I'm using Active Sky X with FSX on a hyperthreaded P4 3.2GHz machine with 2 gigs of RAM and a 256 meg nVidia FX5900 Ultra video card. During my 4 hour flight from Melbourne to Perth, I had 4 crashes to desktop. So I disabled my Norton AV (shouldn't make any difference 'cause I'm not getting any input except for weather updates that happen every 10 minutes), put Zone Alarm in "Game Mode" (which I don't think makes any difference) and opened the Task Manager to see if I could spot a memory overrun. Also monitored CPU temps (well below the alarm threshold). Finally reset fsx.exe to "Above Normal" priority and flew the rest of the way in with no problems. I also saved my flight every 10 minutes or so 'cause I sure got tired going back to YPAD and starting all over again.
So perhaps I was getting background requests from other stuff running (like the automatic AV update, etc.). When I ran fsx.exe to "high priority" it pegged both sides of the CPU and didn't change framerates one bit, so I backed that down to "above normal". Things seemed to return to normal (100% on the CPU0 and 15% on CPU1 that was handling scenery threads). Hope that did it. Many long legs to go. I'll report back.
I always disable my Norton AV and firewall when running FS. As to the crashes, perusing various flight sim forums has led me to believe that the vast majority of CTD's are related to scenery issues.
The ugly demon raises its head again. I've been fighting FSX for 3 days now trying to get the program to just RUN after it loads. Finally found the gremlin, at least on my computer, and thought it might be a good thing to share:
My normal sequence is to first create the current flight plan in FlightSim Commander, load ActiveSkyX to get current weather for that flight plan route, load a fresh (random) set of X-Graphics that (as ASX says) fits the weather, and use ASX to launch FSX and load the flight plan into the FSX GPS. Everything would seem OK until I began changing settings on the panel for altitude, autothrottle, runway heading and all that stuff. Sometimes it would lock up on pushback, sometimes on taxi, sometimes after airborne, although the last bunch never allowed me off the ground.
So I tried doing some trouble shooting. I eventually just loaded the saved flight (cold start, ground position of last arrival airport) in FSX alone, nothing else running. Same thing, no joy. It didn't seem to be a computer problem because nothing else was affected and I could run other programs while FSX was locked up and getting ready to generate yet another "send to Microsoft" error message and reboot FSX. Got to be scenery.... So I disabled a bunch of stuff and reloaded FSX. No joy. Did a complete computer scan for viruses. Ran a defrag on the C:=\ drive. No joy. Ran spy checker programs, disabled Zone Alarm, disabled Norton AV (offline, of course). Same thing. Went back to FS Commander (FSC) and deleted my SID/STAR stuff thinking that maybe it had some "bad" data that wasn't being seen by FSX. Then tried using FSX flight planner to make a simple IFR GPS flight using nothing but FSX data. Same result.
Must be in FSX because the crash messages being sent to Microsoft were all for the mscvrt80.exe file. Deleted the fsx.cfg file and let FSX rebuild that from scratch. Same thing. Did a complete RAM check. Same thing. Nothing else to do but reinstall FSX. Ran the uninstall from the Control Panel and picked "repair" (really didn't want to try re-installing all my FS Genesis stuff, Scenery Tech and X-graphics landclass, and ..... well, you know). That took about 30 minutes or so doing who knows what. I have no idea if that retained the SP1 patch or not (it does show it in the "about" screen so presumably it didn't delete any of that stuff). Re-loaded FSX and the saved flight and it locked up again. Hmmm.....variables. By deleting the old fsx.cfg file, I had also lost all my preferred settings, so it couldn't be those. The really frustrating thing is that every time I restarted FSX, I lost all my settings when it crashed and couldn't close the data to fsx.cfg. What haven't I tried? Wonder if it's a scenery glitch with the FS Genesis stuff out here in Russian no-mans land where no one else has ever flown?
Finally went to the intro screen with Patterson spinning around on his little ultra-light and went through the process of changing each setting from the intro window. Switched to the 737 which I have been flying for weeks now on my world flight, went to the Russian airport UHPP manually and reloaded FSX. Voila!! Worked like a charm.
Somehow (I suspect), although I never switched aircraft, my world flight saved file had been corrupted when saving instrument or other aircraft settings from the previous flight (my analysis ... this may change if it doesn't work next boot). I remember now that I was getting some screwy readings on engine N1 settings, and the lock up occurred usually as I was changing settings on the panel or going to the menu to tweak a setting somewhere.
Bottom line -- if you are having FSX lockups, try loading the whole setup from scratch with default aircraft, let FSX stabilize and then save your flight. May never happen again... may never happen to anyone else ... but it is worth remembering when trouble shooting.
