Transitioning MSTS from AMD-PC to Intel-PC a problem?

[GoGoran]

Hi guys,

I installed all my MSTS installations (I got lots of country-themed MSTS installations on my dedicated MSTS-HDD, e.g. MSTS USA, MSTS Canada, MSTS Germany etc. with the relevant routes and rolling stock) using my beloved but now defective AMD-PC (Athlon 64 3500+, 4GB RAM, Ati HD4350 with 512MB DDR2).

I took a long break from MSTS due to the breakdown of the PC and other, more personal reasons, but now I want to get started with it once again.

My new PCs are all Intel Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad based systems (one of them Core 2 Quad Q9400, 4GB RAM, Ati HD4350 with 512MB DDR2), largely identical but for the graphics cards, CPUs etc. I tried to play MSTS on two of them using my old MSTS installations, but I always seem to be getting memory errors quickly after running an activity or exploring a route, upon which MSTS terminates. I did install a basic MSTS installation on these machines' OS-HDD, which seems to run fine though when I run on one of the standard routes, but I need to explore this more. On all the other MSTS installations (well, I did not check them all yet, but a handful of them so far) on my MSTS-HDD I get the memory errors, though.

The PCs got much better specs than my old AMD-PC, and all other programs seem to run fine on them ... I have been using them for two years, day and night, so no idea what could be the issue there.

Any ideas? Should I get an AMD-PC once again? Maybe I need the exact same type of PC to get it running properly once more?

Or is MSTS very sensitive when it comes to memory errors, detecting bad memory where other programs don't? Do I perhaps have corrupted physical RAM on both of my PCs, without ever noticing it in the past two years?

[gremlin1812]

G'day, do you have many routes and stock in your installs? If I remember rightly this used to happen if the route and stock quantitys got too high for poor MSTS's memory and you had to use train store or similar. OpenRails does not have this issue and works quite well these days.
Regards
Barrie

[lateagain]

I became a Mini Route "convert" a few years back. HDD's are comparatively cheap nowadays so the extra storage space isn't an issue. It also means that you can customise stock in each Mini Route. Errors only affect ONE ROUTE if you introduce new stuff with errors, so it's easier to find and fix. ALL utilities can be "pointed at" each mini route and work as per a normal MSTS installation. Mini Routes are easily loaded into OR should you want to use that too.

It would seem that I'm in a minority using both OR and MSTS but it's for the reasons that you have. A lot of UK stock's physics don't work properly in OR as the UK scene spent a lot of time "bodging" MSTS physics files to make stock run more realistically. Unfortunately although this gives excellent performance in MSTS it's generally hopeless in OR.

I also have an AMD based machine but a couple of years back bought an Intel machine with NVidea graphics just to use as a SIM machine. Are you sure that the AMD graphics cards are not the issue? Whole heap of posts on that here.

[EricF]

On the new machines, make sure your startup shortcuts for MSTS still have the correct "-mem:" value set (assuming the BIN patch is installed). And make sure if it's a post-XP operating system, that MSTS has the "Run as Administrator" property set. If you copied over your old MSTS installations, run mprofile.exe once on each machine, since you're dealing with different video drivers. If you don't know for sure that any prior installer on those Intel machines has dropped the full June 2010 DirectX redistributable, download and install it. Heck, it won't hurt to install over-the-top anyway, just to be sure. There's a chance that if you ran the MSTS installer off the CDs that it was "dumb" and overwrote some DirectX files with older ones. Re-running the 2010 redist package will ensure your DX libraries are up-to-date for DX9 and older.

The catalyst drivers did get progressively worse for supporting older DirectX. If you have access to an Nvidia card (doesn't have to be particularly new or fancy to run MSTS), try swapping it in (and run mprofile.exe so MSTS is aware of the driver swap).

Since these weren't sim-running machines to begin with, you might check your antivirus software's settings and have it ignore anything in the MSTS directories. Most AV software inspects file access, and it will go nuts inspecting every little file that MSTS accesses as it runs a route.

