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Windows 10

Use this forum to discuss technical issues related to the operation of your computer. Graphics, Hardward, Software, settings, etc.
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John Young
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Re: Windows 10

Post by John Young »

I have W10 1909 version and the update is waiting for me. I don't know how long it's been there because I wasn't prompted to look until I read Steve's post. I'll pluck up courage to install it at some point.

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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

The only advice I would give is the same as all Windows version updates. Ensure that all your external USB drives are removed first, other than that make sure you have a backup of your current system - if you take backups.

MS backups are no use if it can't read the drive. They are only useful if you want to fallback to a previous version from a functioning drive.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by TimC340 »

Steve, it may be relevant that I have the Microsoft Windows Update Assistant installed on all my computers (it's not part of Windows, and it must be downloaded and installed separately). That looks after all the major updates for me.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Weescotty »

If it helps...
I only had a problem because of a momentary power issue that caused my PC to restart midway through.
I have successfully upgraded over 20 PCs at work to 2004 without a single issue.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

Tim, yes I was aware of it and was seriously thinking of using it if it went on much longer.

I seem to remember that once it gave notice that some software I had installed needed to be de-installed. That was the UXTheme patcher. I had problems with windows update download would complete but hang with a black screen. It was the one thing that told me what the problem was.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

Gents,

Something that I have just figured out with Windows 10 that may be relevant to others.

Since Windows 10 2004, and still happens with 20H2, was that the screensaver would not kick in. Tried all sorts to make it work but to no avail.

Yesterday, it suddenly kicked in. Result. I then noticed that my CH Control manager icon on the tool bar was not in mapped mode and couldn't be put into mapped mode. It had some sort of corruption.
Long story shortened, it seems that CH Products Joystick and Throttle interfere with the operation of the screensaver. When the drivers and software were removed, screensaver kicked in. When the Control Manager software was installed, screensaver kicked in. When the devices were plugged in and the drivers installed, no screensaver.
Tried it all twice to confirm the facts.

The CH Control Manager hasn't been updated for years so I am stuck with hardware that is conflicting with the OS.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

An update on this issue.
It seems that this issue has been around since Windows 7 and 2014. The problem is not confined to CH Products but Saitek and Thrustmaster, amongst others as well.
The issue affects or can affect any device that is recognized as "HID Compliant Game Controller". Why some people get affected and some not is unknown. MS are stubbornly silent on the affair.

I had found that some people reported that Geforce Experience was the cause, if you had an Nvidia card. If you went into that program and switched off the overlay option that cured it. Hopes raised. Hopes dashed. Didn't work for me.
I then delved deeper and came up with a work around, as I say MS have nothing nothing for 6 years. What i found was a portable app called DevManView. Like the built-in Windows Device Manager you can enable/disable devices and other activities with it.

The reason I am using that is that it has two crucial advantages. One being a portable app you can start it every time you boot up and it can be minimized to the tray. Secondly you can use a command line to enable or disable a device.
This means that you can run a batch file to enable or disable all of your controllers at the same time.

In respect to the CH controllers what I found is if I disabled the CH Control Manager Device 1 and 2 (these are virtually created when you combine your CH controllers in the control manager) then the screen saver came in as normal. The controllers then don't work in FS but simply enabling those 2 devices, or 3 if you have their rudder pedals as well, mean that you can use the controllers with no issues in game.

So in essence either disabling/enabling the offending devices in DevmanView or by running .bat files from the desltop get you around the issue.

Maybe this will help some people.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

I have lost count of the number of times that I post an issue on this website and then immediately find a solution.

It has happened again.
Effectively the work around above does work but you don't need to use it.

The cause is an MS setting that you can alter it's just that for years nobody has seemingly found it fit to tell games, which may tell you something about how much they listen to them.

To solve the issue change the following setting via the Control Panel :-

Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change plan settings (next to whichever plan you have selected) -> Change advanced power settings -> USB settings -> USB selective suspend setting - set to Disabled

If the setting is set to Enabled it means that any USB device can prevent your PC going to sleep.

