I have been travelling around Europe for the last 3 weeks. We picked up the car in Paris and we are now in Pisa in Italy.

We are using Autoroute 2010 for navigation.

I have a couple of problems:

1. Autoroute always uses 100% of CPU

2. Autoroute flashes, ie the base map is visible but the roads and route flash off and on. It can sometimes be fixed by doing a manual save, ie click on the Save icon, not CTRL+S (but this is probably voodoo computing because I don't see how there could be any difference). When it won't stop flashing the only way to fix it is to exit AR and restart it.

I suspect I know the answer but I thought I'd check with the experts first because I don't want to use my fix if I don't have to.

I am using the same .axe file since we started. We have now done about 3000km. The reason I am using the same file is so that I can have a record of our complete trip in a single file.

However, I recall that there have been discussions of problems with previous versions of AR if there were too many data points stored.

Please confirm that this is the likely cause of the problems or if not, what could be causing them?

If I do have to break my stored route into smaller files do you have any suggestions of how large too large is? The file is currently 16Mb.

I'll bet you are creating a GPS trail, too, which requires a fair amount of memory.

... and if that's the case, then re-saving (ctrl+s) periodically could help. Exit [Esc] from the full-screen navigation mode, though, because I'm pretty sure the keyboard shortcut will not save otherwise.

Yes I am creating a trail. That's so I can see where we've been.

The flashing doesn't occur all the time. It's set to autorotate because the on-board ChrisChris navigation system likes it that way. She thinks it may be triggered when the map rotates but that would be happening all the time.

Another possibility is that it's triggered by rescaling which ChrisChris does when we enter a town for fine detail navigation and then zooms out when we are in the country.

I'm also running ATopSoft Autosave to save every 10 minutes. This is due to previous bad experience with, possibly only my version of, AR 2007 which crashed all the time despite many PC rebuilds. I originally had it saving every minute because I was so paranoid but AR 2010 hasn't crashed once so I extended it to every 10 minutes. The flashing seems better since I did that.

As I asked previously, how long a trail is too much: a couple of days, a week, x km?

It seems as if 3 weeks, 3 days is too much.

Sorry, Andrew, but it looks like you are pushing the envelope beyond what most of the rest of us have done on AR 2010 and possibly may be answered only by the engineering folks @ MSFT. Obviously, something is being stressed-out. I can appreciate your desire to have a trail of the entire trip, so I would think about disabling the auto-rotate.

Thank you for your replies.

I have now bitten the bullet and created a new file.

The flashing has gone away and the CPU isn't at 100%.

I will use the suck it and see principle: keep using the same file until it starts flashing or CPU load becomes excessive; then create a new file.

In AutoRoute 2010 is it possible to merge tracks into one file? It wasn't in AutoRoute 2007.

I know there is GPX file export/import so this should let me do this, right?

Franson GPSGate is recording everything so even if I can't get the data out of/into AutoRoute 2010 I should be able to display the route in another package such as Garmin (which I have but I much prefer the MS interface) or Google Earth.

Andrew, the following link gives a good overview of reasons CPU usage may be high: http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/1593-cpu-usage-streets-trips-2009-a

No, it does not seem to be possible. Forum members have whined about this to MSFT, tho. Actually, I think it was. I seem to remember being able to click on the trail (so that all the waypoints showed), copy it and then paste it into a new route file.

Your route waypoints and POIs will be copied into the GPX file but I do not think your GPS trail will be. Therefore, you may want to go back over the GPS trail and adjust the route (and its stops) to conform to your trail, if you mean to do a GPX export.

One thing that has been suggested as a way of documenting a long trip like this is to have a master-route file that shows just the main aspects of the route and then a sub-route file for each day with all the details, including the GPS trail. You can link the sub-route files up to the master-route file with pushpin links so that you can "zoom-in" to any particular day's travels simply by clicking on the pushpin link. Another thing you can do is to use pushpin links to tie in photographs, either on your computer or up-loaded to the web, that you take along the way. And if you want to go even further, you can create pushpin links to websites of many places you visit such as restaurants, hotels, museums or other POIs.

Finally as you've learned for all of us, maybe three weeks is too much but perhaps 4 - 5 days is not. So, it does not necessarily have to be single-day sub-route files if that is not convenient.

It sounds like a great trip; I am jealous. When it is all done, I hope you will post it to the library thread of member trips.

Hi Marvin

I've had a look at the high CPU usage link.

While I was in France I had POIs loaded for all Formule 1, Etap and B&B Hotels plus hypermarches such as Carrefour and Auchan plus all McDonalds in France for free WiFi and toilets plus all the most beautiful villages of France.

Now that I am in Italy I don't need them so with my clean new base file I should be able to get more than 3 weeks to a file before it starts to misbehave.

Today we visited Florence (and all day yesterday) and San Gimignano, the town with all the towers.

Aha, so you've got a lot of POI pushpins in that file as well, eh? That might be more the source of your problems.

Personally, I like to keep my POI pushpins in a dedicated *.est/*.axe file and then only use the ones that might remotely come into play along my projected route. I do this by opening the POI storage file, computing a rough routing in it and then open another *.est/*.axe file in another window that will be my active route file and then copy and paste the possibly useful POI pushpins into that, with both windows open side by side. Although it has to be done one-by-one (hey, MSFT how about being able to do several at a time with a few ctrl-clicks?), it does not take long to do. Note that you do not need to be precise at all about the pasting part of the task as the pushpin will snap to the 'right' location automatically. In this way, the route file is not encumbered by too many irrelevant POIs. Besides eating memory, they get in the way visually if you zoom out too far. Don't forget, even if a pushpin set is hidden, it is still in the file.

BTW, Andrew, it sounds like you've got a useful set of French POIs; any chance of sharing those with us?

Hotels in France from here:

Accommodation in France - GPS POI Data

Hypermarches from here:

Shopping in France - GPS POI Data

McDonalds from here:

Restaurants in France - GPS POI Data

McDonalds in Italy has free WiFi but you have to get a password sent to an Italian mobile phone SIM only.

However, there are a lot of open Netgear, Belkin and dLinks around!

Many thanks! But I hope you don't mind if I give the McDonalds a miss.

Free WiFi is pretty useful when you're travelling.

We don't go there for the food.

The toilets are usually free though sometimes like on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice you need the PIN off the receipt. Loitering outside the toilet door easily solves that problem.

Hi Andrew,

It sounds like you are having a great time. My wife and daughter were in Spain, France and Italy on a school trip when my daughter was still in high school a few years ago and they loved it.

If you are capturing the track in GPSGate you will be able to load it into Google Earth or Mapsource when you are done.

...ken...