Launch problem

[ElPelado]

HI.
I'm having a problem when launching Celestia: after i click the quick-launch icon, it takes more or less 1 minute to celestia to launch.
my system is:
windowsXP professional
128Mb ram
P4 1.5GHz
Nvidia GeForce 2 with 64Mb
does any body know what may be the cause?

[don]

Do you have some HIRES textures, add-ons, large stars database, etc.? If yes, all of these things add to the initial load-time of Celestia.

Hope this helps!

[ElPelado]

I AM NOT USING VERU HIGH RESS TEXTURES. I THINK THAT I ONLY HAVE THE 32K VIRTUAL TEXTURE IN EARTH, THE VIRTUAL TEXTURE FOR THE MOON, AND A 8K DDS FOR MARS. I THINK THAT THE REST ARE THE STANDART TEXTURES.
I DONT HAVE MANY ADD-ONS(I THINK THAT I HAVE NOT INSTALLED MORE THAN 5 ADD-ONS).
I DONT HAEV THE LARGE STAR DATABASE....
WHAT I DO HAVE, AND I WILL TRY TO DELETE IS THE GLOBULAR CLUSTERS AND GALAXIES ADDON.

[don]

> I WILL TRY TO DELETE IS THE GLOBULAR CLUSTERS AND GALAXIES ADDON.

Hi ElPelado,

Or, just move them to another folder to see if it makes any difference.

Just for general information, with the 32K Earth texture and the 2 million star file, my 3.06 Ghz CPU takes 12 to 15 seconds to load Celestia. The clean "download" version of Celestia starts almost instantly (1-2 seconds).

I also have 1 GB of RAM, where you have 128 MB, and my graphics card has 128 MB of RAM where yours has 64 MB. So, if you were to try comparing by using the same files as I am, I would expect your load time to be twice as long or longer, due to CPU speed and RAM differences.

Let us know how removing the Globular Clusters and Galaxies goes!

[ElPelado]

I REMOVED THEM, BUT IT MADE NO CHANGE. I WANT TO TRY ALSO REMOVING THE MARS AND MOON LOCATIONS THAT I ADDED(BUT NOT ENABLED) SOME TIME AGO.
BUT I THINK THE PROBLEM IS THAT WITH WIN XP I NEED MORE RAM. THE VERSION I WAS USING BEGORE I PUT THE XP USED TO LAUNCH QUICKLY, AND I HAD MILLIONS OF ADDONS THEN...

[selden]

XP needs more than 128MB just for itself.
It'll run in less, but the performance will be poor because it'll be using the paging file.

[don]

XP needs more than 128MB just for itself.
It'll run in less, but the performance will be poor because it'll be using the paging file.

Ouch!

I didn't know that. Thanks Selden.

[selden]

You can verify this by running the Task Manager.

Select the "Performance" tab. Down at the bottom, look at the Total value in the "Commit Charge (K)" right after you've booted the system. That shows the sum of the operating system itself plus the programs and dynamic libraries that currently are in use.

Of course, they're not necessarily in physical memory right now, but that's my point: the pages that are not in memory will have to be brought in from disk when they're accessed. That slows things.

[don]

Very interesting!

After boot, my commit charge is 233 MB, which obviously verifies your statement, and could very well be why ElPelado is experiencing slow Celestia startup.

I also find it interesting that Celestia does not take advantage of the HyperThreading CPU that's in my machine. The CPU usage only goes to 50%. However, an old (Win95) board game program I have (Hoyle Board Games) does, as CPU usage goes to 100% when it is run. Bummer.

[ElPelado]

So to solve my problem I should buy more RAM?

[selden]

More RAM will help a lot.

It will also help if you can get rid of programs that don't need to run.
For example, don't use a backdrop picture. That uses memory (for the picture) and makes screen updates slow whenever you add, move or delete a window.

[John Van Vliet]

I normaly shut down S.E.T.I. (all of it ) and mozilla, pop-up-killer,Eracer, and norton , And some times apache

befor i start Celestia

[John Van Vliet]

with win XP ,nvdia gforce 2 mx 400 card and 512m ram


I normaly shut down S.E.T.I. (all of it ) and mozilla, pop-up-killer,Eracer, and norton , And some times apache

befor i start Celestia