Com-Central.net

First off, I'm new here so hello everyone.
I just found this site last week when I was looking online for a P38 download. On this site I downloaded about ten aircraft, three scenery expansions, sound updates, refueling zones, spotlights, etc.
Every so often now when I go to fly before the loading screen my CFS closes itself. This happens frequently to me. Does anyone know what caused it or if anyone had any similar problems?

Greetings GS.
Might be a hardware conflict.
Have you got the spec's of your machine handy (ie. see my sig. for apec's of my rig), also which OS you're using?
I'm going to be out for the rest of today but will try and check in when I get back and see if I can spot anything glaringly obvious.

[edit: If you're old-time and used to fly CFS on the M$ Game Zone, when it was up and running, you might have seen me there under the guises of 'EURO_Shades' or 'redskwirrell'.]

I have a Compaq laptop and the data says:
Windows XP 2002 Edition
HP
AMD Athlon (tm) XP Processor
3000+
398 MHz, 512 MB of RAM

NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go 32M is the display adapter.

That's about all the information I could really find. The hard drive has a free space of 5.16 GB out of 55.8 GB. That's after I recently deleted stuff too.

Windows needs a minimum of 23% of free drive space to get it's defrag sorted so you are running on thin ice there with only 5 G of free space left

Mine only needs 15% but I ran it at 10% anyways. I don't think it's my hard drive causing the game to crash though.

The specs of the laptop are a little on the tight side. IMHO.

XP with only 512meg of ram and also a 32meg video card which will probably be using shared MB memory as well.

I know CFS1 is not cutting edge graphics anymore but I thought the game specs needed a little more power than listed above.

I tend to agree with what's already been said (sorry I'm late.., got held up longer than expected).

I'm not too hot on lappy spec's
As already stated, you don't have much RAM in yr system or GPU.
But then, I first ran CFS1 on a 133MHz Pentium with a 128 Ti4800 (128Mb) card and I'd only get stuttering with a lot of players in the room, but that was more through the combination of everyone's internet lag back then.

If someone did a real good job on the scenery add-ons you dropped into it and the detail is too high for the machine you're using that would increase the RAM useage and could run you out.

XP (Home and Pro) requires 128Mb RAM.
The game itself only requires 64 mb (in XP) but runs much better with 128, or 256.
It shouldn't be draining your graphics.

The 32Mb card you have will use a maximum of 32Mb graphics RAM.
If an application requires more than that, it leeches RAM from your systems' RAM.
As you're already losing around 200Mb to the app and your OS, it only leaves 300Mb to spare for everything else (anti-virus, firewall, etc).
It might be running out.
Same with your sound, to a lesser degree.

I'm afraid I also detest HP systems and it could well be down to some of their components.
They use some of their own propietary parts.
When you buy it, they push the "amazing graphics" card, or whatever, and neglect to mention that the RAM's slow and "value" or the Power unit is their own and not really tested or designed for stable current delivery, etc.
In short, there's lots of things it could be.
These are some.


HEY!
I just noticed you downloaded some sound update files as well!!!
These can really put a drain on RAM if your system doesn't have much anyway.
Try deleting them and see how it runs then.
You may need to re-install the original sounds they replaced.

From the sound of things it would seem the program shouldn't run on this laptop to begin with. lol

I saved a backup of old sounds so I'll use those. I was wondering also, does CFS have mountains on your computer? I saw a screen shot of mountains before by my entire world is pretty much flat.

Yep.
Go to Interlaken, one of the favourite online duelling and bombing destinations precisely because of it's mountainous terrain.
If yours isn't, there's another issue.
Check your game settings; It's possible the game has already decided on some compromises to allow a more basic version to run on your system before you tried the add-ons as well.

If you need to, some extra RAM and graphics power shouldn't be too expensive at the moment and may allow this game to play with more detail.
Save forking out for a whole new system just to play a game.

CFS1 was for me the best and most fun of all the combat flight sims.
But there's a whole lot more realism /graphics that came after and which many other simmers swear by.
Just to save you any extra expense; I doubt any of those newer games will play on your system if CFS1 won't.

You must all be high on something ... CFS1 ran fine for me with a Celeron 333 and a VooDoo Banshee. Were talking 1998 specs here. The hardware requirements are plenty good on this laptop ... while not high by todays standards its fine for CFS1.

System requirements Minimum Microsoft Windows 95,98,ME,NT4,2000 or XP 64MB RAM,Windows 2000,XP 16MB RAM (Windows 95) otherwise 32MB RAM,Processor 133 MHz,Hard Drive 200 MB,Video Card SVGA

EDIT - I would check your hardware for driver updates, maybe also reinstall CFS1. Kill any background applications that may call for resources when playing the game. Check the windows event log when CFS1 crashes to desktop for any tell signs.

Yep, I ran the stock game on a 90MHz P1 m8.
It was horrible at low settings and I maxed out at 11fps and went down to under 4fps with a single aircraft in view.
It ran better when I upgraded the CPU to 133MHz, and added RAM and a better Graphic card, because the system was able to use higher game settings.
Minimum requirements provide the minimum performance.
It's only a small game so you don't need the best equipment for it.
But, if you're adding files to it and they're large files, having (for instance) more RAM available helps.
If the Graphic card doesn't have enough onboard RAM, it will steal some of the system RAM to cope with its' needs.
The Operating System and dependent background software (AV / Firewalls, etc) will also have an effect.
You can make headway by lowering the game settings but, with the add-on Shinobi's talking about, there's doesn't seem to be much point.


Shinobi,
Did you manage to improve things?

And XP has a lot more background activities than '95 or '98 ever had.

'98 was the best for CFS1.
I missed out and ran it in '95 and ME before XP came out.

My computer problem history in a nutshell: '95; ME; XP1; Vista.
Only stuff I haven't had a problem with: XP2 and Windows 7.
1-2 success rate!
Hope I learned my lesson.
*sigh*