I wonder if having 1GB of RAM means that you don't even need to perform continuous IDE transactions, certainly not to a swap file and only occasionally to the HD for new scenery/textures? With little or no IDE activity, the additional requirements of de-compression on the fly would be a negative overall, I would think?Interesting thread, I have yet to try this.Bruce.

Good test !FPS looks the same, but how about smoothness ?Ulisses

Bruce, For some reason unknown to me, Windows uses approximately the same amount of swap file for FS9 as it does free ram on a system that has PLENTY of left over physical ram. For example, I have 1GB of ram on this thing, and yet when I monitor ram and swap file use I find maybe 280mb is used by FS9.exe, and another ~280mb of swap file is used for FS9.exe. Meanwhile, there is another 500+mb of unused physical ram used. This whole thing piqued my curiousity, so I set up a virtual swap drive in ram. So for this experiment Windows did the same thing--but this time it was swapping to ram, not to HDD as in the normal config. The result? No visible difference whatsover in how the sim performs, which is by the way excellent anyway. Oh well, it was fun trying! I would love to see this experiment performed with an ATA drive system.Noel

Hi Noel,Interesting. Isn't there a command line "ConservaticeSwapFileUseage=1"? I don't recall if the syntax is correct, or even where to write the line to in a XP system. I wonder though, if that would make a difference?Bruce.

Well, after a couple of day's i will have to say the performance on my machine is basically the same other than it taking longer to load textures.Oh well,Glad for those for whom it does work.......................

I compressed my FS9 folder and subfolders as described in other posts in this thread using Windows XP Home. Other than a slight improvement in smoothness, I can not tell much difference. Several posts state that it is easy to decompress. How do you do this in Windows XP Home?

Same way - just uncheck the compress checkbox and apply.http://saltydogfly2.avsim.net/images/avsim_sig.jpg"Ah, the Luftwaffe - the Washington Generals of the History Channel." - Homer Simpson

Thanks Ken. That was too simple for me to figure out.

Oh well if it is slightly smoother then I don't know why you don't leave it compressed? Any improvment is better than nothing. Is not being slightly smoother for you not an improvment worth having?

Yes, it is an improvement worth having. I am leaving my files compressed. I was mainly curious about how one decompresses files. Also, I defragmented my hard drive after compressing my FS9 folder. This definitely shortens load time.