Crash to Desktop during long haul flights....again.

[ShaneG_old]

I think it's just a combination of so many addons, both software & hardware, that you now have so many uncontrollable variables in your setup, you could go mad trying to find it.

Want an almost fool proof way of finding out what's causing it, start fresh, default FS9. Do your flight. And see if it happens.

Now add your addons ONE AT A TIME, and do a long flight. If you make it through all of your software and have no crashes, then move on to your hardware, one piece at a time, doing a flight after each part is added.

With as much as you experience this problem, it is sure to creep up and identify itself this way, and when it does, you'll finally know exactly what was causing your ordeal.

[SubZer0]

I think it's just a combination of so many addons, both software & hardware, that you now have so many uncontrollable variables in your setup, you could go mad trying to find it.

Want an almost fool proof way of finding out what's causing it, start fresh, default FS9. Do your flight. And see if it happens.

Now add your addons ONE AT A TIME, and do a long flight. If you make it through all of your software and have no crashes, then move on to your hardware, one piece at a time, doing a flight after each part is added.

With as much as you experience this problem, it is sure to creep up and identify itself this way, and when it does, you'll finally know exactly what was causing your ordeal.

That's exactly what I'm thinking too, Shane.

The problem is bound to show up this way. Although it may take a LONG time to get everything installed and find the problem, I think it's well worth it for you and your son.

[stevehookem]

My only problem with this is that we added them like this and flew for some time when we originally loaded everything. This issue never happened.

He went from Vancouver to Toronto last night. Perfect flight until on short final, runway in site, cleared to land. Crash.

The problem is it doesn't happen every time and it's at different areas. It seems to be after long flights--that's the only constant.

What about my FS Global or Ultimate Terrain causing this? I just can't imagine unistalling everything again. It would probably cause my son to lose interest in this forever.

[BSW727]

I've never had UT cause a crash on my systems, though I have one system that crashes at least once per flight. Usually before I'm even pushed out of the stand. No warning, no messages, just 'poof' and it's off.

After a restart it may or may not run until the flight is completed. This computer crashes to blackscreen though, not to the desktop. It's as if the computer has turned itself off except the hard drive and fans are still spinning.

This is a Wideview computer running the left view and can be restarted from the cockpit so it's more of a nusance than anything, but I've been fooling with this POS system now for over four years and can't get it to run FS even with default everything,  hardware swaps, and everything turned down to minimums.

It's being replaced next week as I'm tired of wasting my time with it. I've swapped everything swappable except the motherboard and the drive all to no avail. This computer just refuses to run FS for a complete flight.

[stevehookem]

I guess I am saying CTD when in fact it is blackscreen. I thought that was the same thing.

Just this minute my son flew from SFO to LAX in the PMDG 737. Perfect, SHORT flight. CRASH about 2 miles out on final, runway in sight. This time it didn't come up with the balck screen--I could still see the runway--but there was no response and the cursor came up and was slowly moving around the screen.

I disabled the FS Global mesh. Obviously that wasn't it. Now he's flying from KFLL to KEWR. We'll see how it goes with Ultimate Terrain disabled.

Is there another equivalent to Ultimate Terrain that may be just as nice without the issues I'm reading about?

[BSW727]

I have four other Wideview systems running UT scenery and none of them have a problem with it ever.

I think my 'problem system' is just too much of a dog to run anything, including FS9.

[ShaneG_old]

I keep looking at your system specs, and wondering how it is you have these crashes when my little putter, never does, and stays smooth the whole time.  :-? :-/

  But doing so, has thrown forth a few ideas...

- You're running a 64bit OS, is there a chance that one or more addons or something else in your system needs a special driver?  I use XP pro SP3 32bit, by choice, as some of my sound equipment software isn't supported in 64bit. So that's a start.

- Are you an Overclocking I7 user?  If so, does this crashing occur without the overclock?  I ask, because I can run smooth & stutter free on my dinky AMD dual core @ 2.8Ghz, so your stock unclocked setup should by all rights be smoking mine.


- Have you tried doing these flights on a virgin install of FS9?  If it does the crashing with no addons installed what so ever, then it would have to be a hardware issue, or an issue with an addon.
The fact that it's occurrence for you is so random, leads me to believe that it must  be hardware related, as so many other people use all of the same software as you, and in similar combination, and yours is the only one having this problem that I'm aware of.

