I have purchased and installed FS 2004 for my son.  The program loaded fine, but while running the progam minimizes automatically every 30 seconds.  I have removed FS 2004 and reinstalled with no fix.  Any ideas?

Thanks from a 1st timer.

Given the regularity of it (every 30 seconds, as you say) and its non-random happening, it surely has to do with some process running in background that calls the SO so urgently that it disrupts the regular functioning of FS.

Which this process may be, though, would be a tough nut to crack if I was at your keyboard, let alone from here.

Could be the antivirus, or the firewall (if a custom non-default firewall is installed), or even some other... impossible to say from here. Try and terminate all the processed in the system tray, even the antivirus (you don't need it anyway while using FS, and if you leave it running it may only slow down the sim. You can always restart it after having finished with FS) and the eventual custom firewall (if you're behind a router, for the time of the FS session the hardware firewall will suffice, if you're using a USB modem, terminate the connection to restart it after having finished with FS).

Should this not suffice, try and terminate the resident driver processes of eventual non vital interfaces you have installed on your PC, like an eventual Bluetooth USB adapter (which on my system makes stutters appear in FS), printer or other similar device, especially, and this goes of course for any program that remains resident, even if not linked to a device, if it has anything to with graphics and/or the videocard.

Try eventually to update video and audio driver too, even if personally I don't think it's their fault but something that merely interacts with them going off the scale of comfort, it COULD be one of them. I'm far from perfect in my previsions, and not being there only worsens this variable.

You can only experiment with this. Sorry not being able to help you more.

Strategic Retreat wrote on Feb 26^th, 2012 at 1:11pm:


Unless you also unplug the internet connection, I can't agree this is good advice.  Not only do many FS add-ons access the net while you're flying, many other programs make routine checks;  as long as you're physically connected to the internet, some form of active AV is wise, even if it means loss of a few fps in games.

FTR, I use one AV for active scan, let it and two others take turns with full scans roughly every week, and do an ESET full scan once a month ...and just spent four days removing Win32/sirefef.DN (a variant of ZeroAccess) from my system.