Registry thrashing by FS with PFC and no windows HID joystic

[airforce2]

Pete;

Was watching FS with Mark Russovich's RegMon utility, and noticed a steady stream of unsuccessful hits for joystick settings on a registry key for DINPUT.DLL (see screenshot). Hit frequency was something like 30-50 times a second. I use a PFC yoke and throttle combo without a regular HID joystick connected to the PC.

After seeing this registry thrashing, I plugged in a USB joystick in addition to the PFC combo, and disabled all the axes of the USB joystick in FS9. The registry thrashing stopped, and frame rate excursions have smoothed out some.

Not sure there's anything that can be done in the PFC driver, but it's a curiosity worthy of a look.

Cheers

[Pete Dowson]

Was watching FS with Mark Russovich's RegMon utility, and noticed a steady stream of unsuccessful hits for joystick settings on a registry key for DINPUT.DLL (see screenshot). Hit frequency was something like 30-50 times a second. I use a PFC yoke and throttle combo without a regular HID joystick connected to the PC.

Why not just go to FS's Options--Controls and disable the joystick input? That's all that's happening -- it is looking for one!

After seeing this registry thrashing, I plugged in a USB joystick in addition to the PFC combo, and disabled all the axes of the USB joystick in FS9. The registry thrashing stopped, and frame rate excursions have smoothed out some.

Yes, but it would be far easier just to tell FS there's no joystick, surely?

Not sure there's anything that can be done in the PFC driver, but it's a curiosity worthy of a look.

The PFC driver doesn't use anything to do with joysticks or HIDs nor does it access the registry.

Regards,

Pete

[airforce2]

Pete;

I tried disabling the joystick and got an even worse storm of registry thrashing.

Understand that PFC does nothing with the joystick...but I did think it important for PFC users to know that if using a PFC flight control with no joystick attached to the PC (I mean with a PFC unit at one's disposal why *would* one want a joystick on the PC?), FS9 will still be busily looking for a joystick in the background even while it's getting control inputs from the PFC driver via FSUIPC. My rather inelegant solution is to plug in a cheap joystick as a sort of FS9 pacifier. If you give Bad Billy what he wants, he shuts right up. I didn't know if (but was hoping) you had some wizardly way to head off DirectInput at the pass...as you often do with these things.

Cheers

[Pete Dowson]

I tried disabling the joystick and got an even worse storm of registry thrashing.

I tried it here and whilst it wasn't worse, it was about the same. Very odd -- the "disable joysticks" obviously doesn't stop the scanning or whatever DirectInput does, even though the results won't be used!

However, there's certainly no registry access for joysticks if you delete all the [JOYSTICK ...] sections from your FS9.CFG. They only got there because you did have something plugged in when you loaded FS. If you change hardware, like videos, it is sometimes a good idea to delete the FS9.CFG file and force FS to make a new one.

I didn't know if (but was hoping) you had some wizardly way to head off DirectInput at the pass...as you often do with these things.

I've managed to avoid getting into DirectX quite well. I've really no time to get into such complex stuff at present.

Regards,

Pete

[airforce2]

OK, Pete, I'll try zapping those pesky joystick sections from the FS9.cfg

Understand about letting FS9 rebuild it, but I have probably 3-4 man-weeks invested in tweaking the blasted config, and am less than cheerful about the idea of re-mapping the FS9 genome... :wink:

Cheerio

[Pete Dowson]

OK, Pete, I'll try zapping those pesky joystick sections from the FS9.cfg

But then disconnect the joystick before re-booting FS, or it will add them back!

Understand about letting FS9 rebuild it, but I have probably 3-4 man-weeks invested in tweaking the blasted config, and am less than cheerful about the idea of re-mapping the FS9 genome... :wink:

Yes, but you understand about editing files. For the average user it is easier and safer just to delete and reload.

When/if you change video cards or even sometimes driver versions you would have to delete the video section before booting -- some horrendous things can happen otherwise. It's a similar thing.

Regards,

Pete