(This article may be found at http://www.combatsim.com/htm/2000/12/b17fixes)

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B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty Eighth
Common Fixes and Problems v.2
By Iain Howe

Game Title: B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty Eighth
Game Version: Release Version
Category: Air Combat Simulation
Developer: Wayward
Publisher: MicroProse / Hasbro
Release Date: Released
Minimum Spec: More Info
Recommended Spec: More Info
Demo: None
Article Date: December 20, 2000

This document was compiled with the help of everyone on the Bombs Away forum. This forum can be reached at www.bombs-away.net and is an amazing source of after sales support from a community of dedicated gamers. In particular I’d like to thank StevieK and Siggi for their outstanding contributions to this document.

The common list of problems was compiled from observations here at Wayward and also at Microprose – however some of the solutions below were pulled directly from the website. We have utilised only those which seem to have greatly helped a number of users but – unfortunately, we haven’t been able to test them ourselves here. For that reason they may be slightly incomplete or incorrect. Do not carry out any step that you feel uncomfortable performing – if in doubt seek advice. There are many knowledgeable users on the Bombs Away forum who will be happy to help!

Common list of Problems



Crashes to Desktop when manipulating B-17 internal views
Main Symptom: This has been largely identified as a bug with the Radio Operator. If you hit the key for the Radio Operators station (Key ‘6’) or select his portrait from the Crew Portrait iconbar whilst in the action view of any station then the game can crash to desktop if you press the key for Compartment views (Key ‘C’) at any time thereafter (but especially from the Bombardier, Right Waist Gunner or Tail Turret Gunner views).

Secondary Symptom: A side effect of this bug is that it can cause the physical representations of your crewmembers to vanish from the Compartment View if the switch to the Compartment view does not cause a Crash to Desktop. Further testing needs to be done to ascertain how long they stay vanished for, and when they return.

Avoidance Tips: Don’t press key 6 whilst in an action view. Always get to the Radio Operators screen either FROM a compartment view, or press ‘I’ for an Instruments View before pressing ‘6’ for the Radio Operator.

Crashes to Desktop at random – “Just playing the game…”
Main Symptom: The game crashes to Desktop, without explanation or Error Message. This occurs after long periods of flight without the use of the Timeskip Facility.

Secondary Symptoms: These include excessive Hard Disk access, extreme Frame Rate drops and slow response from the PC.

Avoidance Tips: This can be tracked down to a number of issues, depending on your machine. Luckily most problems can be resolved by checking your Drivers, Version of Direct X, Virtual Memory management or a number of other procedures. Make sure to close down the programs in your system tray (such as Virus Checkers) turn off any power saving features you might have active and disable Screen Savers. In addition check out “Driver/Hardware Issues”, “Improving Performance” and “Managing Virtual Memory” below.

Crashes to Desktop when using Fighter Canopy Release handle.
Main Symptom: In Fighter cockpits there are a control called the “Canopy Release” (or some variant) that can be used to Bail Out if the Fighter is in trouble. Using this control can cause the game to Crash to Desktop.

Secondary Symptoms: None Reported

Avoidance Tips: Instead of using the Canopy Release, use the key Combination for Bailout. This is CTRL SHIFT B by default.

CD Insert Notification errors on game startup
Main Symptom: When running the game from the Icon the game displays the Copy Protection Error screen and requests you insert the game CD (which is already in the drive).

Secondary Symptom: None

Avoidance Tips: First of all, don’t run a cracked or Warez version of the game! If you’re a legitimate customer with this problem – it is linked to the spin speed of certain DVD or CD drives. If you access the game through AutoInsert (placing the CD in the drive and letting it run automatically through the startup menu) rather than by using the icon in the Programs Group you may be able to bypass this problem. In extreme cases try the procedures under “Dealing with Incorrect requests for CD Insertion”

Disappearing Crewmembers
Main Symptom: This problem is the secondary symptom of Bug #1, above.

Secondary Symptoms: None

Avoidance Tips: Don’t press key 6 whilst in an action view. Always get to the Radio Operators screen either FROM a compartment view, or press ‘I’ for an Instruments View before pressing ‘6’ for the Radio Operator.

Stuttering Graphics
Main Symptom: Whilst panning in the Turret views, or flying the fighters, the frame rate drops. Can also happen in the padlock views in fighter cockpits.

Secondary Symptoms: May be linked to sound stuttering on some machines.

Avoidance Tips: May be down to GeForce and VIA / ASUS motherboards. Disabling the Pilot Information plaque seems to help.