Thank for the heads up Mike, It may just have been a one time glich of a shut down. It is nice to know that there is a repair option in stead of a delete and re-install.
One of the things that I remember from the "big boys" is that, if you are flying an add-on plane and you are having trouble with set up and controls, load a default aircraft and then load the add-on. I know this. The reason I passed it over is because I have been flying nothing but the default 737-800 for the past several sessions with no problems. It never occurred to me that the saved default aircraft situation was faulty.
I am still struggling with lockup issues in FSX but may (I've said that before) have it conquered. I started up today, and saw some graphics glitches in the menu bar and then in the ATC window. Thinking that maybe Microsoft screwed something up with the Patch2 which I just installed, I checked the MS website to no avail.
Coming from the "don't fix it if it ain't broke" mentality, I have been using some old, very stable drivers for my old FX5900 Ultra card which I didn't want to change. But I found a new set for December 2007 at the nVidia web site and they seem to be working fine now.
I can't speak for ATI users (I'm not a fan of ATI although they make some good cards) but if you're using any of the nVidia FX or g-Force series graphics cards, make sure you have the latest drivers. I seem to be seeing better fog and haze blending against the mountains as well, so maybe that's the magic bullet.
Well, I spoke too soon. Flew for over a hour with no problems, then the same old lockup. I’m also seeing some graphics issues that I’ve never had before when the fonts on the menu and ATC window disappear. This happened after I installed the latest nVidia drivers.
During one lockup, the computer moved to a “sent to Microsoft” window and sent the last 5 lockup details. Microsoft must have done something to the computer because right after that, I noticed that the FSUIPC had been uninstalled from my menu bar and from FSX. It wouldn’t link with FSCommander which was the first tip-off. I reinstalled the newest version of FSUIPC4.2 for FSX, linked back to FSCommander and reset my flight (which I have been saving about every 5 minutes). Then, on approach to Miami International out over the water, I had swamp scenery displayed under the aircraft instead of ocean. The Miami ATC failed to give me a continued descent command (or it got lost between reboots) and I went missed at KMIA. Finally landed at KMIA and lost fonts again on my menus. In addition, ever since Microsoft did their thing, now I get a temporary window telling me everytime the drive is loading the next scenery, which is about every 60 seconds, more often on approach to Miami.
I don’t know if I have some bad video card RAM, bad system RAM or a corrupted file somewhere, but I am still fighting this thing. No one else seems to be reporting anything like this on the ‘net, so it must be a worn out computer. As soon as those quad core 45nm chips come down below $1,000, I’m getting a system built with a honkin’ big 512meg graphics card. This is ridiculous!
Well, the saga continues with a bit of improvement. I kept losing the fonts in my FSX menu and ATC window, and was getting some wierd graphics polygons when switching from panel to outside views. Decided to roll back the new nVidia drivers to my older Nov 2006 drivers and had no graphics problems on the last flight KMIA to KBHM, so apparently my older FX card can't handle the new drivers. I did get them from the nVidia web site, and I did double check that they were for the FX series cards. No joy.
I did mention above that during a previous flight, the computer paused and sent a batch of the last 5 lockup error messages to Microsoft. Ever since then, my computer now will pause every 5 minutes or so (sometimes more often) to give me a black screen with the "Loading air, ground and water traffic" window, then restores the flight sim. However, I did not have any lockup/crashes on the last flight, so it looks like this may be the price I must pay for a continued flight. I'll do some more snooping on the FSX forums and review my fsx.cfg file settings to see if I can increase a buffer size somewhere. My settings are very modest (15% commercial, 10% private, 10% ground traffic, boats, etc.) so shouldn't be an issue. Never was before, and I haven't changed anything there for a long time. Microsoft "must" have done something to my settings.
I am also seeing some strange things in the Florida panhandle area. During the last flight coming from the east offshore into KMIA, the ground/ocean area was paved with swamp tiles (no water showing). On the flight from KMIA today into KBHM, the route passed along the western edge of the Florida panhandle but I didn't see the Gulf of Mexico beneath me, just more land tiles. I am using both the Ultimate Terrain Landclass and the Scenery Tech Landclass. UT was in the "priority position" so I tried moving ST up there but got the same result, so somewhere the tiles being displayed are being laid over the ocean areas where they shouldn't be. I'll go back and fly a low altitude VFR flight down there later. Anyone else having issues in the Florida area?
Investigation continues, and the quad core gets closer.....
Found a couple of possibilities. Disable AA in FSX. Install the Microsoft C++ redistributable code from the MS website. I'll report back later. Seems to be a graphics card/driver issue between FSX and graphics settings. More later.