Tips for those having lockups in FS2002

[Guest]

I'm passing these on as a result of personal experience, but I can't vouch for them being foolproof on other systems.My biggest lock up problem has been with ATC set at more than about 50%. My flights, on any aircraft would always be cut short after around half an hour, sometimes less. Without ATC set high things were fairly stable.My system is reasonable: 1.4 gig Athlon, which is as fast as the XP 1.8 gig more current systems, but with plenty of RAM (512) and a GeForce 4/ 4400.During the last few months I tried everything, including BIOS settings at their most conservative, reducing hardware acceleration, different Nvidia drivers etc.I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but I recently noticed I had set my scenery cache to 150 megs in the "library" settings within FS2002! I thought at first this would help in the loading of scenery textures, thus avoiding blurred textures.It occured to me that this huge cache amount was actually hogging vital RAM. So I reduced the cache to 20 megs. I also reduced the Direct X sound acceleration by one notch. I can't be certain which tweak did the magic, but since then textures load just as quickly as before and now I can run ATC at 100%.So far I've had not a single lockup for one week, including flights of several hours with the skies chock-a-block with AI aircraft.Just passing this on to others who may suffer lockups.Best Regards,Rob Young

[rcbarend 37]

Rob,With the lockups.. where you by any chance flying your own plane ? :-) :-) More seriously: unless you have only a partial installation of FS2K2, the scenery cache value doesn't have any influence at all; the scenery cache is only used if you load scenery from the CD-ROM when flying (hence 'cache').So it could well be your DirectX settings for sound acceleration; this has been reported by quite some users as solution for hangups and 'stutter' problems.Regards, Rob

[Francois_Dumas 10]

Thanks Rob, that's interesting. My cache is at 10 Mb since I always thought it does not do anything when you have all files installed on the HD... ?? I could be wrong there of course.The DirectX is interesting, I will try that ! :-) :-outta Francois :-wave[table border=0 cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0][tr][td valign=bottom" align="center]"At home in the wild"[/td][td valign=bottom" align="center][link:avsim.com/alaska/alaska_052.htm|Don's Alaskan Bush Charters]"Beavers Lead the Way"[/td][td valign=bottom" align="center][link:www.avsim.com/vfr_center/mainpages/vfr_flights_main_page.htm]VFR Flight Center]"Looking Good Outside"[/td][/tr][tr][td valign=top" align="center]http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/logo75b.gif[/td][td valign="top" align="left" colspan=2]http://www.fssupport.com/images/moose2.gif[/td][tr][/table]________________________Francois A. "Navman" DumasAssociate Editor &Forums AdministratorAVSIM Online![/bemail: fdumas@avsim.com________________________

[Guest CapnCol]

I definitely agree with the direct X option, I also turned mine down by one notch and did notice an improvement. As for the Cache, mine is at 100 as default. I have tried other settings but not noticed any change.The biggest and best tip I have ever received was to ensure that the compatibilty mode (right click icon on desktop)was unchecked. My last lock up was (touchwood) 70hrs flying time ago and that was due to a panel problem.Happy flying.Colin

[Guest]

I've also recently found out that my longstanding lockup problem with FS2002 was having my IDE hard drive's DMA box checked in Windows 98SE device manager. I will get FS lockups like clockwork with HD DMA enabled and rock solid stability with DMA unchecked. I can't notice performance differences between either DMA settings, however.I'm suspecting some kind of conflict with IDE DMA and my Soundblaster Live video card although I have no idea how these two could be messing up one another. Works for me though.

[Geofa 108]

I have a wierd one that has made FS 80% of the time unusable.It takes about two minutes to get the opening screen-then once selecting a flight it painstakingly loads at 1% in a minute. Sometimes it finally reaches a % and just stops-like 7% or 38%-other times it will eventually load after about 7-10 minutes. On the occasions it works it will slowly creep up and even freeze-then suddenly manifest. Now the wierd thing is sometimes it just works like it should-but these occasions are rare.I have tried different video drivers, via drivers, bought a new video card, dx settings, dma settings, hardrive scan and defrag,and finally the ultimate-removed fs from the drive and reinstalled it (also run with no programs loading at the startup via msconfig).After reinstalling it seemed to run well for about 4 days-then gradually the problem started occuring again-till where I am now where for 2 days now I have not been able to get it to run once.Very frustrating.....http://members.telocity.com/~geof43/Geofdog2.gif

[Guest]

