You can't win: won't go into Full Screen

[macca22au]

Last night I was doing a pleasant flight over Gen X scenery in southern England, when the blurries began to multiply, a couple of huge stutters, and then the picture froze (the sound still playing).

I thought it was a recurrence of the out of memory problem, so I used the Task Manager to close the game down.  I then restarted, and then tried to go full window (I have a Matrox TH2Go).  The window went black, the sound continued, but the only way I could get out of this situation was to shut down using the power switch.

So I ran the repair function - but this was fruitless - mind you it has never repaired anything ever.

I gave in and reinstalled - but the problem remains.  When I key Alt+Enter, or use the menu the scene flickers once, goes black and freezes.

Can anyone suggest an answer otherwise I don't quite know what to do next.

[Camel_Moe]

Hey, Wait a bit for someone else to awnser, just in case i did something unnecesary, but I had somethins simular once, and I ended up deleting FSX.cfg (or mabey it was display.cfg(see why I say to wait for another reply?lol)). More or less didn't hurt me at the time as I hadn't tweaked or anything, and it returned the sim to display defaults has a fix.
Of course, if you can't wait, and want to try it, back up those files before you do. Can't say that enough.
Good luck either way...

[alrot]

:-/ Don't push too much on the set up screen conf macca,as you describe I remember this was a failure before SP1 ,everything was getting blurred on my screen too, But with Sp1 never saw that anymore..

You should try to lower you set up,I got mine like this..




although sometimes it freezes Not only FSX ,FS9 MU, NFU and some other games ,but I know its a failure in some of my DDR2 or motherboard,..But this happends in rarely occasions..

[Ashar]

Not going to add anything new here...Alrot's pic...Even though it's in Spanish, I can figure out most of the word meanings...Italian in very similar...

[alrot]

Yes Italian , Spanish and Portuguese comes from the same Line of Latin....I watch the cable chanel RAI and the 70% of the speech ,I clearly understand it..

[NickN]

This sounds more hardware, driver, possibly system file or add-on releated than FSX, especially since a clean re-install did not fix it.

[macca22au]

Thanks guys for your prompt resposnse.  You may recall there was a Windows Vista Update many months ago to cope with this problem on multiple screens.  I had installed that and it fixed the problem.  However Vista won't let me reinstall it, giving me the message that it is not needed on my machine.  By that I infer it has identified that the update is in place.

I have so much add-on scenery, and add-on aircraft that identifying a culprit would be hard.

It may I suspect be Vista based.  

However I'll try some of your suggestions first.  Vista does not appear to have a repair function, and my skills are too low to understand a diagnostic run anyway.

[NickN]

in diagnostics, always start with a clean FSX/SP1/SP2 (when it is released) with no addons or tweaks and make sure the old config file is removed and a new one allowed to be created. The only tweaks in the file you should make at first are the ones needed for specific hardware such as wide screen monitor and process affinity. Its not about performance, its about elimination.


Short of some type of driver corruption or other hardware issue related to the matrox, I dont have a clue. I would even remove the matorx from the mix and run one monitor direct, confirming things as you go down the list, then add the matrox setup back in and see if that is where it craps out. If so, then you are either dealing with a matrox or driver issue, at least that is how I would approach it.

I would not have compeltely uninstalled FSX except as a last resort. I would have worked with removing the matrox and running single monitor first, then probably have flushed, downloaded updates and reinstalled/setup the motherboard and video drivers (in that order)

If the problem is there with a single display and a clean FSX install, and, I had done the motherboard and video driver swap, then I would suspect a Vista system file problem, or, some type of hardware failure (video card or memory stick (possibly)

[macca22au]

First Alrot and Camel moustache many thanks. And Alrot your English is better than my Spanish I am ashamed to say.  However a background in French and a little Latin makes your pics readily understood.

However NickN gave the clue.  That the problem may be outside the game, and it was.  I remembered that Microsoft had  come up with a Vista update especially for multi-monitor problems.  However it would not let me reinstall the update.

So, I rolled back to a restore point set some day's ago and the problem is cured. Clearly, a file in the Vista OS was corrupt.

The only hangover is that scenery loads very slowly (I have a fast CPU) and the framerate and smoothness have been replaced by slow frames and a lot of stutters.  

I will do a big defrag tonight, and then start from a clean fsx.cfg tomorrow morning.  It is 2230 downunder at the moment.

Once again NickN thanks for pointing me in the correct direction.  I suspect there is a crook bit of scenery somewhere but I will have to wait till it happens again.

[NickN]

It sounds like something went screwy with Vista.

Now you see why although I do have Vista x64, I dont use it for running FSX. Even though MS has released a few patches for it ahead of SP1 due out in January, I do not think the OS will be ready to meet my standards for stability and performance until, like Xp, SP2 is released. I will place more time into Vista and FSX after Sp1 goes gold and I see how well it does on next gen hardware. Right now, its a dog in my opinion (and a few people from MS

[Camel_Moe]

Glad it all worked out.  That's why I said to wait on my suggestion. My issue had been simular, but simular isn't identical after all.  :)
I never did figure out what did it to me exactly, but it has never repeated, so I guess it doesn't matter.
Like I said, glad things worked out for you.

[macca22au]

I found that the roll-back to a restore point worked, but the problem recurred, but was fixed again by system restore.

However as everything is connected to everything else, I found that if I had AA set high on the card, the game would not go into full screen.  AA set in the game solved the issue.  So which screwed what and in what order I am mystified.