To all the hardware folks in this forum:I can fly for about 20-30 minutes and my new PC locks up and I have to do a cold restart. This has happened on 3 consecutive flights. Here are my basic specs:HP Pavilion d4100eXP Home1GB DDR-400MHZ memory160 GB 7200 SATA hard drive256 MB DDR nVidia Geforce FX 6800 videoSoundblaster Audigy AudioCH Yoke and ProPedals plugged into USB2.0 front portsDirectX 9.0cI changed sound acceleration in Direct X to basic acceleration, but that did not solve the problem.I am using factory installed video drivers version 77.79. I can't find any history on these drivers.Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated!Thanks!Airbus

1) patch your FS to version 9.12) One thing I can say is that the NEWER vid drivers for your card contained a number of fixes specific to FS. So you might try to get the latest drivers (version 81.95??). But keep your old driver just in case. The 77.xx drivers were known to work pretty well.3) Also, if your computer is sitting on top of a heat vent, or something like that, you could be overheating. It's happened to people before.

Thanks for your help!I have already patched to 9.1, I am planning to try the newer driversand my PC is not near a source of heat.I forgot to mention that my processor is an AMD Athlon 64 3800+.Airbus

post back the results once you install the new drivers...

Hi Mace,OK, here is what I have done so far. I changed the default.xml in autogen to default.off and set up a new fixed page file of 4GB. I then conducted a flight for about 1.5 hours with NO lockup. I then exited the simulator. All looked good at this point.Two days later I conducted another flight which lasted about 25 minutes and the PC locked up requiring a cold boot. Using autosave, I was able to pick up where I left off but after 1.5 hours the PC locked up again!Based on what you have suggested, next week I am going to try a newer video driver and if that does not work follow up on a possible processor overheating.If you see anything else I could try please let me know.Thanks!Airbus

>>OK, here is what I have done so far. I changed the default.xml>in autogen to default.off and set up a new fixed page file of>4GB. I then conducted a flight for about 1.5 hours with NO>lockup. I then exited the simulator. All looked good at this>point.>Some thoughts here...This is offtopic, but I must ask, why such a large pagefile? 4 gigs seems excessive. Have you tested your PC to see if you really need such a large swap file? By "tested your PC", what I mean is, load FS, or your most memory-intensive app. Load all of the apps that you would normally use at once (FS, FSNavigator, ASV, or whatever you use). Then open Task Manager, Performance tab, and see how much your Peak for the Commit Charge is. Mine rarely gets past 500 mb, and that's with FS, FSNav, InfoMETAR, and a few other small things open.So consequently I have a swap file of 768 megs. But I only have 512 megs of ram, so that makes a difference. I'm sure if I ran a gig of ram, or ran two big apps at once, I would need a larger swap. Perhaps you do that, and that's why you have a 4 gig swap. It is good to have a fixed-size pagefile, and it's good to have the swapfile in one contiguous chunk (not fragmented), and it's also good to have the pagefile on your fastest drive on the first partition, as near to the front of the drive as possible. (It's a tweaker's difference though, maybe 2% faster swap access.)Regarding default.xml file. Are you aware of the memory leak in the default.xml file? MS says the 9.1 patch helped with that issue, but I have heard that it is not completely fixed. There is a replacement default.xml file you can download here at AVSIM that removes those objects that were causing the mem leak. I use this replacement default.xml file. EDIT: Perhaps this WAS fixed by 9.1 patch??>If you see anything else I could try please let me know.>That is strange behavior. It worked great the one flight, and then the next, you flew for 25 mins at it locked cold. I would still try the latest vid driver first and see what happens. I do not want to start suggesting some add-on problem, a heat problem, or a weak power supply, or a faulty ram module YET. Surely the vid driver will solve all of your problems.

Hi Mace,Here is an update. I finally got around to trying one more thing before I updated the driver. I reinstalled FS9 from scratch and ran the updater. I then conducted a simple barebones flight to see if my PC would still lock up and yes, it did! So I went ahead and updated my driver from 77.79 to 81.98 and ran the barebones flight again and after 2 hrs and 15 mins everything was great! I then went ahead and renamed my original directory back to my full blown installation and conducted 2 more flights of about 2 hours and no lockups!!!!!!!!!!So, as you suggested, the driver update appears to have fixed the problem! I guess I still don't quite understand why the driver update worked. I am sure others have used the 77.79 drivers without problems, but why did I get the lockups?Thanks again for your help and support!Airbus

I agree, that is strange because a lot of people in this forum reported that the 77.77 driver worked really well for them, and later drivers did not. But you had 77.79 so maybe there was something that FS didn't like about that particular version.Seems like the latest drivers, 81.98 or whatever they're at right now, are working well with FS for most people. That's good because I just bought a 7800GT card and will be installing it soon with the 81.98 driver.Rhett

>>>>set up a new fixed page file of 4GB>>For what it's worth... for your spec a 4Gig page file seems way too excessive. I've got 1.5GB RAM (see my spec below) and I set a page file of 500MB to 800MB.To determine the minimum page file size:I first found approximately the optimal compromise between quality settings, graphics card setttings, and FPS while using a complex addon plane. I then loaded a default plane and flew around dense scenery at low level (e.g. New York or a busy airport if you have loads of AI traffic). I then used Windows Task Manager (right click task bar) to indicate the anticipated page file size - this rarely went below 500Mb.To determine the max page file size:I loaded a complex addon plane with all features active, e.g. FMC flight plan, and again used the Windows Task Manager to indicate the anticipated page file size - this never went above 800MB.From my own FS experiences I can't see you needing to set more than 1GB given that your system spec is higher than mine.