The day I reduced my scenery cache from 120 Mo to 10 (min. allowed by FS), I noticed a better speed refreshment...but I experimented locks up I didn't have before! So I increased my RAM from 256 to 512 and now all things are Ok.Thierry

[Guest]

Geof A,I had the same problem you are describing. The cause was a dying Harddrive. Try reinstalling FS on a different HD (if you have 2 installed).Saludos,Celador

[Guest Niels_C]

Hello Geof,Sounds wierd. If it is persistent, then perhaps tryto install windows fresh, then MSFS. If ok proceedwith add-ons to MSFS, if still OK, then perhapsvarious "exotic" drivers, one by one to check.It worked for my setup, when performance and stability was nuked for a driver actually writtenfor my specific setup. I have since cut down a biton my lust for "optimizations", and is better of.If you want serious performance enhancing, HWupgrade is still the best solution.Fly safe,-Niels Christiansen

[Guest]

It has been fascinating to see the different reports for lockups and, in Geof's case, a major problem which only goes to show that developers are no different to everyday users of FS2002 when it comes to reliability.It seems that of my own tweaks to solve the problem, the reduction of sound acceleration seems the most likely fix, though I almost dare not tweak further for fear of ruining the welcome stabililty I am currently enjoying.I must say it is ONLY FS2002 that has given me any stability problems out of many graphically intensive programs currently on my system. While I don't wish to be alarmist or unfair to MS, I do find it odd that only FS is prone to instability compared with other equally demanding software.Best Regards,Rob Young

[Guest]

I have a new lockup problem since I installed the 40.71 beta drivers. I'm reluctant to switch back until I play with it some more, since the 40.71s are giving me very good results (except for the lockup).The lockup occurs whenever I exit FS2002 (use Windows key to return to desktop) so I can access FSMeteo and/or FlightDeck Companion. When I hit the FS2002 button on the taskbar, I either come back to a screen that is frozen, or else get a completely locked black screen. (I am currently running the 40.71 drivers without any tweaks).Anyone else experience this particular problem?Steve J.AMD 1800+, 512 Ram, Ti4200, XP/SP1, 40.71s.

[Dark Moment 0]

The combination of too many aircraft, the maximum scenery add-on layers and various other enhancements such as the entire Project AI collection have reduced my loading time to a crawl too. My own solution - for the moment at least - has been to reduce my aircraft folder to a minimum collection of favourite 'planes (yes, the B33 is there, Geof) and keep all the rest in another folder. I bring them in selectively when I decide to fly them. In fact, I have two folders: "FS2002 Operational" and "FS2002 Repair", the latter being for those aircraft that I don't want to lose but which need further tweaking to get them to run properly in FS2002!This has made a great difference to my loading time; I had forgotten just how quick the default installation was.However, that's just one side of the coin; I continue to find my FS2002 to be inherently unstable and have changed drivers regularly in an attempt to combat this. I found the latest Nvidia 40.71 drivers to be real trouble and have reverted to the 30.82s, which seem better; but running two cards, I am forever getting DXDIAG errors, ntdll.dll and FSNav.dll errors, which I can't yet fathom. And sometimes my FSNav database just seems to disappear. Weird stuff.Every case will be different, I fear, so this thread is inevitably a repeat of the usual unhappinesses; I do wish we could fly more and fiddle less. Sorry to hear about your major prob there, though, Geof; try trimming the system a bit as I have done and see if it helps, before you go putting in new HDs or reinstalling everything again.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitak.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/reds.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitakv3.jpg

[Guest CapnCol]

RobMy daughter has "The Sims" on my computer and she has addons installed. This programme is much worse than FS2002 has ever been and causes very frequent lockups, black screens, blue screens and last night we got a hardware failure notice. After running dxdiag, scan disk and defrag, I ran FS2002 with no problems. Wierd eh?Colin

[Guest]

HI Colin,I know there are other flakey programs around, so it's nice to know FS is not alone. I should have kept my mouth shut, because the same day I posted this thread, FS2k2 locked up (I hasten to add not with the SF260!) with a ddhelp error.Back to the drawing board!Regards,Rob Young

[Geofa 108]

Unfortunately-I am running a fresh install of fs with no add ins except the deb and fsuipc. I have also run hard drive tests and it tests out ok. The wierd thing is it ran fine for days after a fresh install-then started doing this. Makes me wonder if there is a corrupted data file somewhere.http://members.telocity.com/~geof43/Geofdog2.gif