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Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

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Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Firebird »

OK finally after some months I decided to do the upgrade from 7 to 10, with FS9 installed.
Hopefully this will give confidence to people that are contemplating the change as well.

Firstly the upgrade to 10 went very smoothly, the only issue that I found was that the install prep seemed to hang until I closed down Daemon Tools lite. I should say that it seems to pause for a long time in several places but at this point it hung for over 20 mins.

Once the upgrade was finished I went about trying to get various things to work that seemed not, like drag and drop into VLC and Everything (search proggy) not starting. In these majority of cases it was the fact that 'Run this program as an administrator' was set. If you switch off the UAC, which I do, then having apps set to run under admin causes problems when it didn't under 7. For example I run VLC from RocketDock. Both had admin switched on and drag and drag would not work for VLC and neither could you drag and drop apps into RocketDock.

So a general 10 tip if drag and drop does not work try switching off the admin user for that proggy and see if that fixes your issue.

Once I sorted out my issues and made the gui look less gopping I started work on FS9.
Now and absolute pre-requisite for it to work is that you must be using the FS9 NoCD patch that has been around for years. Make sure you are using the correct one for your version of FS9 (FS9 or FS9.1). This is because MS have automatically disabled some CD based software security which afflicts even there own products :roll: . I have been using the patch for several years without issue.
I run FS9 in windowed mode so I didn't have any issues of a black screen on load. IF you use full screen mode normally I would recommend that you switch to and save in windowed mode before you begin. There have been numerous reports of black screens when the proggy is started and you have to switch to windowed to see anything. I should say that I have not checked on my system if this is the case or if there has been any permanent fixes. This is about getting it running. Fannying around is something to be done later.

I started FS9 using the FS9CPU_4CPU.exe proggy. and it took some time to start to load, i.e. greater than 0%, so I am guessing that somethings were being altered in the background for FS9. I did get a requester to install Direct Draw which I clicked on so I am guessing that this is not part of the new OS. It installed itself and the loading continued fine.

What I did notice was that the jaggies that I had eliminated from FS9 were there. This was undoubtedly due to the new Windows 10 nvidia driver I was using so I went and loaded my override profile for FS9 through Nvidia Inspector. No difference.
I tried to fallback to my last drivers but it failed the nvidia check as they were not Windows 10.
After some head scratching I eventually found that nvidia had renamed the FS9 profile. It was originally called 'MS Flight Simulator 2004' but is now called 'Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004' so I had two profiles and it was picking up the default one.
So I simply took a copy of the FS9 profile and renamed the internal ProfileName to 'Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004'.

This was then loaded and hey presto the jaggies have gone. Sorry to those with Radeon cards I don't know how to fix the jaggies on those.

So with a few simple planning steps it is easy enough to A) upgrade to 10 and B) get FS9 running.

Hope this helps.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by gsnde »

I went for a fresh installation of Win10 instead of the upgrade and I am on P3Dv31 instead of FS9. And I fully agree with Steve. Windows 10 is a great product.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by BaiterOne »

Hi Firebird,

thanks for a very thorough report on your experience on upgrading.

I have in mind the same upgrade from Windows 7 and using FS9.

Your report however has given me some reservations about going ahead with the upgrade.

You appear to be quite at ease with handling glitches and problems.

I use FS9 in full-screen mode - and getting black screens and blue screens is something that terrifies me!

Maybe I will hold on a little while longer until someone issues a 100%, gilt-edged, fully comprehensive guarantee that I will not suffer! :D

If I thought that Windows 7 would see me out for the next 30 years or so I wouldn't even consider changing...

Thanks

Walter
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Jive1 »

Hey!
One question still, and the answer is very important to me.....
What happens when Windows 10 has been upgraded/installed, and I want to "re"-install Windows 10?
I usually "re"-install Windows when it starts showing some problems and when it gets slower.
To "re"-install is to me not so difficult, it takes not so much time, and I prefer to start again with clean Operating software rather than to have to repair things, after which the 'repaired' operating system remains still slower than when it would have been "re"-installed.
Can I then twice or three times, if need be, use the free software to "re"-install Windows 10 or do I have to buy a set of CD's or Dvd's to redo that? And secondly, of course, how lo,g will that Windows 10 be the standard software, or will there appear soon a Windows 11?....
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by gsnde »

Hi Jive,

You can and should download the offline installer for Windows 10. With this you can create a DVD installation media.

Once you have registered a Win10 license on a given computer, this serial is bound to this device. This means the next time you restage you don't even have to input your serial again.

A fresh installation of Win10 goes way faster than a Win7 installation currently. It is faster to start with and you do not yet have this ton of updates coming afterwards.


From mobile hence short
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Firebird »

Jive,
What Martin says is correct.The same tool that MS made available to upgrade off line can also be used to create a bootable iso.
The tool, MediaCreationTool, is available from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... ndows10ISO

Just be sure to choose whether you have a 32bit or 64bit machine to get the correct download.