If you have the HD space, do a second install of FS9, and put NOTHING into it! Do some flights, short & long, and see if it happens.

To do a sister install, just temporarily rename your current FS9 folder, and then also rename the FS9.cfg to FS9.bak. Then proceed with the Install.

Whether or not it crashes this way, will open up some more doors for us to try... hopefully. 

[jwenham]

Hey Steve, I have been following this thread and am sorry you are still having the issues you are. One thing I would look at is the event viewer and see if you notice a common error happening before or when you are crashing. Have you run memtest to test the memory? If not I would let that run overnight and see if you get any errors. You have alot of extra items running with the sim that most people dont use so its hard to trouble shoot exactly what is causing your crashes. And for Gods sake man what the @#$% are you doing running FS9 on that system for?

[Romflyer]

I get a similar black screen CTD that only seems to happen with a certain combination, one of my favourite singles, the aerosoft beaver (modern cockpit) combined with some local scenery crashes this way everytime......I can fly the beaver anywhere else no problem, and I can fly any other aircraft around that scenery with no problem. and it's only the modern cockpit version of the beaver that gives the crash, the old cockpit beaver is fine......where I'm going with this is maybe you try a few different A/C on similar flights.....try a couple of freeware planes and see if they CTD in similar situations (short final) there are a few fairly good freeware planes that would be good test beds for this issue......
For that matter, maybe you could try a couple of flights with your PMDG 737 in locations that you dont have as many scenery addons, perhaps a few European flights or whatever takes addon sceneries out of the equation.

[stevehookem]

Thanks again for all the help.

I'm running FS9 because we are flying large airliners into large airports almost exclusively. The number of add-on airports AND AES functions (not to mention the 1000's of other scenery add-ons) make flying FS9 a much better experience for us. I no longer look at FPS at all. With this system I get locked, never changing FPS and absolutely no stuttering. Why fly FSX if you have to turn things down so much that it ends up looking worse than FS9? I always hated the "popping" in of autogen in FSX so close to the aircraft. With FS9, I can max out everything and it looks much more realistic.

True, we have been having some other issues now but they are not FS9 "performance" related. I spent far more time messing with settings and "fixes" for fsx than I did flying it!

It may be too early to proclaim we have a fix but yesterday two flights were completed with no crashes---Toronto to Tampa and ATL to SFO.

I took the computer back to stock. No more overclock at all. Cannot tell one bit of difference in performance of the sim. It still is locked and stutter free.

My son is about to fly this morning. I'll update how that goes....

[ShaneG_old]

I so glad to hear you got some flights in! 

I've often wondered why the i7s would need to overclocked to run FS9.  It's pretty much a single core application, and as long as you've got over 3ghz on that core, you're good to go for maxing out the sim.

  What could have been happening I suspect is that with it being overclocked, when you would arrive at these densely packed scenery regions, it would some how cause a system spike that took it over the edge that it was so close to already. 
With it running stock, you now have much more overhead for when these large information hits take place.

Just a theory, but it sounds good. 

[jwenham]

IS there no way to set an affinity mask in FS9? Steve try is again with the OC but before you start the flight go to your task manager then the Processes tab and find FS9. Right click it and set it to run on 1 core only, maybe try the first core or the last core. May be best to set it to the last core but not really sure. Just a thought and it would be interesting to see how it works. I thought I have read somewhere before telling how to do this a different way. 

[SubZer0]

Steve,

Please let us know how that flight went this morning, and continue keeping us posted on such flights!

I thought you had already reset your OC back to DEFAULT a LONG time ago... that was one of the first things we had told you to do.

[stevehookem]

He didn't get to fly today. Tomorrow morning is Newark to O'Hare. I'll post the results.

I didn't reset the OC because I have run so many tests and it was perfectly stable and always very cool! I just think something was not working with FS9 very well.

Has anyone else set FS9 to run on a single core? I thought FS9 was automatically running on a single core. Wasn't that a big difference in FSX? I really don't even see the need to OC for FS9. It has so much power that everything runs smooth as glass at stock speeds.

[stevehookem]

Flew Newark to O'Hare---->Perfect!
Flew Toronto to CDG---->Perfect!

We may have found a solution!!