Long Time Gone Returning with Win 7 issues

L

Lowlevl

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Been gone quite awhile in the mean time new machine reloaded CFS3, read many threads can't find my issues. After initial loading realized there were several issues noted with downloading into "Program Files (x86)". After reading Win7 issues I started over with a clean install into "Program Files/MS Games/CFS3". Currently stock game with 3.1a updates, and no addons ... yet ;) The game works in almost all aspects of "Quick Missions", all keyboard/Joystick functions seem to be working as advertised except when I switch to "Player/Target" or "Chase" views. In these two external views I select a zoom key "[ or ]" and instead of incremental changes of each keystroke, once I select the zoom key it goes to infinity, really maddening. Planes fly great, visuals great, no stuttering, just the zoom issue.


The other issue is while all the "Quick Missions" seem to work I can't save a "Campaign". Initially I could start a new campaign, fly normally (except for the zoom issue above), but when I stopped I couldn't save the progress. After another complete re-install, the zoom issues are still there, but now I can't even start a new campaign. After selecting new campaign & pilot I hit start and get the following window: "No British Hqs/Squadrons can be properly placed with spacing 2 given the current squadron data and frontline shape". This is regardless of my nationally. On my previous XP system I had none of these issues everything worked fine except for graphics stuttering and was one reasons for computer upgrade.

My Sys: Dell XPS7100 / AMD PhenomII X6 3.0 GHz / 64 bit Win 7 service pack 1 / ATI Radeon HD5670 / Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme / Logitech Xtreme 3d Pro Joystick.

Sorry for the long post, just hope there's an aswer. I've missed this 'ol flight sim and want to get back into it.

Lowlevl
 
That's a new one on me, but then even after two years I cannot get it to run on Win 7 consistently. Initially it was graphics corruption and lock-ups if it tried to access more than one CPU core. Mostly now it will just freeze up after a seemingly random period of time requiring a hard power down / reboot of the computer. (Doing that too many times recently cost me a hard drive.) One thing that did help a little was installing all of the fonts from XP into Win 7.
 
Hmm what do you mean putting xp fonts into win7? Seems I read something about that somewhere, is this something difficult, I'm not much of a techno geek, if it's something to involved who knows what would happen, everything would convert to donkey kong :icon_lol: Another far fetched idea I read was partitioning and having a section loaded with xp and run the game through there? How does that work and what risks are there? Like I mentioned most everything about flying works great except for zooming and starting/saving campaigns.


Thanks,

Lowlevl
 
A dual boot system is normally not all that difficult to set up, but on my current machine I couldn't do that because I couldn't get the CD to run during boot up to load my copy of XP, and you can't install it once Win 7 boots up. I had my old XP hard drive from the last machine, so I was able to simply drag and drop the Fonts from the XP C:\Windows\Fonts into the Win 7 one and they installed themselves just fine.

Now that I think about it I did experience the runaway zoom problem at some point in the past, but I don't actually remember how I made it go away. I'll sleep on it and maybe it will come back to me.
 
I do not run CFS3, BUT if you can afford windows 7 PRO addon, it solves almost every problem
and will switch between 7 and xp without help or input, at least mine does.

Dave
 
If you're adding an XP drive/partition to a Win7 system, look for EasyBCD (free for non-commercial use) to set up a dual-boot system. If you already have an XP system and install Win7 to another partition/drive, Win7 will set it up for you without fuss.

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but Windows 7 will install and run CFS3 without issues, except for multiplayer and shutdown. The answers to these have already been found and if you read the sticky threads above you'll find the answers. I don't know what the answer is to lowlevi's zoom or campaign issues, but the fact that he has CFS3 running suggests the OS is unlikely to be the problem. Moving fonts over from XP is likely to do nothing more than clutter up an already busy fonts folder.

Windows 7 is getting so old, people! We have Windows 8 to worry about, anyone tried flying CFS3 with a touch screen yet? lol...
 
My experience with Win 7 has not been the same as yours. I was getting "missing font" errors (OCR in particular) from CFS3 even when running in XP Compatibility mode, and that's what prompted installing the old fonts from XP.

I used to flawlessly run a dual core CPU in XP, but the quad core CPU in my Win 7 leaves CFS3 unable to display any 3D graphics unless I restrict it to running on just one core. I'm not saying that it's all unrelated to the hardware differences between the two machines, but since being forced to Win 7 I've been unable to have CFS3 run successfully for more than a few minutes at a time. I've been building computers since the mid-80s, and modding software for nearly as long, and this is the first time I've been thwarted in making a system function the way I want it to.
 
