Transfering my install to an old computer.

[Linguofreak]

Just a couple questions here. For about a year we had a spiffy "new" (compared to what we had been running) 2.66 GHz machine with about a gig of RAM. The thing ran Orbiter really well compared to the machine I had been using (which bogged down even more when we "upgraded" the thing from Win ME to Win2k. Half my games quit working when we did that, though fortunately not Orbiter.) Then, one day this month, out of the blue, the motherboard quit on the new machine and the thing won't even turn on. And it looks like we can't really afford a replacement at this point (the dead machine had been a gift). We pulled the hard drive and put it in an external case, so we have all our data back, but we're back to using the old 766 MHz, 256 Meg, Win 2k system we'd been using before. Orbiter 2006 P1 had worked on this machine (though I'd had to turn off a bunch of options to make in run with any kind of speed), but this time through I'm having a few problems (not bad, but annoying). Firstoff, when I first launch Orbiter and the launchpad comes up, I get an error box "The procedure entry point PrintWindow could not be located in the dynamic link library USER32.dll." Orbiter seems to run fine though. Second problem (possibly related just to running on minimal memory and CPU resources), is that I get a CTD when exiting from the sim to the launchpad. Any idea what's behind either error? I don't recall getting the first at any point when running Orbiter on this same machine back in the day, although I think I do recall the second.

And I'd also like to ask which flight model and grapical options give the biggest CPU hits, so that I can optimize for decent framerates while retaining as much realism and eye-candy as possible.

 

[Marcel]

The only tip I can give is to make sure that "always enumerate devices" is checked in the video tab. At least I think it's in the video tab, I'm not at my computer. Anyway, this will make sure that Orbiter checks your current set up before starting.

 

[Linguofreak]

The only tip I can give is to make sure that "always enumerate devices" is checked in the video tab. At least I think it's in the video tab, I'm not at my computer. Anyway, this will make sure that Orbiter checks your current set up before starting.

Yes. It is checked. On my fast machine I'd get framerates in the 1 FPS range if it wasn't, and this machine would likely just choke and die.

My problem is that the machine I'm stuck with at the moment is scraping pretty near the minimum specs for Orbiter, and I'm trying to figure out which options are the real processor hogs and which ones I can leave on.

That, and the mysterious DLL error on startup, and the crash on exit.

 

[willy88]

I think the best option would be to get a brand new computer. You can get a decent (compared to that thing you currently have) computer for about $350.

If not, good luck trying to run Orbiter on that... thing.

 

[Linguofreak]

I think the best option would be to get a brand new computer. You can get a decent (compared to that thing you currently have) computer for about $350.

If not, good luck trying to run Orbiter on that... thing.

It does in fact run on this... thing, no luck required. In fact, this... thing was the first computer I ever ran Orbiter on. And, at least for the moment, we have other concerns than buying new computers (plumbing, car maintainance, etc). We have been window shopping, but I'm not sure if we'll actually buy anything.

In the meantime, I've unchecked the options I most felt I could part with, and in most situations I can get 30 fps.