Missing Sound Effects

Main Symptom: Machine Gun burst noises terminate after a few rounds. Flak Explosions disappear.

Secondary Symptoms: May be linked with stuttering graphics. See Bug 6.

Avoidance Tips: GeForce users report better performance with 6.47 driver set. May fix it if A3D not used (even on Aureal cards). Owners of Aureal cards should disable “Splash” and “Sound” in the Aureal control panel.

Managing Virtual Memory
Make sure your Windows swap-disk space is at least 400Mb in size.

To do this, right-click on "My Computer", select "Properties", then select the tab for "Performance". You'll then see an option for "Virtual Memory" - click it to view the settings.
By default, Windows will want to manage your virtual memory for you, and if you're getting CTDs very early in the game, you most likely have less than 400Mb for Windows to play with. Free up some space on your drive, reboot, then check again and see if Windows is using the right amount - only mess with it manually if you have to. You should aim to have maybe at least 1024Mb free on the drive, and tell Windows to use at least 400Mb, but the higher you set it the better it will run. Note that you mustn’t set it higher than the free space on your drive!

If you still get CTD, but only after a long(ish) time in the game, and your swap space is at the correct size here are some suggestions:
a). Find a 3rd party cache manager, such as the freeware Cacheman 3.80. People have reported that they get no CTDs running this, but there's no guarantee. Cacheman will attempt to optimise your virtual memory for various types of setup including "3D Gamer", and is considered a good add-on for most 3D gamers in any case, so it's worth getting. Search for it on www.downloads.com or www.tucows.com. One thing that Cachman *should* do is stop Windows/B17 goblling up the entire swap file, which could well be a cause of CTDs (unconfirmed). Basically, the more people who try this and report back to the troubleshooting forum, the better for everyone.

b). If you have the space, try manually setting your swap cache to silly high numbers, such as 2048Mb. People have reported that the CTDs disappear under those circumstances. Seems that for people with 128Mb Ram, 400Mb is a good enough swap file but people with 256Mb seem to need huge 4x or 8x memory amount. Again, this is an unconfirmed fix that has worked for some people. (Try Cacheman first, though).

c). Try not to use the pop-up graphical menus at the right of the screen when moving from one view to another within a crew station (i.e. the little graphical menus that appear when you move your pointer to the extreme right of screen. One user has reported that his CTDs stopped or were drastically reduced by not using this menu, though the more people who try it the more we'll know how well this works. To avoid using the right-hand pop-up, just use the C (compartment), I (instruments), Spacebar (alternative instruments), or A (action - ie. turret view) keys when, say, checking your gunner's ammo or moving from A to I on the bombardier screen.

d). Set the Terrain Detail to SPEED rather than Balanced or Detailed. If your crashes stop, then move up and see how BALANCED works for you. Basically see how high you can go without getting crashes. If crashes persist on SPEED, then you can set Terrain as high as your system will support.

e). In system.ini under [386Enh] add the line
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1.
This tells windows to use all physical mem before using the swap file.

IMPROVING PERFORMANCE
The most severe examples of this have been reported by GeForce 2 users, though there's not enough evidence to say which specific cards or variants *might* have dodgy drivers. The most stable Detonator driver release so far (by count of hands) looks to be 6.47 (i.e the one recommended by Wayward). Avoid the latest 7.17 beta drivers unless you have tried all the others. Beta drivers for NVidia (all cards) can be found at www.reactorcritical.com (as well as a huge list of drivers for just about every other card imaginable).

1. Some GeForce 2 users have resorted to pulling out their card and replacing it with a TNT2, or using a secondary card such as a Voodoo. GOOD NEWS: pulling out the GeForce 2 has completely solved the stuttering graphics issue for these people, which means we're closer to a more definite fix than "use a different card", which is your stop-gap for now. At least we seem to have identified the culprit. Any grieving GeForce 2 users should note that the game looks superb on a TNT 2 as well.

2 One user reported that he stopped the stuttering problem by switching his hard drive over from his ATA100 controller to ATA66. Strange, but true. Well, not that strange, really, as the stutters happen when the hard drive is caching exterior textures.