Really appreciate the feedback, with my limited abilities I tend to agree it's not my operating system. As mentioned if everything is working great except the zoom and campaign functions it has to be some little files somewhere. And again with said limited abilities I seriously doubt I would try the partion trick and dual run xp. Maybe I'll try yet another complete uninstall/re-install. Last time I placed cf3 into the program folder (not program x86), maybe I'll try putting the complete game into a folder on the desktop. Also on my re-installs I've only been removing cfs3 itself, even though I haven't done any mods the folders from everything I've ever downloaded are still on my machine. So maybe I'll wipe everything, and really start from scratch ... I'll let yo know how it goes, wish me luck.
 
MajorMagee said:
My experience with Win 7 has not been the same as yours...
Click to expand...

I know, and a thought occurred to me. Did you install CFS3 in Windows 7 from the CDs or DVD, or did you just copy over the folders from the old rig/old drive? Because I haven't heard of missing fonts with a standard install before and that's the only reason I can think of.
 
I have the discs, several years old, but I purchased them new. And yes everytime I've used the discs for a re-install.
 
It may be premature to declare victory, but I just made some real progress with Win 7. I found the old DirectX 9c Full Installer (not the Web Installer version that just checks for needed files to update that I tried and it didn't find anything to fix).

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

When I ran the full version it installed a dozen or so missing files. Not only was I then able to fly in game for more than just a few minutes without the computer having a hard lock-up, but I was also able to run it on two cores without video corruption instead of having to limit it to just one. More testing required but this really is a good sign.

Of course I'd given up and decided the problems were hardware related and ordered a new GTX 670 video card just last evening, but at least that will be a significant upgrade from the GTX 285 I'd brought over from my previous XP machine a couple of years ago.

***Update***
It rebooted itself again later in the evening. I may find I also have a power supply or CPU problem before this is all over.
 
Well after a complete re-install without any add-ons (stock with 3.1a updates) everything worked for a couple of flights then the uncontrolled zooming issues came back. The other issue seems to be fixed, it will let me start a campaign now, not sure if it will then let me save a campaign which was another issue. Then I tried the Major's directx installer above and the zooming issue is partially fixed. Not sure why/how, but after starting a mission I can do player/target & chase views a few times before I loose control again, so if I set the viewing distances right at first it's ok, not a perfect fix, but it works. This has to be some file issue, as everything else seems to work great. Now to actually start a campaign and see if it will save my progress.

I know this is sounding like a broken record, but does anyone have any guesses for the uncontrolled zoom problem? At least I'm up and flying again ... beware the hun in the sun, and always check six!
 
After much trial and error hardware swapping and diagnostics I finally put in a new Corsair 800W power supply today and the problems stopped. At least I ended up with a better system for all that investment in time and money. :salute:

It turns out that it still will only run on one or two cores, but no more than that or the planes fail to display.
 
Now that I have it running again, I've noticed that everything renders okay, except that when a plane get's hit the skin texture disappears (turns black with the just the reflection/shadow maps showing through). Using the Nvidia 306.97 drivers. Is there some setting or file I've messed up that controls the damage model rendering?
 
Running the 3D Model viewer I can see that the problem is happening only with the machine gun damage, and only with a few of the elements. For example the stock P-47-25 has four areas (like l_aileron_0_01) any of which will turn the aircraft black when it gets hit by machine gun fire. Looking in the MOS file I can't see anything unique about those locations and their damage texture assignments. I'm still not quite sure why this started happening.
 
It's definitely something with the way the MOS file is being read and interpreted by these Win 7 64 bit video drivers and the GTX 670 video card. If I rename the MOS file it doesn't happen. I've got multiple installs, and it happens in all of them for any plane that has an associated MOS file.

Has anyone else ever seen this happen?
 
I've been trying to follow the instructions for the MOS Editor Installation from the knowledge database but I can't seem to get the Managed DirectX install to be recognized by my Win7 64 bit system.

In reading the MOS Editor documentation I can see what the likely problem is. Each layer is assigned a Blending option and Alpha Test. Depending on how those are set the damage will be properly overlaid on the base texture, or in my case overwrite the whole thing and turn the plane black. If I can ever get the MOS editor working I'll be able to check all the layers for improper assignments, otherwise I'm doomed to trying to figure it all out in hex...
 
Managed DirectX (MDX)

Having installed DirectX 9.0c recently, all you need is to run MDXREDIST.MSI: some have called this 'waking up' MDX or 'activating' it but this is actually for installing it.

Managed DirectX is not installed by default with DirectX, you have to do it yourself. The .MOS Editor should then run.
 
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