Warning sm.exe

[Hern07]

Recently I got Windows 7 and was downloading some old games. One, Pacific Storm, would not load and needed something called sm.exe. Looked on the web and found that sm.exe was not part of windows, no one was quite sure what it did and its country of origin was China. But, more alarmingly I found links to a site where i could download it. If you come across this file, do your own research before you put it on your computer. I like 7, but after all these years on windows 98 and XP, it takes some getting used to.

[PJMack]

Recently I got Windows 7 and was downloading some old games. One, Pacific Storm, would not load and needed something called sm.exe. Looked on the web and found that sm.exe was not part of windows, no one was quite sure what it did and its country of origin was China. But, more alarmingly I found links to a site where i could download it. If you come across this file, do your own research before you put it on your computer. I like 7, but after all these years on windows 98 and XP, it takes some getting used to.

I just rebuilt my machine and went back to xp. 7 is too advanced for this great sim.

[rohan]

I just built a new PC and installed Win 7 Pro, only to find it still has a lot of the things I hated in Vista. My original plan was to install the big XP emulation pack so that I could run those awkward little programs that aren't compatible with Win7. With this, I was going to see whether CFS2 behaved any better / differently under Win7 native and Win7 XP emulation.

Then I ran into the Vsync issue when you run older apps like CFS2 under Win7 (even with the XP emulation), which doesn't seem to have any guaranteed solutions.

So I bought a copy of XP Home and made the PC dual boot ... and found I had to go through a whole raft of fudges and fiddles just to get the two working properly together. And they call this progress.

[sc7500]

http://www.threatexpert.com/files/sm.exe.html

[Devildog73]

I just built a new PC and installed Win 7 Pro, only to find it still has a lot of the things I hated in Vista. My original plan was to install the big XP emulation pack so that I could run those awkward little programs that aren't compatible with Win7. With this, I was going to see whether CFS2 behaved any better / differently under Win7 native and Win7 XP emulation.

Then I ran into the Vsync issue when you run older apps like CFS2 under Win7 (even with the XP emulation), which doesn't seem to have any guaranteed solutions.

So I bought a copy of XP Home and made the PC dual boot ... and found I had to go through a whole raft of fudges and fiddles just to get the two working properly together. And they call this progress.

I have dual boot Windows 7 and XP Multimedia on my laptop and dual boot XP Multimedia and Vista on my PC. I have no problems with either system. Are you still having problems? Let me know and I might be able to assist.

[Togo]

I also built a new pc earlier this year and loaded XP onto it.
Running CFS2 & 3 SF1, WOV and WOE.
If all your flight sims are fairly long in the tooth as are mine why buy a new OS.

Now using an old AMD64 3700+ with a Linux distro for all internet work and it is only limited by the slow semi-broadband we have to put up with, no dual boots and no anti-virus to slow things down.

[rohan]

Are you still having problems? Let me know and I might be able to assist.

Thanks, but right now both systems seem to be co-habiting without problems ... if you sensed some anger and frustration in this, it's because building this PC has been plagued with problems from the very beginning, from suppliers who put the right part in the wrong box (or should that be the other way round) to parts that do not meet their specs. To have more problems with Windows behaving inconsistently at the "end" of the build, despite my years of experience with it, was something I neither expected nor needed. In fact, I still find myself surprised when the new PC works each time I boot it up, and I'm praying that that isn't famous last words ...
Ro

[Devildog73]

Thanks, but right now both systems seem to be co-habiting without problems ... if you sensed some anger and frustration in this, it's because building this PC has been plagued with problems from the very beginning, from suppliers who put the right part in the wrong box (or should that be the other way round) to parts that do not meet their specs. To have more problems with Windows behaving inconsistently at the "end" of the build, despite my years of experience with it, was something I neither expected nor needed. In fact, I still find myself surprised when the new PC works each time I boot it up, and I'm praying that that isn't famous last words ...
Ro

I truly feel your pain Rohan! I built three systems myself and ran into the same problems. Took several pieces of hardware back to the computer supplier and finally ordered parts only from newegg. They were always great to work with. Then, I decided to just go ahead and pay the money to let the big companies build my gamer machine and laptop. Checked out Gateway, checked out HP, checked out Comaq (before merger), checked out Dell. Investigated everything available online about support on all at the time. Dell came out ahead of the others. Both PC box and laptop have been extremely stable, very reliable, and Dell support has been excellent when on warranty and OKAY, afterward.

Oh, and even though Dell wants you to buy new machines from them instead of upgrading parts, it can be done and it is fairly simple. The hard part is getting Dell convinced. Both my PC and laptop came with only 2 Gigs of RAM and one HD, mediocre sound cards, and okay vid cards. I have upgraded all of the above, except the sound and vid on the laptop. The really nice thing about Dell is that you can actually "build" your own machine online. Mine came from a factory in North Carolina. Parts are all Chinese I am sure, but they were put together here in the States.