BaiterOne,
I understand your reticence, which is why I wrote my experiences here. It is quite harmless, as unlike with other versions Windows 10 does make a complete backup of your Windows 7 system folders before it starts so that you can back it all out.
I will say that it is the easiest upgrade to a MS OS that I have encountered.

There are two things that should be kept in mind, one is that Windows 11 is already being worked on and it is designed to be an upgrade from 10. The other and potentially more important thing is that MS has apparently built in an auto upgrade feature that can be triggered at sometime in the future. It might be better to plan a cutover then have it done at a time of their choosing.
From my point of view it is best to keep your FS on a completely separate HD, and backed up externally, so that you don't get wiped out. If you are very paranoid you can do what I did which is to buy an SSD and use it's cloning software to back up your entire C: drive, externally, before you start so that if things go wrong you can simply switch over SSDs and continue as you were.
This does of course assume that your system is new enough to be able to use SSDs.

As far as a 100% guilt edged solution to the black screens for both FS9 and FSX in full screen mode then I am not sure you will ever see one as MS do not do fixes for no longer software plus nobody seems to be exactly sure what is the cause.

My gut feeling here is that it is a DirectX thing.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Jive1 »

Sounds good!
I will first try it all on my second pc, and after some axperience there, I can switch over on my FS9-pc from Win7 to Win10. My FS9 is entirely on a separate HD.
Thanks for all the information!
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by david.harwood »

Do I even consider upgrading to Windows 10 as I using FSX!!!! Its taken me months of tweaking to get a nice stable platform for FSX using Windows 8 and now 8.1. I've disable the automatic update reminder as I feel Windows 10 might kill FSX or at best make it as jumpy and crashy as without the tweaking!

Has anyone had any success with FSX and Windows 10?
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Firebird »

David,
From what I understand FSX has the same problem as FS9 under 10, and that is that you can run it in windowed mode but you will get a black screen if you run it in full screen. Some people say that they have had success in full screen mode but not enough give consistant answers to say that if you do xyz then you will be successful.

Disabling the automatic update reminder will not stop the auto update, if they push it out, as there was a patch a few months ago that allowed them to push the update through under the windows update system.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Greg »

Firebird wrote:From what I understand FSX has the same problem as FS9 under 10, and that is that you can run it in windowed mode but you will get a black screen if you run it in full screen. Some people say that they have had success in full screen mode but not enough give consistant answers to say that if you do xyz then you will be successful.
Never had that issue. Both work perfectly fine in full screen mode here without doing anything special... :smt102
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Christopher Barbas »

david.harwood wrote:Do I even consider upgrading to Windows 10 as I using FSX!!!! Its taken me months of tweaking to get a nice stable platform for FSX using Windows 8 and now 8.1. I've disable the automatic update reminder as I feel Windows 10 might kill FSX or at best make it as jumpy and crashy as without the tweaking!

Has anyone had any success with FSX and Windows 10?

Yes,

I had run FSX at WIN10 64 without any problems at all but I had upgrade from WIN7 64. I has run more smoothly comparing with WIN7.

You will have only to re-install GPU drivers and also check about sound drivers for you mother board or if you have other than the motherboards sound card.

That was the only things I had done.

Remember only that you will have to restart more than once and even if the upgrade is finished.

You will have to do this in order the user files to be organized and synchronized by WINDOWS. That was the only thing that had made me worries at this time because at the 1st restart after the upgrade was finished I had some errors from FSX, cfg missing etc. But after some restarts everything was OK.

There was a "temp" folder by my documents, new at WIN10, which had all my documents from the previous WINDOWS installation. After some restart, made a few to be sure, the "temp" folder was disappeared and all was at their right place.

This was happened at least to me, didnt heard so far if it happened also to others because all my friends had upgrade by 1st they have delete FSX in order to make a fresh install of P3D, which I am also running now at WIN10.


Good luck
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Firebird »

Well I bit the bullet and tried to run in full screen, as a test.
The screen goes instantly black and it then messes up my other screen big time with windows of other open things being moved around and the screen resolution being constantly reset, including FS9 which several times appeared on my other monitor fleetingly in what looks like 640x480 resolution.
I managed once to be able to click on the close gadget and everything went back to normal. I tried setting it Windows 7 compatible and with admin rights, as one suggestion went, and that was even worse with FS9 never appearing on the other screen and so with no chance to close it or even click on the task manager window that I pre-opened to kill the app.
After 15 mins of constant flashing I had no choice but to reboot the PC.

So in a nutshell after an upgrade from Win7 64 to Win 10 64 and with the latest Win 10 drivers installed it was an abysmal failure. I am convinced that it is something to do with the pairing of DirectX 12 and the Win 10 drivers. For some people it works flawlessly but for most it means a reboot.

