FS2004 crashes fixed by memory timings

Hi,I had posted the information below on the Microsoft Simulator Newsgroups (April 4) and wanted to post it here as well to try to be of some help to those of you having those very frustrating and seemingly hopeless blue screens, reboots and frame-freezes with FS2004.Here's a quick summary: I had to manually change the memory latency timings on my Kingston HyperX CL2 from the default 2-2-2-5 (detected by the auto setting on my mobo) to 2-3-3-7 so FS2004 would work properly. My memory is 2x512MB Kingston HyperX 1GB Kit.---------------------------------------------------------------------I wanted to post my ordeal and how I resolved it on these newsgroups to hopefully be of help to those of you having system crashes with Flight Simulator 2004.Since a few weeks now, I've tried three different memory modules from Kingston on my ASUS board and either had FS2004 locking up my PC entirely or exiting to Windows.First, here are my most important system specs:*ASUS A7N8XE-DELUXE motherboard, NVidia NForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset.*AMD Athlon XP3200+ CPU*ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP 8X video card*512MB 333MHz. DDR SDRAM (before my memory upgrade to 1GB) - NOTE: EVEN THOUGH THIS IS RATED AS A CL 2.5, MY BIOS DETECTED IT AS A 2-3-3-7 -> a fact which proved crucial in the end... (read below)*Windows XP Professional, SP1My existing RAM above worked perfectly with FS2004 without any problems. The system would never crash.First, I tried 400MHz. DDR SDRAM Kingston Value Ram (CL3) -this still locked up my system (requiring a manual reset). I would usually get a frame freeze in mid-flight, which tended to happend not when my plane was in the air but when taxiing out to take-off or taxiing to the gate at the end of the flight, or would get a blank blue screen where all video was lost; this happened even with one 512MB module (I did remove my old ram of course).Second, I tried 400MHz. Kingston Value Ram but at CL 2.5 - this time, there was an improvement - FS2004 would not lock up the system, but simply exit to windows with the error that FS has encountered a problem and needs to close....Finally, I got Kingston HyperX CL2 1GB KIT (with timings rated at 2-2-2-5 ) - and this too, after some flying (say 15-30 minutes into the flight) would crash FS and it would exit to windows instantly without any errors. In other words, one minute I was in my plane, the next minute, I would be looking at the Windows desktop.I even tried installing FS2004 in my Windows 2000 Pro as I have a dual-boot system - same problem.After doing some digging in TOM'S HARDWARE GUIDE community and articles, I found some ways of modifying the memory clock timings following the RULES which are very important.Finally, I tried 2-3-3-7 timings in the BIOS: IT WORKED!As I mentioned above, my original RAM of 512MB had been setup automatically by my BIOS with these same timings and it is these timings which obviously were best, even with two modules, at least on my motherboard.I have flown several test landings and taxied to the gates about 6-7 times and two complete flights without any problems - FS2004 is finally working with 1GB of RAM!**PLEASE NOTE TO THOSE OF YOU WHO WANT TO TRY CHANGING TIMINGS: DO NOT CHANGE THEM UNLESS YOU KNOW THE RULES AS per the link below from Tom's Hardware Guide community (newsgroups) - otherwise, you can corrupt your data and crash your system ===>>** LINK TO HOW RAM TIMINGS WORK: http://www.community.tomshardware.com/forum/showthreaded.m?Cat=&Board=comp_cpu&Number=512314&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1#Post512314** LINK TO GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF MEMORY TIMING PARAMETERS:http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20030701/memory_tuning-10.htmlHope this will of some help to some of you experiencing system lockups or FS2004 crashes. Also, my motherboard, the A7N8XE-DELUXE was known by Kingston Technology as a problematic board with respect to memory comptability, although in my case, the only program causing problems was flight simulator; all my other programs and games ran fine.One further note: I think it is significant that the crashes occurred when the frame rate of the outside scenery with respect to my aircraft went up - as it does during taxiing - for the faster response/rendering required by taxiing put too much stress on the system and the two memory modules probably could not synchronize with each other and/or the motherboard's memory controller. The other solution to what I did would be possibly to get a single module but the timings are still crucial as I found out when I tried a single Kingston 400MHz. CL2 module and still found FS to crash.John