Could someone possibly explain this?

[ThomasKaira]

What cataclysmic event could occur in this program that would cause it to crash soooo hard that it corrupts your operating system? It's not the first time something like that has happened in my home, and this as happened to me twice already. Both, coincidentally, were in the PMDG 747 V1.2. (really the only plane I fly right now, so others have not been tested as vigorously yet.)

Fist time was in the middle of the atlantic, upon opening IE7, the second was on approach to St. Maarten, just minutes before landing (FlyTampa scenery, AES active). Both instances locked my computer and corrupted my system config to the point where attempting to start windows freezes the PC.

Is the sim trying to tell me something here?

[Mazza]

try other planes, if they make a crash then do a scan

[chrism7262]

this sounds familiar. i had the same problem but not with flight sim. i dont remember the file exactly, but it was something like this:

C:\WINDOWS\system32

one of those files, and windows wouldnt start. now there may be an easier fix, but i wasnt sure what to do, so circuit city fixed the problem. maybe trying to put in the windows disk and booting up manually could work?

[Daube]

Either your hardware has been overheating too much, causing great system instability, either your memory (RAM) has some problem, either your harddrive has some errors on it (errors in file system, or damaged sector). I do not think that the usage of those addons could cause any damage, I never saw any complaints like that before, so I would first check the system itself.

[ThomasKaira]

this sounds familiar. i had the same problem but not with flight sim. i dont remember the file exactly, but it was something like this:

C:\WINDOWS\system32

one of those files, and windows wouldnt start. now there may be an easier fix, but i wasnt sure what to do, so circuit city fixed the problem. maybe trying to put in the windows disk and booting up manually could work?

C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\system

That is the file in question.

[chrism7262]

yes i think that was mine too. i do not think its the addon itself, but rather, and overload on maybe the video or graphics card. again, if you have the wondows disk, you may want to try inserting it as you startup the computer and try that if nothing else seems to work.

[ThomasKaira]

yes i think that was mine too. i do not think its the addon itself, but rather, and overload on maybe the video or graphics card. again, if you have the wondows disk, you may want to try inserting it as you startup the computer and try that if nothing else seems to work.

I just ghosted back to a previous hard drive configuration, and re-creted the flight as best I could (takeoff from Europe, entire flight in full-screen in the VC), and this time, it worked fine. There was one difference, in that I started from an airport with AES already active (SimWings Mega-Airport Heathrow).

Let this be a lesson to all: if you are using AES, always always ALWAYS start from an active airport, if you don't, you are running the risk of crashing the simulator.