A little advice

[garymbuska]

Over the past week or so I was having some issues with FSX FSX Steam and FSX2009 the problem started out with flickering images in the background. I had chalked it up as some bad scenery and never looked into it what might be causing it. I was also having texture problems with some aircraft the best one I had was an invisible AI aircraft all you could see was a shadow. There were also some occasions when I could not see all of my aircraft while in spot view. A few days ago I was flying a flight when I heard a sound your system will make when you unplug a USB device. I thought that was odd since I had not unplugged any thing. So I paused the flight and opened up the device manager and noticed that several of my USB device had the Yellow triangle on them which means something is wrong. So I tried to restart my system which should clear that up. After shutting down my system just set there and did nothing the fans were still running as were the lights on them but my monitor showed nothing and I noticed I had no hard drive light blinking showing that the drive was running. I could not get my system to start no matter what I tried so I let it set for awhile and tried again and it came up with no problems. So i checked the device manager to see if my USB devices still had issues and none were found. I was not sure what was going on when I noticed my mouse or key board did not work, they are both wireless and the transmitter plugs into a USB port. I could not even use crtl shift delete to reset the system with I had to hold the power switch to reset my system and sure enough it would not come back up so I was thinking this could be two things a power supply problem or a Motherboard problem. After doing some research I figured that the power supply had some issues so I bought a new one and crossed my fingers and toes hoping this would solve the problem. I installed the new power supply Wednesday night and turned it on the system came up and than I opened FSX to see if there were any issues. I could not believe my eyes the image was sharp and clear no more blinking images in the background at all. It just goes to show that there is a reason things do not work right. Apparently my power supply was having some power issues my Video card uses a 12 volt rail for power and it was not getting enough power or current which is what was causing the blinking images and other texture problems I was having as well.
Bottom line here is one to needs to stop and find out why something that used to work without problems start having issues.

[Hawkeye07]

Thanks for the info Gary. I don't think I would have suspected the power supply.

[slimcooper2002]

I have my PC running through an old "Cyberpower" UPS and the last time I checked the battery was dead. I didn't bypass it as I thought the surge protectors were still offering a bit of protection until I can afford another UPS. But recently I have been having problems with "disappearing" planes and scenery where I just get a black line like where the top of the dash should be. And I have to restart the game to get it to work. I haven't had any devices become "unplugged" but maybe I should bypass that old UPS. Never would have expected a power issue would cause that. I only have an NVidia GeForce GT 635 but low power is low power correct?

[garymbuska]

I have my PC running through an old "Cyberpower" UPS and the last time I checked the battery was dead. I didn't bypass it as I thought the surge protectors were still offering a bit of protection until I can afford another UPS. But recently I have been having problems with "disappearing" planes and scenery where I just get a black line like where the top of the dash should be. And I have to restart the game to get it to work. I haven't had any devices become "unplugged" but maybe I should bypass that old UPS. Never would have expected a power issue would cause that. I only have an NVidia GeForce GT 635 but low power is low power correct?

You are correct your old UPS will still give you surge protection But this would not cause power issues so replacing or removing it is not going to do anything if you have a power problem. I have a smart 1000 UPS and it failed its last battery test I am thinking about doing away with the UPS completely and just use a good surge protector.
In my case the fact that the computer would not boot up was what told me to suspect the power supply because with out a 12 volt or 5 volt supply things like your hard drives and video card and USB devices will not work correctly
As far as disappearing planes that could be an AI flight plan problem. Some AI flight plans you down load do not come with the aircraft that is needed and just use what ever you happen to have and it is not that unusual for plane A we will call it to be used in two different places causing a problem. An example say you have a B737-400 that is scheduled to fly from KATL(ATLANTA GA) to KJFK (KENNEDY INTL.) departs at 0800 and arrives 0930 That flight will take you a hour and a half we will say. but than another flight plan can have the same B737-400 scheduled to depart KLGA (LAGUARIDA) at 0925 so what will happen is the plane will just disappear while on final approach. There are other reasons as to why AI aircraft will just up and vanish like the lack or misplaced HOLD SHORTS at an airport. If a runway does either not have a hold short or if it is placed to far from the actual runway an AI aircraft will never get permission to take off and eventually the aircraft will be needed for another flight someplace else so it will just vanish.
Now mind you the problem you describe here may have nothing to do with power at all. You need to ask your self how old is the power supply. My power supply was at least four years old. Also the video card I use has its own 12volt power input so the power supply has to have a dedicated 12volt RAIL just for the card and the the minimum wattage needed is 300 watts
My point is if you are having problems of any nature that just recently started occurring you need to find out the reason.
If your power supply is failing it could destroy or damage your motherboard and they are not cheap If I had to replace mine it would cost $199.99 just for the motherboard and than you might have to replace the CPU or RAM
SO if you think your power supply is starting to fail replace it now before it causes other problems