CFS & CFS2 + rundll32.exe

[scott_295]

I went for a long time without playing CFS, CFS2, or FS9. About three or four years ago, I got into simming again when I found a used copy of FS9.

 

Two or three years ago, I installed CFS and/or CFS2 and tried running those but they didn't work. I searched for a solution here to the problem of them not running and didn't find anything that would help nor was there anything on MicroSoft's website. I tried changing the compatibility mode but that didn't work. The strange thing is that I'm pretty certain I had them running in Win7 many years ago. I could be wrong, of course, and probably am. But I read here that others have run CFS/CFS2 in Win7 with no problem.

 

Now, here's another thing I don't recall happening before. When I first installed FS9 and tried to run it, I had no problem. After some period of time, whenever I launched FS9 nothing happened. Fiddling around, I opened Task Manager and discovered it was there. I ended the process and relaunched it. That worked. And ever since, whenever I launch FS9, I have to open Task Manager, stop FS9, and relaunch it to get it to work. Well, that's not accurate but I'll get to that in a minute.

 

I discovered the issue is that the rundll32.exe process needs to be running before I can open FS9. Okay, no problem: if rundll32 is running, FS9 starts right up with no issue. But, something that started occurring a couple years ago is that while flying around, at some point my HDD will spin up and will continue spinning for a long time. Sometimes it will stop on its own and other times it won't. Why the difference, I don't know.

 

I discovered, however, that rundll32 doesn't need to continue running for FS9 to function. From my understanding, it's simply a process MS created for 32 bit programs to start up on 64 bit PCs.

 

Anyway, I found that by stopping rundll32, my HDD stops spinning unnecessarily, solving that problem. Of course, now I'm back to square one if I want to open FS9 the next day. The good news(?) is that rundll32 will load when I try to open FS9. I discovered this when I had Task Manager open as I tried to open FS9 and saw that rundll32 loaded, as well. But, since it loads after FS9, FS9 won't run. How fucking stupid. LOL Thanks MS.

 

So then I wondered if maybe rundll32 needed to be running for CFS & CFS2 to open. So I launched FS9 to get rundll32 running, ended FS9, and tried opening CFS & CFS2. No success.

 

So, this brings me to the reasons for my post:

1. Why does my HDD start spinning while rundll32 is running?

2. Is there a similar process needed for CFS and/or CFS2 to run?