Diana writes:

"some difficulty we are experiencing with our computer(s) -- our old,
ancient one
and the new, bells-n-whistles one. ;).....

We have several flight simulator games (mostly from Janes -- USAF, F15,
Fighter Anthology) that lock up the computer.  The oddest thing about it is
that once in a blue moon, one will work.  The next time you turn on the
computer and try to play -- nothing.  One even worked for a month or
two and
now -- nothing.....

have done all their troubleshooting. "

Diana--

I'm no expert on gaming, although I do have most of the Janes sims you
mention.  I think the experts will need more info---

What troubleshooting have you tried?
Are you having the same trouble on both computers?  If so, that seems to
point  to your methods rather than  the computers.
How are you trying to operate these games?  I believe that some people load
the entire contents of the CD onto their hard drive, to enable faster
performance.  Others like myself are content to run them from the CD.
Are you trying to run them from their batch files?  These sims do seem to
be fussy about how you initiate them.  Are you running them direct from
dos, or from within Windows?
Mine usually won't run under Win 95 if I try to execute the .exe or .bat
file--but work very well if I close Windows and run them direct from dos
commands.
Do they crash the computer immediately you try to run the .bat file, or
does the computer try first to recognize the CD?  Of course, you will need
a reboot disk containing your CD driver.

These sims do seem to be rather temperamental things, albeit very good sims
(I much prefer USNF) but I think they must date back to pre-Windows days,
as they don't seem to be at all happy running under Windows, despite the
blurb on the boxes.

Before reinstalling the games, have you completely uninstalled them first,
using a good uninstall monitor such as Cleansweep?  Otherwise there could
be corrupted registry files preventing proper initialisation of the game,
and that will remain even if you reinstall over the top.  Simply using
Windows Add/Remove won't remove bad registry entries.

When you say--"Nothing"  what precisely do you mean---is it a total freeze,
are you getting any error messages, will the computer restart and if so,
how?  Blue screen, black screen, or blank screen?  Can you get back into
Windows, or is it a "pull-out-the power-plug-and-restart" crash?

The answers to these questions may give the experts the specific info they
will need to give you more enlightened answers (hopefully).

Don Penlington






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