OpenRails on Windows 10

[frliss]

Hi all,

After many years of faithful service my windows 7 machine is dying a slow death and I will be forced into using windows 10 in the near future.

Installing MSTS and OR is a fairly simple process. What I am looking for is information on special considerations and issues when installing MSTS and OR on a windows 10 machine.

I would appreciate any help.

Fred

[NorthernWarrior]

OR runs and installs fine on Win 10 (I reinstalled the latest version a couple of years ago).

MSTS could be a different matter. Installation pretty much as per the instructions at steam4me for Win7/8, mainly don't install to any of the Program File areas. Also if installing from CD, Win 10 may not read Disc 2 due to MS blocking anything that uses Securom copy protection. Once installed, runs after a fashion but you must have a Nvidia graphics card and you will probably have to mess about with DPI settings on the launcher. In addition, if you're running to a UHD (4K) monitor that brings further issues again.

[NorthernWarrior]

Edit: First line above should read... A couple of days ago!!!

[frliss]

Vern,

Thanks for the info.

Fred

[EricF]

Installing on Windows 10 is no different from installing on Windows 7, other than the Securom protection being blocked by Windows 10. But you can still copy all the MSTS files from both discs into one folder, and then run the installer from there. (Ignore the one file that gets overwritten in copying from the discs.)

[landnrailroader]

I still have Win-7 but expect to go to Win-10 later this summer. I do have one strange error with my
MSTS (RE) on Win-7 and I would guess it would appear on Win-10. Sometimes when starting MS/RE
it does not recognize all of the keys on the keyboard. Evidently this relates to processes (too many)
running. My supplier gave me a free install of Glary Utilities, so I first run that to shutdown all
instances of Chrome (which does not completely shutdown anytime I use it) and to get rid of any
temporary files etc. Then I do a warm reboot, i.e. shutdown/restart. This generally clears the issue
for several days. Then most of us have mentioned random errors occurring when using RE. Lukas
is studying one of these in my Virginian route which prevents running or editing with MSTS, but does
not affect TSRE or ORTS.

J. H. Sullivan

[mikeebb]

Installing on Windows 10 is no different from installing on Windows 7, other than the Securom protection being blocked by Windows 10. But you can still copy all the MSTS files from both discs into one folder, and then run the installer from there. (Ignore the one file that gets overwritten in copying from the discs.)

Excellent point there about Securom. While still on Win7, make a backup of the MSTS CDs: copy them both into one directory, then make an ISO of it; make ISOs of the original disks; etc. Because once you're on Win10 it becomes much harder - installing from the CDs may no longer work (key symptom: Disk 2 can't be read), so you'll need those backups. If you get a new computer, also, it may not have an optical disk drive (they're becoming rare; I bought a USB DVD burner as a backup plan).

[mikeebb]

I still have Win-7 but expect to go to Win-10 later this summer. I do have one strange error with my
MSTS (RE) on Win-7 and I would guess it would appear on Win-10. Sometimes when starting MS/RE
it does not recognize all of the keys on the keyboard. Evidently this relates to processes (too many)
running. My supplier gave me a free install of Glary Utilities, so I first run that to shutdown all
instances of Chrome (which does not completely shutdown anytime I use it) and to get rid of any
temporary files etc. Then I do a warm reboot, i.e. shutdown/restart. This generally clears the issue
for several days. Then most of us have mentioned random errors occurring when using RE. Lukas
is studying one of these in my Virginian route which prevents running or editing with MSTS, but does
not affect TSRE or ORTS.

J. H. Sullivan

Firefox has the dangling-process problem too, as does (only recently) Thunderbird. Windows Task Manager is the way I kill them. Luckily, the computer I normally do trainsimming on has enough RAM (and a 480GB solid-state boot disk) that such things aren't usually a problem. I don't use Chrome, and what you describe give me another reason to stay away from it.

Edit: my main computer is a 15-yr-old Core2 Extreme with 8GB RAM and a low-end (GTX750ti) nVidia GPU. It maintains at least 40-50fps in nearly any route I've used with Open Rails in Win10 Pro 1909, even with a couple of [email protected] tasks running in background (yes, it does run better if I suspend them). So if you have something newer than that and still have problems requiring that you shut down background tasks, you might want to consider system upgrades, or at least use your utility program (or Windows Task Manager) to inspect and tune your startup programs.