[GoGoran]

G'day, do you have many routes and stock in your installs? If I remember rightly this used to happen if the route and stock quantitys got too high for poor MSTS's memory and you had to use train store or similar. OpenRails does not have this issue and works quite well these days.
Regards
Barrie

Hello, useful hint but I got a "parking space" folder for the routes and only ever put the one or two routes into the main ROUTES folder on which I want to run.

[GoGoran]

I became a Mini Route "convert" a few years back. HDD's are comparatively cheap nowadays so the extra storage space isn't an issue. It also means that you can customise stock in each Mini Route. Errors only affect ONE ROUTE if you introduce new stuff with errors, so it's easier to find and fix. ALL utilities can be "pointed at" each mini route and work as per a normal MSTS installation. Mini Routes are easily loaded into OR should you want to use that too.

It would seem that I'm in a minority using both OR and MSTS but it's for the reasons that you have. A lot of UK stock's physics don't work properly in OR as the UK scene spent a lot of time "bodging" MSTS physics files to make stock run more realistically. Unfortunately although this gives excellent performance in MSTS it's generally hopeless in OR.

I also have an AMD based machine but a couple of years back bought an Intel machine with NVidea graphics just to use as a SIM machine. Are you sure that the AMD graphics cards are not the issue? Whole heap of posts on that here.

I have used AMD (Ati) graphics in the AMD-PC before, and had no issues. Hmmmm.

I got a maxi route approach, i.e. one installation for each country ... as I got so many routes from all countries space still IS a constraint for me, after all. But I only load one route at a time and only limited sets of rolling stock (consist files). It's a bit complicated, basically I move the routes and consists from special folders as I need them. Same for the GLOBAL folders, as required for each route.

Thank you for your interesting thoughts!

[GoGoran]

On the new machines, make sure your startup shortcuts for MSTS still have the correct "-mem:" value set (assuming the BIN patch is installed). And make sure if it's a post-XP operating system, that MSTS has the "Run as Administrator" property set. If you copied over your old MSTS installations, run mprofile.exe once on each machine, since you're dealing with different video drivers. If you don't know for sure that any prior installer on those Intel machines has dropped the full June 2010 DirectX redistributable, download and install it. Heck, it won't hurt to install over-the-top anyway, just to be sure. There's a chance that if you ran the MSTS installer off the CDs that it was "dumb" and overwrote some DirectX files with older ones. Re-running the 2010 redist package will ensure your DX libraries are up-to-date for DX9 and older.

The catalyst drivers did get progressively worse for supporting older DirectX. If you have access to an Nvidia card (doesn't have to be particularly new or fancy to run MSTS), try swapping it in (and run mprofile.exe so MSTS is aware of the driver swap).

Since these weren't sim-running machines to begin with, you might check your antivirus software's settings and have it ignore anything in the MSTS directories. Most AV software inspects file access, and it will go nuts inspecting every little file that MSTS accesses as it runs a route.

So many useful hints, I will check them all out once I find the time and energy. Thank you, Sir!!!

[GoGoran]

If you don't know for sure that any prior installer on those Intel machines has dropped the full June 2010 DirectX redistributable, download and install it. Heck, it won't hurt to install over-the-top anyway, just to be sure. There's a chance that if you ran the MSTS installer off the CDs that it was "dumb" and overwrote some DirectX files with older ones. Re-running the 2010 redist package will ensure your DX libraries are up-to-date for DX9 and older.

Hmmm ... do I need to reinstall DirectX 9 Redistributable under Windows 7 as well, which got DirectX 10?

[derekmorton]

Direct X is not backwards compatible.
It would not hurt to reinstall 2010 dx.

[EricF]

Specifically, the DX9 redist package includes the final updates to all pre-DX9 backward compatibility modes. Although DX9 was included with Vista and later, Microsoft may have included only cut-down support DLLs for backward compatibility in order to save space in the Windows installer files. This has never been fully explained by Microsoft, to my knowledge. I've noticed more and more installers that support older games are running the DX9 redistributable package "just to be sure".