Lately, I've been experiencing a recurring situation where FS9 will lockup my system completely at different times requiring a hard reboot. This event can occur while sitting on the ground, while flying, or on approach. I can be flying a 172 or a BAC 1-11. The symptoms are few. Sound will click and loop, and computer freezes. I can be in any view from normal 2D to outside.At first, I thought it was the sound card (Audigy). Then I thought it might be addons (VoiceBuddy or FSNav or Active Camera). Next I thought maybe the MSFS survey might be the culprit. I thought it was the SB sound drivers which I replaced with KX. I thought it might IRQ conflicts but there are none. I turned the sliders down and turned off addon scenery to no avail.This problem started about a year ago. As mentioned above, I replaced the sound card drivers and the issue resolved itself until recently where it has popped its annoyingly ugly head again. I have two theories as to the culprit:1. Bad gauge. How do you debug that?2. Framerates. A few weeks back I posted the advantages of setting framerates to unlimited. I'm now testing at lower settings to see if this mitigates or eliminates the problem.I definitely do not want to do a full reinstall because I have no proof that this will eliminate the problem; I'd be mightily ticked going through all that just to find no improvement.So, I'd like to hear your thoughts, theories and possible solutions. I know that I am not alone on this one, and there are likely a myriad of potential causes/fixes.lynx

Lynx,I had the same problem soon after upgrading my ATI drivers on a couple of occasions. I manually reinstalled the drivers: goto System Properties>Hardware>Device Manager>Display>Update driver(under Driver Tab)>Wizard>Just say NO>Install from a Specific Location>then Browse to your ATI/NVIDIA directory under C:(not under C:Programs)>then select the appropriate INF and reinstall. You can also try uninstalling and reinstalling your drivers making sure no anti-virus program is running in the background.Hope this helps.Jim Young

Lynx,I had the same problem a few months ago after I finally had replaced my SCSI subsystem by "normal" IDE optical drives: hang-ups, sound looped, hard reset necessary. Although in my case installing the latest ASPI did the trick, maybe this won't help in your case. But anyway it's worth a try, I think.Cheers,Holger

I'm going to have to look into that because I am not familiar with those systems, nor have I ever replaced them.I thought I might have licked it by turning down the framerate slider which seems to have delayed the locking up. I flew from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Pueblo, Colorado last night and everything went smooth until about two miles out from touchdown. Now, that is quite maddening.

Jim -Do you really think it is a video driver issue? I don't understand why nothing else crashes aside from FS. I have an Nvidia 6600GT and did a really clean initial install. I'll give this a try. Do understand and its nothing personal, but I am skeptical.

Some other theories I had were:o Heat - I've left my Dell case open so there's no buildup.o Addon Scenery - As I said before, I turned off all of it and it still crashes.o Aircraft - Before when it was doing this, I could fly certain aircraft without crashing. Now, I can fly anything and be assured of a random lockup.o Pausing - I'm still experimenting with pausing. I've read other posts where pilots have experienced lockups after pausing the simulator.o FSNavigator - Most folks run it. I don't have an answer yet for this.o FSPassengers - I've not experimented with this program enough to make a determination.As you can read, I am giving this considerable thought trying different scenarios and configurations to resolve the issue. I cannot believe what a PITA this $25 program can be. All I can say is that Microsoft better work all this crap out before they even think about releasing another version.As I see it, right now MSFS is like MSXP; full of holes, but the only thing we've got.lynx

I'm experiencing the same problem all of a sudden. I have never had FS9 freez-up, but now it is! I have to do a cold re-boot since everything is frozen.I think it might have to do with BEV spring textures or something. That was the last add-on that I installed and now I am having the freeze up problem. Maybe there are missing textures or something and when FS9 tries to load them, it locks up.I will continue to try to figure out what is going on.Scott :-hmmm :-hmmm

"Do you really think it is a video driver issue? I don't understand why nothing else crashes aside from FS. I have an Nvidia 6600GT and did a really clean initial install. I'll give this a try. Do understand and its nothing personal, but I am skeptical."Well, like I said, it was a video card driver problem that caused crashes like yours but it definitely could be something else. Maybe I was just lucky reinstalling my video card drivers. The screen would go black but I could hear the sound crackling. The only way out was to reboot. Have you checked your event viewer to check for errors? Sometimes, even if you don't get an error message after shutting down FS9, it will show up in the event viewer. Also check for duplicate AFCAD's as that has been known to cause some crashes. You should also check your scenery.cfg and make sure it is not corrupted (i.e., AREAS/LAYERS do not match or are not in sequence). You could also have problems with textures in a recently installed scenery or aircraft. Hope you can get it figured out.Jim Young

I thought about BEV too as a culprit. I have BEV loaded fro Summer and Fall. I have FScene for Spring and Winter so I will experiment with flights during those seasons comparing profiles with BEV textures.lynx

I'm subtitling this post, "Duh, Doh or, What the F?"FSUIPC is one of those things that I tend not to look at too often, but probably should. For me, it's a set it and forget it kinda thing.During a flight yesterday, I went to take a look at some settings to try to resolve my crashing issue, and low and behold, the module was gone. I quickly searched for it, but it was nowhere to be found. How this happened, I have no idea.Since FSUIPC reinstallation, I've had no lock ups, but am still testing.lynx

I have the latest FSUIPC module (3.5.3) so that doesn't seem to be the culprit.I was able to fly a flight from KCOS to Aspen using the Summer BEV textures with no problem. But in the springtime, I still get the lockups.I think I will post this over at the BEV tech forum also.Scott

OK, I think in my case I found why FS9 is freezing.It has to do with one (or several) of my background processes.I recently noticed one that I had not seen before, so I disabled it along with several others and so far absolutely no lock-ups at all.Here is a list of what I disabled:- Process File: ctdvddet.exe- Process File: cthelper.exe - Process File: incd.exe - Process File: ezsp_px.exe <--------- I think this is the one causing the lock-ups.- Process File: iTunesHelper.exe - Process File: mssysmgr.exe - Process File: UAService7.exe - Process File: mspmspsv.exe - Process File: InCDsrv.exe - Process File: ctsvccda.exe - Process File: mdm.exe - Process File: nvsvc32.exe - Process File: ipodservice.exe After disabling these processes, I also got a good bump in performance of the sim.I don't think the lock-ups I was having have anything to do with the seasonal textures that BEV installed for springs, since I can fly in the spring season now without the lock-ups.I'm 99% sure the freezes and lock-ups had to do with background processes.Scott :-)Gamming System Specs: (Built this one myself)AMD Athlon-64 3000+ (Overclocked to 2.35ghz)Gigabyte K8NS nForce3-250 Chipset 8x AGP Main Board2GB DDR400 PC3200 Memory (400mhz)160GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive 16x DVD-ROM Audigy 2ZS Gammer Sound Card (Set at FULL acceleration)5.1 Channel Surround Sound Speakers256MB GeForce-5700 8X AGP Video (Overclocked: Core 260mhz RAM: 430mhz)Cotytech Gaming CaseCH Products Yoke, Rudder Pedals, Throttle QuadrantSaitek Cyborg Gold Joystic for Helo's & Stick equipped aircrafteDimensional Force Feedback HeadsetsSaitek Eclipse KeyboardWindows XP Pro SP2Home Network for using the Instructor StationFS9 Sliders maxed with other settings at their best quality positions.Antalasing: 4XAnistropic Filtering: 4XResolution: 1024 X 768 32bitTexture load speed: 200Average FPS: 22 (Locked at 22)