PMDG 747X for FSX Vista- Crashes and screen freezings

[Guest panam1736]

Hello,I wanna start by saying how amazed I am at the quality of the PMDG 747x, a product I am still learning how to use fully and i'm excited about the upcoming MD-11...Now, the other day i did a cyul-lfpg flight, maybe an hour into the flight, I started experiencing what I would describe as screen freezings.Basicly the plane and the screen would freeze there, I would still hear the engine noise but nothing more would happen or could be done...Being in full screen mode I couldnt exit it as none of the keyboards, plane or fsx menus commands would work. After maybe 5-10 minutes, (I had pressed pause in case it would return ok) the game seemed to be ok and it was on pause. I resumed playing and all seemed fine except maybe around half way in the flight (1500nm remaining out of 3500),it happened again, this time though, after the 5-10 minutes wait,it would freeze again, barely 2-3 minutes later. After 2-3 times in a row I quitted simply pressing the off switch on the PC ( i was kinda getting annoyed i admit..lol). I had saved my flight and so I tried to resume the flight the next day and the same would happen, after 2-3 minutes it would freeze. Two or 3 times, it would even freeze before the screen would come up as the flight was finishing to load, leaving me with the engine noise but a black screen but at least the echap button worked on that occasion and so i could end the flight. I didnt get any out of memory error or any error message for that matter. Since getting the 747x I have repeatedly lowered my fsx options, using the pmdg recommended setting as guideline, I even use a pmdg setting saved for my pmdg flights:Lens flare, light bloom, advanced animations,bilinear filterings, antialiasing, plane casts shadows on ground, lights lit up ground,ALL ON.Level of detail radius: large (max),mesh complexity: 75, mesh resolution: 38m, texture resolution: 1m, water effects: mid-1x,land detail textures: ON, secenery complexity: very dense, autogen: sparse, ground scenery shadows: ON, special effects detail: high (max),cloud draw distance: minimum,thermal visualization: natural, detailed clouds, clouds coverage density: high,rate at which weather changes over time: low.36% airline traffic, 36% aviation traffic, medium airport traffic, 10% road traffic, 30% boats/water traffic, NO on itself shadows for the planes. I had expected with the pc i had i could have kept it a bit higher...I'm using Windows Vista so a bit of the problem might lie there although I have other addon planes that work fine with settings much higher than those i use for the 747x...Planes mostly from feelthere or just flight. Those planes are far from the 747x in terms of sophistications though I admit...I bought my PC last fall from DELL and i paid a fairly decent 2500$ for it so I thought it would give me better performance and i"m a bit disapointed in it (the pc not the 747x....lol). I wrote my specs at the bottom if anyone can help it would be appreciated...I have read that cpu power is the key to fsx performance and i fear that may be the culprit...Windown Vista 32 bitsIntel Quad Core Q6600 @ 2400mhz3GB RamNvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MBAlex

[BillC 135]

It sounds to me like you have something (like AV) phoning home for updates and then installing them. You may well have more than one program doing the same. It would bother a "heavy" model like the PMDG more than it would something less intensive.

[Sharrow 0]

Hi AlexOver and above erratic software this freezing issue could also be hardware related. Is the PMDG744X your first complex add on? If so then it is likely that you are stressing your system more than it has ever been before. My initial guess would be either memory related (timings, voltages etc) or heat buildup. 3GB of RAM sounds a bit awkward to me (is this 3 x 1 GB modules?). You are most probably running dual channel RAM which runs best with two identical ram modules. If a third is inserted then I believe that this disables dual channel (I stand to be corrected on this though). Try with only 2GB ram to see if this solves anything...Heat is always a potential issue, especially with quad core processors. The 744X, together with FSX will thrash all 4 cores pretty heavily. Are you using a stock intel cooler fan on your CPU? There are a few excellent and free temp monitoring utilities out there - let me know if you need some links.If you can also supply your motherboard details and exact specs of your RAM (ie DDR2, DDR3 and at what speed etc) this would potentially help narrow this down.Konrad

[Guest panam1736]