3. One GeForce 2 owner (Creative Labs Annihilator Pro), reported that turning on anti-aliasing stopped all his stuttering graphics, though with both AA and T&L on, you're forcing the card to do a lot, and general smoothness can be affected. To turn on anti-aliasing for GeForce cards, go to: Start menu->Settings->Control Panel->Display. Now click on Settings, then Advanced, and you should see your GeForce-specific setting available on two or three tabs. Look for the general settings one, click on DirectX settings, then on "More DirectX", and you'll see an option to set anti-aliasing to whatever value (try 1x2 or 2x2 to start), and a check-box to force AA in all games, Check that, then restart the game.

Dealing with Incorrect requests for CD Insertion
1. Fixed by going into System Manager and removing the CD-ROM from device list, restarting PC and LEAVING the settings windows decided for my drive. Disconnect on and auto-insert on. DMA and data sync off.

2. Go to system and check if the CD drivers are working! I have 2 CD's plus 1 DVD installed in my PC and noticed the drivers had been deleted and that standard drivers had been put in their place.

I deleted all the CD drives and restarted the pc and the original drivers were once more in place and the game ran!

Alternative fixes regarding CTD’s
1. Game crashed to desktop before the end of all missions.
Fixed by changing BIOS settings;
BIOS - disabled Video Shadowing
BIOS - AGP Aperture size changed from 64 to 256.
This has cured the problem.

2. Quote from the cacheman help : " ...VCACHE is drive cache Windows allocates that can often gobble up 25-40% of your installed memory. By default Windows places NO LIMIT on how large it can be. Wonderful....

After accessing large files, like video clips, VCACHE expands to an often huge size and then is very stingy about giving
that memory back to the system.

This is NOT the Windows swapfile and is NOT controllable from System/Performance/Filesystem/Troubleshooting."

So by limiting the max of this cache you make your system not use more disk cache than you want and save memory in use.

Other gems gathered regarding Jerky Graphics
1. Has anyone seen the GeForce FAQ? It has a section specifically on stuttering:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/#hw:gef:troub:stutter

It has a number of possible solutions, including a link to an article by someone who solved stuttering graphics in Q3A by manually upping his swap space and turning on DMA for his hard drive (default MS drivers keep it turned off).

2. I've found that Rambooster (and other such programs) are a problem as they have the tendency to unload graphics in system memory (this caused a LOT of stuttering until I removed it as the game constantly had to reload textures.) Gameplay on my system is much smoother without it. I can aim turrets and fly fighters with no problems now.

Miscellaneous Issues
1. Disappearing Mouse Pointers:
Set Mouse Pointer to “Windows Standard”, to solve the disappearing mouse pointer issue.

2. Throttle settings on Logitech Joystick and Thrustmaster F16 FLCS
Assign all the various Throttle Axes to the Throttle to solve?

3. WS2_32.dll is missing from the install on some Win 95 machines.
Needs copying from the game CD to your Windows / System folder.

Where to Get More Help


Minimum System Requirements:


  • Operating System: Windows 95/98/ME
  • Processor: Pentium II 300 MHz or faster (or 100% compatible: Celeron 400 or AMD K6-2 400)
  • Memory: 128 MB RAM
  • Hard Disk Space: 700 MB Free
  • Video Memory: 8 MB VRAM
  • CD-ROM Drive: 8X Speed
  • Video: Windows 95/98/ME compatible 3dfx Voodoo2 (with 12MB VRAM), Voodoo3 or higher, Matrox G200 or higher, Nvidia TNT or higher, ATI Rage 128 or higher, S3 Savage 4, 3D Labs Permedia2 or higher*.
  • Sound: Windows 95/98/ME compatible sound card
  • DirectX: DirectX version 7.0a (included) or higher
  • Input: DirectX compatible joystick

* Indicates device should be compatible with DirectX version 7.0a or higher.

Recommended System Requirements:


  • Operating System: Windows 95/98/ME
  • Processor: Pentium II 400 MHz or faster (or 100% compatible: Celeron 400 or AMD K6-2 400)
  • Memory: 256 MB RAM or better
  • Hard Disk Space: 700 MB Free
  • Video Memory: 16 MB VRAM
  • CD-ROM Drive: 8X Speed
  • Video: Windows 95/98/ME compatible 3dfx Voodoo4 or higher, Matrox G400, Nvidia TNT2 and GeForce, ATI Rage 128 Pro and Radeon* Supports Hardware T&L.
  • Sound: Windows 95/98/ME compatible sound card
  • DirectX: DirectX version 7.0a (included) or higher
  • Input: DirectX compatible joystick

* Indicates device should be compatible with DirectX version 7.0a or higher.

(This article may be found at http://www.combatsim.com/htm/2000/12/b17fixes)