX... but most of the stuff he mentions is also fine for FS9. One caveat....... follow his very sequential instructions TO THE LETTER if you expect it to work the miracles that it does. READ the whole thing first and print it out. Take your time doing it. It is long and involved. Read all of the stuf in those 12 pages of postings.... lots of "hints" hiding in there too.

Enjoy!

best,

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

[Michael Carter]

That's the one I was really looking for.

Thanks!

[ak49er]

I've read the Nic's post several times before, but a couple questions remain. Should I install MSFS into its own partioned space before doing these tweaks. To do that would I need to reformat my hard drive? Doing that, would I need to reinstall XP? How deep should one go to get the best performance. And in regards to Nic's posting, do I need to back anything up before trying these tweaks, for such a detailed post it does not mention backing up data.

[BlackWidow]

I did all that Nick said except I cant get O&O Defrag to run on my 64bit system but I did notice a FPS difference not much maybe 3 or 4 but its better then no FPS improvment.