About a week ago I decided to try and upgrade the drivers on my video card, and the result was frequent CTD's. I rolled back the drivers to the original version, and subsequently had a couple of CTD's in the next week. Now I decided to get a driver cleaner, clean everything out and reinstall the orginals. In the process of doing all this and researching what could be wrong on different forums , I noticed that there were frequent postsings of CTD's after installing various add on aircraft and sceneries, as well as drivers, hardware, etc..... Sometimes this created a real problem in isolating the cause of the CTD's determing which one was the culprit. I am starting to realize that I think I have all the add-ons that I will probably ever need, UT, Level D, FS Nav, ASV, SB3, .. etc.. etc.. I feel like I am really stretching the envelope everytime I add yet another add on, and sooner or later, I will probably cause a problem that will only be cured by a complete reinstall of FS 9. After thinking about it , I believe I am going to keep everything the way it is, enjoy what I have, and don't push my luck anymore. My question is, do other people feel as I do or am I in the minority?

I feel for you, because I am pretty sure you have an ATI card. ATI drivers are known to be crappy and, to be blunt, their driver upgrade is a joke and has caused me many hours of troubleshooting.I am not a fanboi, but my new nVidia card is much more stable than my previous ATI card has ever been.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Well, sticking to the intended topic, yes I have thought of that, but I have not yet gone through with it. I'm still finding things I can download and install that are just too cool to do without. One day though the time will come to stop. Probably on the day I get FS10.:-lolNo, I won't uninstall FS9 when FS10 is released; it'll be the workhorse sim till some quality mods start popping up for FS10. And even then I may leave it on because I have so much into it. Who knows?-Jeremy BurchThe Ozark Dogfighter http://forums.avsim.net/images/wedge.gifHappy Flying!Pilot-Dead bugs on the windshield.Mechanic-Live bugs on back-order.

>"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. :-)I'm still using the Omega 2.6.42 Drivers and have not had any issues or problems in months...I think I am pretty much done upgrading anything for hopefully a year or so.

I agree, I quit upgrading at FS2002. I don't have Service Pack 2, and my ATI card is still running fine on its original drivers. I don't let 'Windows' update me automatically, I pick and choose what I think I need.The result? My computer and Flight Sim scream without tweaking, prodding, poking and all that stuff I used to do to try to keep up. Sometimes the latest and greatest can give you problems. I did install FS2004, briefly, but found that the main thing I really liked more about it was the color of the sky. Not a good enough reason to rebuild the sim. FS2004 is back in the box in a drawer. (And I really hated having to put in the disc to play it.)Anyway, cheers...Bob

How about acually do what you say, reinstall. Then install only the addons you actually use. I'm getting a new rig later this week, and have to make a fresh install, and I'm looking forward to it! I have loads of old stuff in the fs folder and most of it won't be installed on the new one. Right now I'm tired of those small sceneries where everything is nice and shiny ... for two minutes. All you can do is circles in a cessna, or you will be out in everything-looks-the-same-world before you can say "blueberrypai".What I really enjoy now is that awesome combo BEV/UT USA/FSGenesis/Flight1 Flight Environment and ASV. And of course some nice planes, and with a new rig, i may try some large airports for airshows (can't do that on my present rig).Point is: rather than stop adding stuff, get rid of old crap that is messing up your sim. A fresh install is a good start. After all, the reason why this hobby sticks to you is the ability to expand and build, try new aircrafts, go new places, right?Happy flying :)Eagle

I hear you Bob. Although sooner or later you will come across one more thing that you MUST have, or one more tweak to try.I've been there, where I get to a point that I am satisfied with the sim just the way it is. But then I read a billion posts on how great this add-on or tweak is, so the process starts all over again.I think we'd like to keep things the way they are, but ultimately we, the simmer types in general, don't leave things alone. And part of the reason is that, even if we don't like to admit it, we're perfectionists always seeing room for improvements. Believe me, its a curse. :-)

