A Hard System Crash!

[Mistro]

For the first time I experienced a severe crash while flying. I just clicked out of the map window and the game froze. Usually a message would pop up saying FSX had to close. But this time my whole system just froze up. I tried ctrl+alt+del but that didn't work. So I tried a hard reboot and the system just turned off. I powered my rig back up and was ushered to the BIOS screen (asking me to reconfigure something). I went into the BIOS and changed nothing as everything looked normal. After exiting the BIOS windows started back up normally but now I see "New Hardware Found" PCI device. In the Hardware Manager whatever it is is listed under other devices. I have no idea what this device is. This never happened to me before. The only thing I suspect is my firewire because my sound and video cards are fine with no yellow question marks. But I don't recall needing a disc to install my firewire. The flight been going for at least 3 hours non stop before this happened. Now I'm afraid to run FSX before I backup everything important to me on my system. Did anyone else experience this before while flying?

[volunteer]

I am sorrry to read this!! I had a dose of this - this was when running IE8 = if you are - try a roll back to IE7.

It could also be something overheating - certainly after i reseated all my components and cleaned everything out - it is now stable.

I also loaded the basic BIOS - and retweeked it. I think my BIOS had a little glitch some where.

The comp is now stacks better !! And rock solid!!!

I guess that will solve your phantom hard ware - which may be some driver fiddling in the background.
all the best : volunteer

[Mistro]

Thanks for your reply volunteer. Turns out that was a HiDef Audio device for my onboard sound. I had to go into the BIOS and disable it. I use a dedicated sound card so I don't need it enabled. I also disabled the express gate.

I think I have a memory failure somewhere. Could be one of my memory sticks, or my video card, or someone suggested that it may be that my BIOS was somehow reset to factory default which caused those things to be enabled and is probably giving me slower performance. I may have to take my rig to the shop as this is territory I don't want to mess with on my own.