Frequently, as I'm in flight, I get a loud sound, kind of an electrial short sound. Hard to describe. Like a very fast jackhammer or something. The sim freezes, computer locks and I must pull the power to reboot. Not sure but many times it appears that I was switching views or going to or from external view. Today, just from 2d while enroute. I have a Creative LiveDrive 5.1Anyone with the same problem?Michael

Have you recently updated video drivers? That's what caused mine. If so go back to the older ones. Hope this helps you!-Jeremy BurchThe Ozark Dogfighter http://forums.avsim.net/images/wedge.gifHappy Flying!Pilot: November 123 on a very short final, understand I'm cleared to land ?Tower: Oh, who's talking ?Pilot: Me

Michael,I have the same problem - only very occasionally luckily but I've never got to the bottom of it. Did you find a solution?Martin

Now isn't that weird, have the same problem, but only over last week or so....Dell XPS, 3.6ghz Pentium 4, Radeon X800SE 128mb, Soundblaster Audigy 2I started off with CTD flying the PMDG 737 with FSCrew - happened twice on same route at St Abbs Head - within 15 miles (which at 450 knot ground speed and 1 hour into flight is pretty close).I have the FS9 update, so can't be a seasonal CTD can it...?Put it down to a corrupted Activesky AS5 weather file, as when I downloaded new weather, completed same flight without difficulty - as is normally always case with ASV5. Presumed a weather update with a bad weather file had crashed the sim? These occur at fixed time intervals, so could explain why CTD happened at almost the same place.However, subsequently had a further CTD with sounds you describe - like a short circuit - was wearing headphones, which I wouldn't normally do.I'm not making any accusations here at all, but have recently loaded both ActiveCamera and FSCrew for the Flight 1 ATR (plus a whole load of AI aircraft, flightplans and couple of AFcads!).Also have been running my sound card on 5.1 recently - only FSCrew made me realise it defaults to 2/2.1 - hence couldn't hear all the calls properly. Any of those unfocussed ideas give common cause?

To be honest, I strongly suspect that the Audigy 2 is the cause - it is a common factor here. I have had no end of other trouble with it and it has always been (though it's only happened three times in 6 months) when the sound has been audibly 'under most stress' that my laptop has frozen up with this siren-like noise. Tested my RAM with a burn-in test - OK apparently.I am in the middle of troubleshooting sound problems I have (frequent loud 'squeaks' and cracks - not just in FS9 either - with Creative. They sent me quite a detailed troubleshooting guide. I won't post it here now, as it is related to the problems I have with sound, not the freezing up of my laptop, but I can do so if it's of interest to you - AYOR!!Whatever, I'd put money on the fact that the Creative software is the root cause: if you do a Google search you'll find, as I did, many others with similar gripes against the Creative drivers messing up their system. Having paid a good lot of money for my ZS external soundcard, I'll persevere, but may ditch it if all else fails! (Trouble is though, my very high-end laptop (for now!!) is nobbled with a really lousy onbaord sound system)..Martin

Reinstalled all my Audigy drivers, and cleaned up onboard drivers, as Creative instructed and would you believe it, within 5 minutes of starting FS9 I get the freeze up, with blaring car horn sound.And to boot (so to speak) my screen, which runs at 1920x1200, no longer shows this option and gives 1280x1024 as the maximum resolution in Display Properties! Am I going to have to reinstall my video drivers too?!Not sure where to go from here. As this happens quite rarely, it's very hard to troubleshoot. Bit fed up by this stage!!Martin

Not at all clear why this has been moved to the Hardware forum as I don't know whether it's hardware or software!This is one of those impossible tasks, describe a sound in text form!Mine wasn't a car horn - as I think original poster said, more like a short circuit, sparking sound.No smoke seen then or since thankfully!But definitely something weird going on.

HI FolksI feel your pain...I have several times warned people about Soundblaster, frequently to no avail, since they pack a lot of features for a rather low price compared with a similar "pro" card with the same amount of features. I recognize your noize problem, drove me nuts. After switching to an M-audio audiophile card (which have some driver probs too, sometimes it loses the firewire-connection on startup, but otherwise it sounds WAY better than SB, for similar price, with less eyecandy, and no cheap ridiculous "make Chopin sound like he's playing underwater" effects, haha, great for like 2 seconds), those insane noises have cleared, yet I still get occasional crackles in fs. After endless research I found that my VIA motherboard is just about the worst when it comes to sound, - there seems to be sound bottlenecks in many VIA chips, yet they seem totally unwilling to acknowledge the problem. Not a 100% tight case, though, so I'd love to hear from you. Please, those of you with these crackling and whitenoise sounds, check if your motherboard has a VIA chip. In combination with SB you may have double-trouble... I'd like to find some pattern here.I also had lock-ups when I ran SB, in connection with those noizes, yet I had a feeling it was from low power or too much heat, - maybe it was all because of Soundblaster, jeez....Good luck with overcoming your frustrations,Dasher7(A musician and producer, please trust me on low SB sound quality)

As I use a laptop, I was a bit restricted for choice. (Or did I not investigate properly?).M. :-)

Well, I have a laptop that I use for music prod. but even though its just two years old its got a 64 mg shared ram graphics-card and all I play on it is tones or Solitaire :) The onboard soundcard is worthless, but the comp had a firewire-jack and thats what spurred me to get such a card. Yet the harddisc is a bit slow, so I only do big arrangements on the PC. I'd think I'd rather dig your rig !! I imagine that many run the Audigy card with FS perfectly, so I truly think SB should be able to troubleshoot. Sound can be a real bugger..The problem is, no computer retailers I know of ever markets anything but SB, they seem to sit heavy on the market. Of course if you go to the producers forums you'll see them moan frequently about that :)Good luck,Dasher7

I may well refer the 'Creative' guy to this thread!!M.

I am amazed. I have been suffering for weeks trying to figure out the same problems described here. I have done more install/uninstalls of hardware and software trying to figure this out than I can to admit. Being that my computer completely locks up to the point of requiring a power off, I've had no real hints to where the problem lies. I have always been leaning towards my SB Audigy 2 since it the lock ups are always accompanied by a continuous loop of whatever sound was playing at the moment. However, I had been using the A2 for a few weeks before the problem arose and when I went back to my old SB Live board I experienced the same lockups, so I was unconvinced. My motherboard is an ASUS A7V600 running the VIA chip. Does anyone have any possible solutions short of a complete replacement of the sound card or MB which my budget isn

I'm using an Audigy2 card and not experiancing any problems. I had the intermitent hum or horn problem with the Soundblaster Platiunm that's why I upgraded to Audigy2.Like I stated before you must check you IRQ's to be sure your video and sound cards are not shareing IRQ's wirh other compoenets.Bill M

An important addition. All these "lockups" have occurred while running Active Sky,usually with a lot of weather.(not blasting them 'cause I love it and always fly with it) I thought it was a video problem with just a loop or something thrown in. I suppose I need to run FS9 live weather to make a judgement. I tried a small program that addressed a sound loop but still had the problem shortly after. Michael

<>Strange, I have had the "lockups" using ASV also. Tried the same flight 4 times in a row with the system locking at almost the same location; a couple miles from destination :(Michael