Questions About Win 7 & Installing Fs

[Cris B. 120]

Mathijs,

Due to the increasing complexity of add-ons (for FS9 & FSX) and the ever increasing number of OOM crashes I’m experiencing with Win XP (32 bit), I have decided to give Windows 7 (64 bit) a shot. But before I get knee deep into the changeover project I have a few questions I’d like to ask if you would be so kind as to answer them.

1. Does Win 7 incorporate a UAC similar to Vista’s and can you turn it off?

2. In Win 7 is it still advisable to install FS9 & FSX to C:\fs9 (C:\fsx) instead of the default directory?

3. Should I set all of the FS related programs to run as administrator?

Edit: Should I patch FS9 with the 3gig patch?

I know to some, these questions may sound stupid. I only ask because you have some experience with Win 7 and I would prefer to get it installed correctly the first time. Thanks in advance for any help and insight you can offer.

[Andy B. 40]

Yes to all of those questions, its still basically Vista under the hood, just a lot more optimised i.e. most of the bloat has been removed.

[olivermbs 1]

I'm happily running W7 and XP pro in dual boot, no problems so far. And you wont need the 3Gig switch by the way because a 64Bit operating system can happily use more than 3Gigs of RAM.

[Cris B. 120]

Andy & Oliver,

Thanks for the quick reply!

So if I understand correctly I should be able to use Vista (64 bit) drivers for hardware when I ‘m unable to find Win 7 specific drivers, yes?

[Andy B. 40]

Just to be clear the FS9.exe does still need to be patched with the largeaddressaware flag.

Yes I think Vista 64bit drivers should work, but I think most of the decent manufacturers of sound cards and GPU's already have Windows 7 drivers even if they are beta versions.

[Cris B. 120]

Thanks again! I’m going to download Win 7 tonight and give it a go.

[Sharrow 107]

Hi Cris

I am also considering installing Windows 7 64bit but for me it would have to be in dual boot with XP32bit. Even though W7 now has Release Candidate status it remains in effect a beta. Retail release is only planned for late October/early November. Furthermore, the majority of drivers are also still beta so it may be a bit premature to changeover completely, especially if this system is to be used for more than just FSX.

Here is a good guide on how to set up a XP and W7 dual boot (with XP installed first).

Good luck!

PS: If I may add a question of my own: How does it work with FSX and addon software activation, licensing etc when you have the same things installed in two different OS's on the same machine?

[Cris B. 120]

Hi Konrad,

I’m glad I checked the forum before starting the install! You make some valid points and after checking out the article on how to set up a dual boot, I think I’ll install Win 7 that way. …at least until the retail release. Thanks for the tip!

[James A 39]

PS: If I may add a question of my own: How does it work with FSX and addon software activation, licensing etc when you have the same things installed in two different OS's on the same machine?

Works OK for me with only a slight delay in finalising the loading as it's waiting for FSUIPC to kick in. On some occasions it pops up as Not Responding, but, the good thing about Win7 is that it will go out of it's way to fix and run rather than it either crashing or you having to shut it down.

As to the legality of having FSX installed twice on the same pc under different operating systems I'm not to sure, but, again I would not worry about it as you can only operate 1 operating system at a time, therefore, you are technically only using it as a single copy/installation.

[Sharrow 107]

Just to follow up a bit on this issue of FSX "installed" on 2 OS's on a dual boot setup I came across this post by NickN over at simforums. I quote:

"NOTE: you can only legally run FSX without the 30 minute timeout on one OS, not both. Which ever OS you have booted when you install FSX will be the primary and allow unlimited flight.

In order to run FSX from a 2nd OS with all addons you must make a BACKUP of the first FSX install with all addons, then delete it and repeat the same process with a DUMMY install of FSX with OS 2 booted. Once complete overwrite that dummy install with the original

that is the only way you will have full support and addons that require registry support running correctly for both OS's

none the less only ONE will allow full flight (which ever it was activated with).. the other will timeout in 30 minutes"

[Andy B. 40]

I'm sorry but that's not true, It may be if you follow it to the letter of the EULA, but Microsoft don't have these rules to stop genuine customers using FSX the way they want, its to get/stop the pirates. I have FSX installed in XP and Vista 64 and they are both separate installs and it works fine, there were no activation problems and no timing out issues.

I actually started out by using Nicks suggestion above and performance on the secondary install was erratic and very low compared to the primary install. Once I switched to the completely independent install method performance was far far better on the second OS (Vista) and a lot smoother than it was even in XP.

[Sharrow 107]

Thanks for clarifying Andy! This stuff gets a bit confusing...