Train games, railway games Rule the Rail!

[AZRoger]

I am trying to switch between RTR (full screen) and other Windows work (like e-mail or even using the web to look at the RTR forums) and have very bad results about 1/2 the time. What sometimes works is pressing the "Start" key on the keyboard. This will either work or it will completely hang up the system. Power Off and Power On is the only recovery.

If I exit RTR, this will always work. However, RTR takes over a minute to start up so I'd prefer to just let it rest while I do the other things.

Other things that might be pertinent: 1.5 GB SDRAM, 1.5 gHz P4, NVidia graphics card, Win XP Pro SP2 and other online upgrades that Windows does sort of automatically.

Any advice would be welcomed.

[Chris]

Roger,

Try the 'windows' key that prompts for the start menu - second from the left on the bottom of your keyboard between <ctrl> and <alt>.

Chris

[AZRoger]

Chris,

That is the key I called "Start". On my keyboard, it has the wavy microsoft flag and the word Start. That's the one that crashes about 1/2 the time.

Roger

[Blazer9]

Roger

It sounds like you might have several processes running in the background that are reducing the amount of free resources available for rtr to run.

Windows XP needs about 65% free to operate at it's best.

from the start button click on run and type in msconfig press enter and see what programs are loading at startup. any programs that you are not using all the time can be removed/stopped from loading at startup. Windows XP needs iexplorer and any system files to run they will show that they are in the windos directory. All others can be stopped or removed in order to increase the amount of free resouces availible to you.

Happy Railroading

DonR aka Blazer9

[AZRoger]

Based on your suggestions I checked background tasks. The only ones running were Eudora (for email) and Norton's anti-virus. Others listed will shown as inactive (like some fast startup mode for Adobe PDF Viewer).

Since it sounded like a system load based thing, I tried the following sequence of operations. First, save the layout I was working on (which is getting very complicated). Second, load a very simple layout. Third, press the Windows Start Key (between Ctrl and Alt). The RTR screen goes away and the desktop reappears. Success. This has worked 10 times in a row.

It looks like getting the graphics buffers completely cleared out by loading the simple layout is important. Some sort of Layer thing is going on. The RTR screen doesn't go away all at once. The Track Info (Switch Names, etc.) still shows for a split second on top of the desktop.

Anyway, I have a solution that works. Thanks for the suggestions.

Roger

[AZRoger]

Hi,

I've been running RTR every day for weeks. It never hangs the system when I switch out of RTR when I run at 1024x768 resolution. Since I run windows at 1280x1024 I had been trying to run RTR at 1280x1024 too. Well, that doesn't work. Is anyone else able to run at 1280x1024 or higher?

At 1024x768, I can go back and forth without problems. At 1280x1024 it hangs. Since I try to avoid pain, I'm running at the lower resolution. Maybe one of the dot level releases will fix the problem.

Roger