If you want to be more particular and only alter individual devices then:-
Control Panel -> Devices and Printers -> (right click on the game pad) Properties -> Power Management

If Windows allows, check the first box "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power", and also uncheck the box "Allow this device to wake the computer".


For completeness, for those not comfortable with all the features of Windows 10 yet the old Control Panel display can be accessed by entering "Control Panel" in the Search icon/bar in the Toolbar.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by pslinger »

I need to reinstall FSX on my Windows 10 computer. I needed to do a complete reinstall of Windows 10, so I have the latest version of Windows 10. First question; is there a simple way to reinstall FSX without going through and reinstalling every item, one at a time? I have a complete back-up of FSX on an external hard drive, so I have what was built in FSX available. I assume there is more to it than just cut and paste from the external hard drive.

The second question is when addon scenery is activated in FSX, there is an entry made to a .cfg file if I remember correctly. What is the file name and where is the active file located. I tried an experiment by activating an addon scenery then looking in the Scenery.cfg file in the main FSX program, but didn't see an entry in the Scenery.cfg file.

If you could point me in the right direction, that would be appreciated. Thanks.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

OK well FSX SHOULD be exactly the same as FS9. Quite often I have had to recover FS9 from a backup.

So apart from the normal FSX structure you will need to backup your cfg files as well.

I believe that one folder is :- C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX where xxxxx is your userid.
The second folder is :- C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX

Now my installation is the Steam version so it maybe differently. To confirm it is correct do a system search for 'scenery.cfg' you should find two. One is in the first folder BUT that is not the one that gets updated by the game the second one is.

So if you use the Everything search util it will take seconds to find them. Then if you compare them you will find one that has the manual mod you mod so the other is the active one. To prove this just mod the scenery to that file and check in game.

Once you have all the config folders backed up as well then you only have to worry about the reg entry.
So you can either use a tool that will set it, or you can back up what you already have using the builtin regedit tool.

If you read this thread you will see that somebody has listed the possible reg entries https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threa ... v2.432633/.
So go into your registry using regedit and drill down the path until you find the FSX entries. Then you can select the 'FSX' folder and right click and select export. Save the file wherever you want and whatever you wich to call it.

Now double check, for your own piece of mind, the reg file created in notepad. you will see the entries there.
So when you double click on the .reg file it will apply those keys to the registry using regedit.

So once you have that .reg file backed up somewhere safe you can do what you have to do, copy FSX and the config folders back over to their original places ans then click on the .reg file and you will be back in business.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by pslinger »

Thanks for the help Steve, I appreciate it. Unfortunately I neglected to back-up the .cfg files. The registry entries are something new and the FS Developer forum thread is helpful. Should make things easier if I have to go through this again. I wasn't happy with the way I had the Addon scenery organized, so this will give me the excuse to re-organize things.

Paul
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

Don't worry, Paul. Everybody forgets about the config files the first time.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

As I have written elsewhere I am building a PC that is Windows 11 compliant. I have not updated to Win 11 yet so I am posting this here.

As part of my build I decided to read up on M.2 drives and after that I decided to get some.

What is an M.2 drive?
Simply put it is another memory based storage device, like SSDs, but instead of being nice clean looking tin oblong blocks that you attach to a SATA port and uses a power cable off your power supply. These things are very well documented by now.

An M.2, or NVME drive, is a small stick of chips that fits into a suitable socket on a motherboard. It takes its power from the PCI bus so no leads need to be attached to it. They can be blindingly fast so accordingly they run very hot and some people find that the bare drives can get throttled at high temperatures.
Most motherboards that can accommodate them come now with a heat sink for at least one drive to alleviate that problem. If you use more than one then you will need to buy a heat sink kit and they do not take up a lot of internal real estate.

