fxing my system for G1000 PC trainer

[olasek]

Anyone here is running Garmin G1000 PC trainer but had some technical problems in the beginning? In my case synthetic vision is all messed up but the rest of the simulation seems to be OK. The chance is small but I am looking for someone who had similar problems and managed to fix them. Mine is an old system but its general capabilities exceed Garmin's minimum specs but at least two-fold so I figure I should be able to run the trainer in its full glory. I tried a lot of things like trying different video drivers but so far nothing made it better.


Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
Video card: ATI Radeon X800 Pro (256 MB)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

 

[RJM62]

1022 MB RAM? That's an impossible number unless something is siphoning off 2 MB. Maybe you should run a memory test using bootable media. Almost any "live" linux CD has MEMTEST as one of the startup options.

This is just a shot in the dark... Is it possible the system also has a cheap, built-in video card that's using 2 MB of RAM? If the system has onboard video that's not being used, it should be disabled in BIOS.

Have you run dxdiag?

Corruption/fragmentation of the pagefile might also be the culprit. You can run an analysis in defrag and view the report to see what the pagefile fragmentation is.

Also, if I I recall correctly, the Radeon X800 Pro has a Molex jack on it to which power is supposed to be supplied. Peek inside and see if that's the case; and if so, make sure that the power is connected. (While you're in there, blow the schmutz out of the cooling fan with some canned air.)

-Rich

 

[olasek]

Well, I do have 1GB RAM, 1022 MB is what dxdiag reports, I have seen this number a lot on the internet (and there are explanation for that), I don't think there is anything wrong here.
(however I may recheck my BIOS settings).
No, video card is 256 MB X800, no built-in video card here.
dxdiag runs fine, I pass all DirectDraw and Direct3D tests.
I don't think page file fragmentation has any bearing on it, needless to say the problem did not disappear when I reformatted my HD couple weeks ago.
I also don't think it has anything to do with power the to Radeon X800 - this card is recognized by my system and like I said Direct3D is there ....

Anyway, I appreciate your reply.

 

[rpadula]

What about just adding more RAM? How much of that 1 GB gets hogged by Windows?

 

[TangoWhiskey]

What about just adding more RAM? How much of that 1 GB gets hogged by Windows?

256MB of on-board video RAM on a video intensive program isn't much. What kind of bus is your video card on? Upgrading to a better video card helps with games and video intensive programs. More RAM will help here, too.

Is your processor a single core or multi-core?

 

[olasek]

Amount of memory can't be an issue. 2-3 years ago I was running Microsoft's FSX on this PC - a much more CPU and memory intensive program than Garmin's trainer. Now I can also run FSX but in some situations I see some graphical artifacts that I have never seen before. I am not exactly Sherlock Homes but all the evidence so far points to either a failed piece of hardware or some nasty configuration problem (driver incompatibility, etc.).

 

[olasek]

Well, I have given up long time ago on proper functioning of the G1000 trainer on my PC. I simply were unable to resolve issues despite getting numerous technical suggestions on various specialized forums and trying installation of over 10 different video drives for my Radeon card.

Well.. but all of a sudden last night I discovered to my astonishment that the trainer works just fine - all problems got fixed and I could admire synthetic vision in its full glory. So what had changed in the last 11 months?- really the PC was simply left in the auto-update mode - all patches from Microsoft for my XP were automatically downloaded and installed. Other than that I hadn't done a single thing on my own. This only proves how elusive and mysterious this world of computers is ...

Wanted to share this piece of unexpected good news with you.