OK, I'll tell u right away, im not a computer genius I know all the basic stuff but im not too advanced, i bought a stock PC from Dell, trying to get the best i thought...So I wrote the complete specs here, I bought it from Dell so i guess all must be stock parts, as for power supply i dont know where to find what i have in there, I hope/suppose its enough for my 8800gtx which i think is pretty power hungry, when i bought it i did ask the salesman if they would put 1 good enough (good enough being 350 i think)for that 8800 gtx and he yes said they would...Indeed I dont think I have somethiong as advanced as pmdg 747x in there but its hard for me to judge, all my other programms work fine and almost never crash, bug or freeze, I play Tower simulator from feelthere, simcity societies and Star Wars galaxie online with the settings maxed and they never bugs or crash, idk if those are complex programs or not compared to 747x/fsx...Thanx in advance for any info...Dimension 9200 Intel

[Guest panam1736]

OK, I'll tell u right away, im not a computer genius I know all the basic stuff but im not too advanced, i bought a stock PC from Dell, trying to get the best i thought...So I wrote the complete specs here, I bought it from Dell so i guess all must be stock parts, as for power supply i dont know where to find what i have in there, I hope/suppose its enough for my 8800gtx which i think is pretty power hungry, when i bought it i did ask the salesman if they would put 1 good enough (good enough being 350 i think)for that 8800 gtx and he yes said they would...Indeed I dont think I have somethiong as advanced as pmdg 747x in there but its hard for me to judge, all my other programms work fine and almost never crash, bug or freeze, I play Tower simulator from feelthere, simcity societies and Star Wars galaxie online with the settings maxed and they never bugs or crash, idk if those are complex programs or not compared to 747x/fsx...Thanx in advance for any info...Dimension 9200 Intel

[Sharrow 0]

Alex, you have yourself a great system! You should not have any hassels running FSX and the 747X as long as you keep your autogen and scenery complexity low to medium and ai aircraft settings low or off. Make sure you have both patches (SP1 and SP2) for FSX installed.The only way to check what power supply unit (PSU) you have would be to open the case and see if you can see a sticker on the side of the PSU which should have the PSU specs on it. 350W is definitely too low for your system though I doubt Dell would have included such a low wattage model. If you do indeed have a 350W model I suggest you get it swapped for a minimum 550W model or higher.Your 3GB of RAM is troubling me. You sure it is not 4GB? You mention you have 4 DIMM's (4 separate RAM modules) and there is no way 4 DIMM's could total 3GB.FSX on its own is a very system intensive "game". Add in the 747X and you are probably doubling the overall workload. There are very few games out there, if any in fact, that place as much stress on your system.Try a flight in the 747x with both the autogen and scenery complexity set to sparse or lower and with no ai aircraft and no weather and see what happens.Good luck!Konrad

[Guest Mower]

Do not rule out sound board/driver issues as well. That seems to cause hard locks for me with my Vista 64 and HiFI.

[Guest panam1736]

-Your 3GB of RAM is troubling me. You sure it is not 4GB? You mention you have 4 DIMM's (4 separate RAM modules) and there is no way 4 DIMM's could total 3GB-Well...to be honest, I didnt even know what 4 DIMM meant... I copy/pasted my PC specs from the email Dell sent me to confirm my purchase so I guess it must be indeed 4 DIMM for 3GB of ram...maybe they use (4x 750 MB) or (1GB-1GB-500MB-500MB) if that even exists, I dont know if that would have an implication, the way they configured it...I cant really open the PC or id lose the warranty and....I dont even know what a power supply would look like unless I saw voltage numbers on a box, then id guess that was it...Ill call Dell to know what they installed. Thanx for all KonradAlex

[dirky 1]

Alex,I have a HP system with the same specs as your system (also 3 GB memory and Quad Core 2.4 GHz with a 8600 GT Nvidia).I had all kinds of problems with FSX ( freezes, crashes, etc. ) until I installed SP1 for Vista.Since then I have no problems anymore with FSX and any add-on, including PMDG 747X.There is a bug in the original Vista and FSX, when it tries to use more then 2 GB on a system that has more then 2 GB memory, it blows up.Have you installed Vista SP1 yet ?Dirk

[jdk2 1]

... there is no way 4 DIMM's could total 3GB.2 X 1GB + 2 X 512MB = 3GB, a very common setup for Dell.Regards,Jim Karn