Flight Sim 2002 crashed my Hard Drive!!

[Guest Flying4Free]

Well, that's what it seemed like. I'm running XP with an Asus A7Pro MB, AMD 1.0gig, 512mb RAM, GeForce2 MX400 64mb, Maxtor 7200 20gig HD, SBL Value, and using the most current Detonator drivers from nVidia. Every time I've ran FS2K2, the computer has all of sudden shut down/warm boot and loads windows just fine. Well, here I was flying my newly downloaded and installed P38 from Simviation yesterday(really nice bird!!) when I went to the top down map view (ctrl+s) and zoomed out to see the earth..why, who knows. All of a sudden, screen went black and the computer began a reboot. Well, when it started doing it's little thing, it never detected the HD...press F4 to skip was the only note. Uh...ran some tests and absolutely no HD was found, not even in the bios. So I decided to reboot using the XP cd and do a fresh install just to see what would happen. I had tried everything. The dang thing started installing. I shut down the computer and cleared CMOS. So now I've done a complete format and installed XP. Bios did an auto detect on the HD and is running fine. I'm not going to run FS2K2 for about a week or two to see if anything like that happens again. Has this ever happened to anybody or knows what the heck is going on. I'm thinking it's the Detonator drivers with an old card...but to wipe out a HD and mess up the bios??? Hmmmm...I'm sooooo confused!Any help would definitely be appreciated. BTW, this never happened while running Win98SE. Not even with the newest detonator. Mike

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I would say that FS2002 didn't crash your hard drive, but the problem of the repeated reboots has. Your solution may be found in your last sentence. When you converted from 98SE to Winxp, did you change anything else? Did you add memory, as an example? Did you upgrade your Hard Drive? Did you verify that XP's IRQ assignments were the same as 98SE's?You could also have a defective or weak RAM chip, which would explain why 98SE worked with FS2002 while XP hasn't--XP has a higher memory footprint than 98SE. You could try pulling one of your chips (I'd suggest the last one), to force XP to use less memory. That might isolate the problem if it's RAM related.Hopefully this will give you a place to start research...-John

[Guest Flying4Free]

Funny you'd say bad RAM...I had a bad stick of 256mb when runnin' Win98SE. I formatted to give my computer that "fresh feeling" before I installed FS2K2. During the install of FS, I kept getting blue screen after blue screen. Drove me nuts. So I did the RAM isolation thing and tried one stick at a time. Sure enough, bad stick. It installed fine after I took out the 256mb stick. I just don't have any luck with this computer!! I'm thinkin' maybe even a bad MoBo? So now, here I am with another dilema with FS2K2. Hopefully it's not the RAM...Thanks for your quick response and the help.Mike

[Guest]

Hi there, I remember reading a post describing similar behaviours - spontaneous rebooting - perhaps on a hardware board (www.sysopt.com or www.viahardware.com).Two solutions seemed to be offered:1 - check the temperature that your machine is recording - system temp and cpu temp and consider adding cooling fans - induction and extraction2 - power supply - is your power unit delivering adequate wattage, seems that a minimum 300w is recommended.If your in-case temperatures allow, perhaps try a modest increase in core voltage, which may be possible in your bios options.Finally, this is my amateur advice and please accept it as such - please do some research on these areas first, I'd hate to encourage you to tweak voltage and cause donner und blitzen to eminate from your case.PH

[Guest Flying4Free]

Thanks Phil, I've got two fans that are not really doing the best of jobs, well 3 counting the cpu fan. Definitely using a 300w PS. My chip does run pretty hot. I called AMD tech support and they said the Athlons run hot. I'll try some more cooling or just upgrade the cooling I've got. Thanks again! Mike

[Guest Niels_C]

Hi Mike,My Athlon 1.4 ran pretty hot, and that was mostly because the fancould not get enough air. The PSU was in the way in my previousmidi-tower, so I cut a hole out in the PSU. Later I upgraded to a"middle-tower" and that helped even more.Fly safe,-Niels Christiansen

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I have given thought to the P/S as the source of your problem as well, although I've assumed from your posts that your system is exactly the same, with the exception of the O/S. That's what made me feel memory could be an issue, given XP's greater memory footprint.If you used your upgrade to XP as an opportunity to enhance other hardware on your system, then the cooling/PS issue may be in the forefront....-John

[Guest Flying4Free]

One question for everybody..what does this mean? "XP has a higher memory footprint than 98SE" I'm running 512mb of PC133 SDRAM. I thought that would be plenty for XP. Also, I've added nothing to my hardware, made no upgrades of any kind. Just a simple install of XP. Yes, for sure I thought it would improve on frame rates, performance, etc. Now I'm thinking I need to go back to Win98SE. I still haven't installed FS. I'm really missin' all these great downloads, too.Mike

[John_Cillis 2,406]

What I mean is that XP is simply using more memory than SE... Perhaps not enough to challenge a 512 meg system, but if one of the RAM chips is compromised, it might be just enough of a "footprint" increase to start stressing the compromised chip. Most of the XP users here applaud the O/S on how stable it is. Since you haven't replaced any hardware, the issue is either memory, or perhaps a power supply/heat problem that just happened to coincide with your O/S upgrade out of pure chance.-John

[Guest Flying4Free]

Thanks! If it is a RAM stick, then I'm definitely jinx'd with bad RAM. Do you think that an overheated PS would knock a hard drive out of the bios? Or even a bad stick of RAM? Just a thought. Thanks again for your knowledge. Mike

[Guest Flying4Free]

O.k., I did the install of FS. I've got a floor fan blowing into the case with the side removed from the case. I've ran FS with the new 727 and have had no problems. Soooo...seems like a heat problem? Who knows, I'm still in early testing phases. Here's a SS I took just a few minutes ago.