Chris - What graphics card do you have, and how many monitors do you use?
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Firebird »

OK. A curse of being a software analyst is that you can never let a problem go, and this was one in particular that I just couldn't drop.

I THINK that I have found the solution :shock: . If it is then I can't believe that nobody else has made a song and dance about it before now as it is so simple.

A quick recap, Win 7 upgraded to Win 10 then the latest graphics driver installed.
One thing I tried after that was renaming the fs9.cfg file to keep it safe and then letting fs9 rebuild the cfg file.

It started up but was in a slightly skewed setup with half on a 800x600 res screen and half on the second 1920x1200 screen. Then in less than 30 secs it corrected itself to the full 800x600 display on one monitor. Result!
I then set the graphics card hardware setting in FS9 to 1920x1200x32 and it still worked. I loaded up the default Cessna at KSEA and hey presto full screen with no problems. I pressed the ALT key to check the menus and no problems. I tried ALT + ENTER and it switched successfully to windowed mode. I also switched back with no issues. I ended the flight to ensure that it was saved at the correct hardware settings and then proceeded to copy across from my saved fs9.cfg file.

What I did notice was that the old cfg file had my old graphics card and not the new one. Could it really be that simple??!

With all the settings copied across with the exception of the old graphics card parm I retried it and again it all worked perfectly.

My guess is that under Win7/8 it didn't matter if the graphics card name was wrong as long as the Mode (1920x1200x32) was a valid card resolution. Under the combination of Win 10/DX12/Windows 10 drivers it now matters.

The only issues I found are the same that others reported in that the aircraft choosing window is black when started in full screen and at a higher res than 800x600. So it would make sense that if you use that method to choose planes then start up in windowed mode and switch once you get in game.

So I guess the only thing left now to test is that this works for somebody else that has upgraded and has the same problem. So could everybody please try this resolution if you have this problem and let us know if it works or not.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Christopher Barbas »

Firebird wrote:Chris - What graphics card do you have, and how many monitors do you use?
I am using 2 monitors and I have the MSI GTX770 TF 2GD5/OC. The 2nd monitor is not used for simulator but to monitor other applications, Teamspeak, Jeppview etc.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by col1948 »

I have a touch screen PC in the living room I let the grandchildren play on, it's easier for them than having to use the mouse etc, it's not my main PC by the way.
When I got it there was Windows 8 installed, so out of curiosity I put the Windows 10 upgrade on, I played about with it for a while but didn't like it nor did I like the Windows 8 that was originally installed. So I decided to wipe the lot off and install good old Windows 7 Ultimate.
I've read on a few forums where people have and are having problems after installing 10, a lot of their software won't run where as they did run well with Windows 7, I have read a few posts where people have had no problems with it but the people with problems seem to out number the ones who are OK.
On my main PC and my laptop I have Windows 7 Ultimate and I'm happy with that for now, just my preference.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by Firebird »

It does seem to be that the software problems that people may be having is due to them leaving them to run as admin, like they did under 7/8. I had those and fixed them all by running them w/o admin rights and/or running them as 7/8 compatible.
I do hate the look of 10.

What I do want to find out is whether or not my fix for FS9 fullscreen, and presumably FSX, works for others.
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Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

Post by mikewmac »

Guys,

For those of you who are like me and will not transition to Windows 10 until MS has it fully debugged and I feel that I absolutely have to, there is a neat little app called the GWX Control Panel that allows you to block all of MS's attempts to trick you into installing Windows 10. It allows you to easily block all the Windows 10 installers/upgrades that continue to sneak onto your PC and unblock them later for your use or remove them completely immediately. Basically it puts you back in control to determine if and when you transition to Windows 10. :wink:

You can download the GWX Control Panel installer at the following link:

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

You can read the GWX Control Panel User's Guide at the following link:

http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/0 ... emove.html
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    Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

    Post by pslinger »

    The GWX Control Panel appears to do what it is designed to do, however it doesn't appear to be set and forget software. I would keep an eye on the settings in the control panel. I would check them on a regular basis to make sure nothing has changed. It appears that something is reaching out and changing the non-critical Windows 10 settings enabled from NO to YES. I have made it a habit of checking these settings.
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    Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

    Post by Firebird »

    From what I understand the current situation is that you can upgrade for free until July 29th. What happens after that time I have no idea. Maybe they will extend the time, maybe they will force an upgrade on compatible systems, maybe there will no more support from then on, maybe nothing.
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    Re: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Window 10 and the impact to FS9

    Post by Firebird »

    Gents,
    I have no responses yet as to whether my fix for FS9/FSX in full screen fixes other peoples problems, so if it did/didn't then let me know.

    Secondly, on a Windows 10 related issue, the next major version of Windows (currently codenamed Redstone) will be rolled out this summer. It is called the Windows Anniversary Update and is a free upgrade only to those on Windows 10.
    Now I am not going to suggest upgrading, that is everyones personal choice, but it is something that you guys who haven't yet should take into consideration.
    Steve
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