Thank you all for your reply's. What I don't understand is why after ten minutes the computers communicate normally. The two pc's drive two monitors. One shows the out the cockpit view the other the cockpit instrument panel or chase plane view. For the first ten minutes I can see the aircraft move foward very slightly every two seconds. After ten minutes I can fly realtime and both monitors are linked together realtime. The exhibit runs all day.

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In your tcp/ip properties/wins tab is netbios over tcp enabled? I would suggest it should be. Though a 10 minute delay.. is hard to relate to protocols. I would suspect there is something running in the background on either or both pcs that is consuming cpu time. You can check on this by bringing up task manager [control-alt-delete] and look at applications then monitor processes. See in processes what is grabbing all the time during this 10 minute window.

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thank you wanderer, The win tab chose the default. I changed it to tcp enabled. That didn't help. I'll check the processor tomorrow. These pc' have 13megs of cache with a 10K rpm hard drive and 4 megs of ram. The only thing I installed is this program on the hard drive. It really does take ten minutes on all six of the pc's. I have been to the simulator site and there is no mention of this ten minutes. The simulation version was released 9 months ago after a lot of beta testing.

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"4 megs of ram" surely this is a mistype :-) those are pretty beefy machines if they have 4gig I suspect name resolution maybe the issue. As a test in the 10 minute window ping the other machine by name not ip. what are the results?

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Good Morning, I got my meg's and gig's mixed-up. it is 4 gig's. I checked my task manager this morning. I see "system Idle Process" 99%. everything else is 0%, after the ten minutes it drops to 17% 21%.

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I would suspect there is something running in the background on either or both pcs that is consuming cpu time. My experience with both computing in general, and gaming tells me this is the most likely suspect. antivirus applications used to play hob with games and I would have to shut my antivirus off or experience the type of issues the OP is asking about. Nowadays with RAM being so easy to afford, I don't need to shut down my AV to play games because I have 2 GB's of RAM. If you're actually running only 4 MB's of RAM, then you'll basically want to kill all background programs you can before firing up your game. If you have nothing running in the background, the next most likely problem is the game itself..........providing all your hardware is working properly, your networking is setup correctly and you have the most up-to-date video drivers installed.

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I will do a more through search to see if anything else is running in the background. I made a mistake I have 4 gig's of ram, more than enough to run this program. The program is called x-plane very simular to microsoft flight simulator but a little more accurate. The program has been around for a number of years and is constantly being updated. The x-plane community is world wide with 40K users, i haven't read anything about this problem on the x-plane web site, but I did post my problem there also. I have an older version of the program running on 10 gateways for 3 years now. I'm using the same ip setup. I have removed Mcaffee with an application from Mcaffee that completely removes the program or so they say. I have the firewall disabled and updates turned off. I am the exhibits design and build exhibits here at the Museum of Discovery and Science. I welcome any suggestions. I had a mac service rep. suggest I install a router. I have one but have not had a chance to install it yet. Do you think that would help?

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You can't get any more pure than just a crossover cable between machines. From the system idle time it appears the programs aren't starting until 10 minutes. Do they appear in the applications tab? How are you starting them? Ask in the x-plane community forums if 4gig is too much memory.

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No 4 gig's isn't too much. It will take everything you can throw at it. I'm running xp pro and that only uses about 3.5 gig's. I did get some feed back from x-plane about a bug in this version when there are ip addresses being used with no internet connection. I'm trying to find out if I can force my pc to use the ip I assigned and not look for the internet connection.

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"there are ip addresses being used with no internet connection" That does not sound right unless this software is configured to connect to an internet server for some reason like checking for program updates. Given your configuration of pc to pc, you should have no gateway listed anyway. No gateway means no place to look. I am still wondering if this isn't a name resolution issue which is why I suggested this previously "As a test, in the 10 minute window, ping the other machine by name not ip. What are the results?" Can you try that test?

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It can take up to twenty minutes to resolve netbios names. If you want you can try this. Search (browse) for computer IP. You should find it on same workgroup (hopefully) then try your game. If it does start right up then it is netbios issue. Playing to the angels Les Paul (1915-2009)

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thank you, I think I know what the problem is and would like to find a work around if possible. The simulator program I use is looking for an internet connection and after ten minutes it gives up and uses the pc to pc ip address I assigned. Is there a way to set up my internet configuration so that it doesn't look for the internet connection? It is a pretty big job to update the simulator version I'm using. I posted the problem on the simulator web site and was told my problem is a know problem.

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Dooohhh! Playing to the angels Les Paul (1915-2009)

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You might be able to setup a Proxy Sever which will emulate an internet connection but without knowing how the emulator works its hard to tell because it may have to handshake with the game server. You might have to setup a separate subnet complete with its own router and separate NIC but this can be expensive.

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I think what he is saying is the program is made to look for some connection. (which we don't know about yet) When that time limit is reached then the system looks to other protocols. Playing to the angels Les Paul (1915-2009)

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Lets review guys crossover cable between pcs not a protocol issue but a game config issue. anything you do will have exactly the same results unless you give the app internet access which, given your setup, I highly recommend against. I think you have no choice but to live with the 10 minute startup delay. Now if you knew the exact domain name it was looking for you could configure a hosts file to direct that domain name to the bit bucket [127.0.0.1] and perhaps that would end the search but it appears to me the program has a timer that decides when it gives up. along the same line it might be interesting to have a hosts file that lists the domain name and instead of the bit bucket direct it back to the ip of the workstation [back to itself]. Wonder what effect that would have :-)

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