I just rebooted my PC after FS9 froze on approach to EGLL 27R in the NG 800 model. All had gone well for 2 hours today, but it suddenly froze and the sim then reacted to inputs about 1 minute later at a rate of 1 frame per 20 to 30 seconds. I consulted the Windows XP Task Manager where I was astounded to note that FS9 was consuming 670MB of my RAM (total of RDRAM 1024). After using FSAutostart, my memory had risen from 720MB to 870MB. FS9 normally uses 270 to 300MB on my PC.Earlier today, after landing at another airport in the 600NG, the sim froze during REPLAY and I had to close down the PC and reboot.I am wondering if my PC has some sort of memory leak. I am only guessing. I really don't know. The PC is stressed a lot running FS9, but I've found that with the NG series I get crashes, failures to re-set the aircraft, and now more recently, a few freezes like I've described above. It's a disturbing trend. Has anybody got any idea what I am dealing with here? Is there any way for me to test my PC's memory or RAM usage?Appreciate any input, thanks.Jonathan

I got my first "your computer has run out of virtual memory" msg the other day while using the 737NG. I have since gotten rid of Norton and installed less computer hungry firewall and anti-virus (must keep both activated due to flying on VATSIM). I have 1024MB of RAM as well. I found this occured only after about 6-7 hrs of flying.

I have programmed FSAutostart to close ALL of my antivirus, antispam, anti-popups, firewalls, anti-spyware, etc. I now use PANDA antivirus. I used to use NORTON but it killed frames. Using FSautostart restores about 150MB to my PC and reduces my Windows XP processes from 45 to 17. I don't get it. How can FS9 use 670MB of RAM?!!?Jonathan

The windows task manager shows Page File usage, if it's the graph youre talking about.Pagefile is a part of you HDD that is reserved incase you run out of RAM, because if any given program is deprived of memory it will crash, and the reason XP's pagefile gets a bit out of hand is because XP makes darn right sure itself never runs out of memory and keeps hogging and letting other programs exceed PF limits and sometimes leaving RAM free.Free memory is wasted memory.Set a page file with maximum at 256mb and minimum at 128mb for the partition FS is installed on. It may help.

a chance is you got a "memory leak" due to a new scenery install... Check you don't have a scenery folder containin an empty TEXTURE folder. If FS finds a scenery with an empty texture folder it allocates space for the texture, tries to load it, fails becaucse it dsoesn't exist and restarts this process... ending in FS using up to 1Gb of RAM and crashing :) Happened a couple of times testing some scenery or following wrong instructions... :9Bye, Luca

Just to prove a point here, I installed Norton SpeedDisk from CD on my computer, which I hadn't done in a long time.I went flying a day later, and some 30 minutes into the flight, I got the "out of memory error" in FS. Norton went off as the sole suspect in an otherwise identical configuration. No problems since.Sometimes I think the new Symantec stuff is both the patient and the doctor at the same time. It's sad because the very first set of utilities for Windows 3.1 were stellar and SpeedDisk is generally one of the better defrag utilities out there - provided it doesn't frag your PC in the process.

Etienne:I used NORTON for 3-4years and thought it was super. I was then made aware how much of a memory hog it is and I bought Panda Platinum antivirus and firewall. I'd previously used PC Cillin and McAfee. PANDA is fantastic and beats everything else. It isn't crippleware for FS9 and it's fast and very effective. The interface is simple and you can't go wrong with it. I am most impressed.JS

Terence and Luca:Thanks for your posts. I'll check those items out.JS

JS,Can you do me a favor and look in your windows task manager. Find the processes that are running this panda stuff and tell me how much memory useage there is? Make sure you count all the Panda exe files in there. There usually is about 4 for a firewall and antivirus in total. I am curious to know. I currently use Kerio for a firewall and NOD32 for antivirus. I had to do a whole bunch of things to get them to work with online flying like SBRelay etc... Thanks for helping with this. If the memory useage is lower, I might give Panda a try. Anyone else use this or Kerio/Nod32 want to share to insights, it would be most welcome.MODS: I know this thread dont relate directly to PMDG but it helps in flying your bird better!

Eric:I have three PANDA exe's running:PAVFIRES.EXE=16.7MBPAVPROXY.EXE=15.6MBPAVSRV51.EXE=4.9MBThese get turned off by FSAutostart when I run FS9. Does this assist?JSP.S. I also use AdAware Plus SE 1.05; SpySweeper 3.2.0; and my ISP supplies Checkit86 to further block popups. I turn all of them off with FSAutostart to give FS9 more juice.

Terence:I realized later that I was NOT looking at Page File usage; I was looking at Windows Task Manager "Processes"--that is the screen that indicates that when I run FS9 with the PMDG NG, "Mem Usage" is around 650 to 700MB on my PC.Does this change anything?JS