I sometimes wonder about all these complex addons too, how they interact with each other and the sim itself.For this reason I am very conservative about what I install and almost never trust autoinstallers - I got to see what's being installed and where, then I'll usually do it manually if I like what I see.Guess I'm lucky re drivers - I've been steadily upgrading my ATI card since I think 4.12, with no issues at all - I do believe though that it's time to stop pushing it.Never had a ctd that was'nt caused by a bad afcad - knock wood. regards,Markhttp://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a319/markrey/lsd2.jpgXPHomeSP2/FS9.1/3.2HT/1GIG/X700pro256

I know exactly how you feel. In about 2 years I've never had to re-install or F-Disk anything (*edit-since I bought my puter), but I'm really close now. yes, CTD's are starting to get frequent again. Have ATI card and all the add-ons for FS...LOL. I wouldn't even know where to begin now. I think I'll just wait a bit and get a new puter.

Sonar5, what video card do you have? I have a Radeon x850. I am going to try the drivers you talk about. JimCYWG

Hey Bob, I know how you feel.I now have my window open, since it was nice the past few days here on the east coast. I removed the screen about ten minutes ago after the last CTD I had. Now that nothing is between my computer and my driveway below.....guess whats next? Oh wait, I better move my car first. I had all working good a couple of weeks ago after a reinstall of FS9. Should have left things alone. I'm building something new anyway, so watching this one break into a million parts will give back the hundreds of hours I spend trying to make things work with no avail. All kidding aside, I really should let things be, but then that itch hits to get that tiny bit better performance. The result is always the same. Have a good night.Best regards, Jeff

I am amazed that this topic was moved to the hardware forum, as this had nothing to do with hardware in my opinion. The point that I was trying to make was that causing a problem by changing a driver, made me aware of how many problems different scenery and aircraft add-ons can cause , when looking for a solution for CTD's. Oh well, anyway, since it is in the hardware forum now, it was a Nvidia Card. ;) Anway, as I stated, this has made me gun shy about adding much more in the way off add-ons to my FS9, cause there is always the possibility of causing an incurable problem. That was the point of the thread.

Many problems are caused by WINDOWS itself, which does not handle the registry in my opinion correctly. IMHO if you uninstall something, windows uninstall should uninstall -everything- from that package, AND REMOVE any registry entries at the same time. It does not.After uninstalling anything, I also Defrag to close up all the space left open by the removed bits and pieces. If not, it means extended time to find things spread all over the drive. That slows the FS down and if it is seeking something, takes too long to find it, can cause a CTD. Registry entries for thing which also no longer exist, can cause crashes.Sooo, even if I remove pictures, text files, etc from the system, REGISTRY.EXE is then run to clean out the registry. The first time I ran it after buying it, it cleaned out 287 old entries. Some created by Norton, two years before I bought the Registry cleaner and ran it. One friend who used it, found over - 1200 - invalid links in his registry, he no longer has a CTD at least once a day!So, dont be quick to blame the authors of addon's etc for problems, if the system cant function correctly because of the way it is designed.

Bob, I guess that is why I read the forum. I have just uninstalled F9 and reinstalled FS2 because I was getting tired of messing things up and couldn't leave well enough alone. I have been pondering removing every download I have made and starting over again to force some sensability into myself.But I'm addicted to downloading stuff. Gotta have it! 8 gigs of stuff and I only fly 3 planes.(Well,I fly 2 and crash 1.)Luckily, most guys say that it is improper use of AFCADs which I really need to concentrate on learning.I don't have a mega computer yet. Wife and kiddies getting mad at me forslowing the thing down with my super tweaks. I don't think I will be satisfied with what I have as long as I see others out there who are having more fun than me. Right now all I can tink about is 80 gig more of storage and a gig of RAM. I have a NVIDIA and I'm learning to update drivers. Got ready to delete planes last night and got a cramp. Can't find a forum which tells me what I don't want to keep:-)Best regardsJan1,KINDWhen I push the button and it works, I'm happy:-)