H-street

by default it is set to the Slider axis, change it to the throttle axis and it will work

go into one of the instant action missions, the target practice one is good.. and change the start location to airfield.. save and load it up i think its called SHooting Range. that is the best one to use because you can also go practice your weapons..

are you running it in compatability mode or anything like that? how about admin level? have you tried installing DCS BS to a user directory folder instead of the Program Files/ ? what hardware/drivers? since W7 is beta there is no telling what could be wrong... have you looked up te 0xc0000142 error code? do other directx 9 applications work? what does it say in your event logs?

I guess we know how they feel about dynamic campaigns...

well good luck then.. you come asking for advice and if you aren't really wanting to even think it could be the problem then i'll leave you to figure it out on your own.. irregardless of what you think the 8500GT is pretty low budget, i have one myself and compared even to my 9600GT it is bad.. i'm not saying it is the actual problem, but if you aren't willing to even investigate it then i'm not sure you are really interested in fixing your problem.

what is your network card? is it onboard? i would look at updating your network hardware drivers.

i would suspect the 8500GT, that is about as low budget a card as you can get for gaming.. the 8400 being the only one lower.. infact a while ago we already saw someone with issues on a lower budget card dealing with texture issues.. not here to be the bringer of bad news but when i saw the 8500GT that is the first thing i would suspect..

it doesn't have to be but its one of those simple "why not" features of a good dynamic campaign. In dynamic campaigns each unit is 'more' anonymous.. in a scripted campaign the main character is the story character, in a dynamic campaign each unit has equal importance to the campaign.. which lends nicely to a multiplayer element. Especially when you consider in a true DC in DCS you could have Blackshark pilots flying at the same time as teh A10 pilots.. because each one is just as important, instead of the campaign being strictly tailored neither for the BS or the A10..

the best solution is just to add a true dynamic campaign into DCS, only ED would really be able to do it justice.. i'm hoping that with the A10 addon something like a dynamic campaign will be added. I mean this is a Digital Combat Simulator :) there is more to combat than just the aircraft.. its one of the reasons i have been taking it slow with BS.. i know once i fly all the missions and the campaigns it'll be harder to come back and replay it.

its either ED addes the Diagonals to be able to be mapped seperately and add a keycommand for diagnol slewing or they don't see the diagnol coming from the joystick and treat all hat switches as 4 way. that way when you press diagnol it is the combination of up and left and not something unique. having looked at joysticks, an 8 way hatswitch is just a 4 way with 2 button presses interpreted as a single button press. in the saitek software you actually have the option of doing either an 8 or 4 way.. i always do 4 way that way the diagnol is interpolated from the up and left (or the 2 button presses)

this is why i created a directory under My user called Games eg. C:\Users\{USER}\Games i install almost all my games under there so i don't have to really worry about the virtual store or running as admin..

i still haven't figured out all the settings but maybe look in the key command at things like F1 - LCtrl F1 Natural head movement view or F1 - LWin Head shift movement on / off

you could always try joytokey.. maps joystick buttons to key presses

make sure you aren't using any beta drivers.. goto saitek website , download drivers and SST software from the download drivers and you'll be fine th eproblem is now your drivers don't match your sst software..

it isn't an axis, it is a mouse.. if you want to use it like i do (See my X52 profile) you have to use hte SST software unless you assign the SHKVAL to the mouse.. but that will be both for your mouse mouse and the x52 mouse. there might be some underlying DCS setting to directly access the hardware, but to your system the X52 mouse is just seen as a regular mouse. the SST isn't that hard to use, you could even just use the SST software for just hte mouse if you wanted to and map everything else in game..

some of it depends on the order the game loads the textures.. hav eyou tried the textures on the lowest setting? also what ar eyou nvidia control panel settings? is AA/AF off? another possibility is a feature called HyperMemory or Turbocache.. on the lower end cards, they use this feature to allow system memory to act like Video memory.. if you go into your nvidia control panel and goto system settings you would see if it was on (total memory would be higher than 256Mb). I've never liked this and what could be happening is the Turbocache (Nvidia's version) is bugged and not working correctly. to see the memory usagei think you use the Show Framerate key twice, first to show fps , hit it again to bring up detailed statistics.. hit it a 3rd time to hide info.

yea, the 8600gt pretty low budget and with only 256Mb of onboard memory it is probably being pushed by DCS blackshark pretty good.. (the lock up is probably over heating) my guess is its just running out of memory and the texture isn't being loaded. I think there is a way to display the memory usage statistics. I'd look in that direction. what is your texture quality setting?

i believe its just a PS/2 cable.. any PS/2 double ended should work

what hardware specs? video card , memory, drivers etc.. anything over clocked? there are 2 possibilities at least as i see it you video card is running out of memory or the ram is corrupted due to overclocking need your system specs first though before we can help with anything. or the installation didn't complete and you are missing textures..

hardware specs? that looks like the distant texture or something like that..

what make model of video card? lot sof really low video cards have 512 memory..

i don't know how it relates , but the 2.6Ghz C2D seems kindof low, BS is a hugely cpu dependent beast.. you actually have pretty similar performance that i have with my 3Ghz AMD + 4Gb Ram/ ATI 4850.. also post your friends system specs.. its hard to compare

i imagine they probably fly with them off, especially when tracking a target or doing nightvision track etc.. the light button is a real quick way to illuminate your guages to check them.. just a guess but that would be my suspicion

doing a google search, it appears that someone had the same problem - seemed it was linked to an ATI driver, re-installation of the ATI drivers fixed it for them. i'd give that a try, 8.12 i think is the latest. usually in a bluescreen it gives the module it died on.. that would help track down the problem issue

wow great checklist.. the one question i have is after starting the Right engine, do you move the Starter Selector Switch to Turbo Gear? great list and very nice layout..