How fast are they?
Well it depends upon the version of PCIE bus that you have on your motherboard. Most new boards have gen 4.0 but some you can get are the older 3.0 gen.
One good thing is that all slots are forward and backward compatible between the different generations. So a 4.0 M.2 drive will quite happily run in a 3.0 M.2 slot although it's speed will be limited to the architecture of the motherboard.
The speed of a 3.0 slot is around 3.9GB/s. The speed of the 4.0 is twice again - 7.8GB/s. Each gen of PCIE is twice the speed of the previous.
If you compare that to the speed of a M.2 SATA interface which is 0.75 GB/s.

So are the latest M.2 drives around 12x faster than an SSD? The answer can be yes. However, remember that what we are talking about is read and write speed. It does not speed up your computer. So if you are running something like a Flight sim then it will probably load quicker and the loading of scenery will be quicker and smoother but it will not get a better frame rate.
The other obvious use for the speed would be video streaming.

Other things I should mention.
The motherboard I chose was a 4.0 motherboard with 3x M.2 slots. The primary one is 4.0, the other two are 3.0 so as I decided to get two M.2 drives I only got one 4.0, for the system, and one 3.0 for MSFS. This meant I was saving some cash whilst not missing out on any speed.
The second thing is that the M.2 slots share the PCI architecture with the SATA slots. What this means is that if you have more than one M.2 drive you will lose some of your SATA slots. As these are probably being used for HDs or SSDs and the M.2 drives are probably replacing some/all of them this will not be an issue.
However, read your motherboard manual as this will tell you which slots you lose. For example, for my one the first M.2 has no cost. The second slot means you use the SATA2 slot. The third one means that you lose SATA5 and SATA6.
The inevitable question. Can I boot from it? Yes. You set it as a GPT drive, same as a SSD for booting.

My PC boots just fine and completes its loading in 50% of the time it from the SSD. My MSFS loaded to the main menu in 3:42 from an SSD. Moving it to the 3.0 M.2 drive the load time was reduced to 2:51. No other changes whatsoever.

In short if you have the chance and the money to get one then i would go for it. If you don't, or your hardware doesn't allow for an M.2 drive PCIE slot then take note and get it when you can.

I don't think that you will regret it.
Steve
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Weescotty »

Yup, motherboard and chipset will dictate what you lose access to when adding M.2. drives.

Steve - M.2. drives come in both SATA and NVME (PCIe) versions, with NVME (PCIe) versions being faster.

My motherboard the X570 Gigabyte Aorus Ultra is a little more complicated -
1st and 2nd slots - with NVME or SATA drives come at no cost - they are connected via the CPU.
3rd slot is connected via the chipset -
a) with a NVME drive I lose SATA 4 and 5
b) with a SATA drive I lose nothing

The manual should tell you what happens when you populate the M.2. slots.

I currently only use the 1st slot with a PCIe 4.0 NVME drive.
Pretty fast!
The 6 x SATA ports have a pair of 2Tb SSD, and a pair of 1Tb SSD, and finally a pair of 500Gb SSD.
Each pair is setup as a mirror using Windows Storage Spaces.
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Firebird »

I thought that I mentioned the speed of the M.2 SATA drives but obviously not well enough, although it is possible that you might have dozed off in the middle of the post :lol: .

If you have a simple enough PC setup then getting one or two M.2 drives to replace your SSD/HDs will mean that it is a lot tidier inside. Two less cables per drive. It looks better inside and of course means an undisturbed airflow through your case. It is what PCs have been waiting for.

The current gen of motherboards with 3 M.2 slots mean that you could have up to 3x 2TB capacity sticks. More than enough for most people.

Do not be afraid of the terms 'M.2', 'PCIe' and 'NVMe'. If you are looking to update/upgrade check them out.

If it helps anybody the passive heat sinks that I bought for my system were the Be quiet! MC1 Pro M.2 Cooler. I checked them out and they are very well made. They are easy to assemble around your drive and both top and bottom come with prepared thermal paste layers.
I got the Pro version because it was only a couple of quid more but it delivers even more cooling performance.
Steve
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