FS crashes when minimized

[WebMaximus 372]

Hi,I noticed very frequent crashes in FS when FS is running in the background, by this I mean I minimize FS when on a long flight to be able to do other things with the PC like reading this forum etc during the most boring parts of the flight and only come back to FS once in a while to check everything is fine. Usually it works just fine the first 10-15 minutes or so but then all of a sudden I get this lovely "FS9 has crashed, we are sorry for the inconvenience..." message and all there is to be done after this is using Task Manager to end the FS9 process.Every time this has happened, the causing module has been ntdll.dll.The problem never shows when staying within FS during the whole flight.Anyone else seen this or has a cure for it?

[Guest Pilot533]

Hmmm I have this problem too, would be interesting to see what other people say.

[Guest firehawk44]

I have never seen this error while running FS9 and do not have a cure for your problem; however, I strongly suggest you Google "ntdll.dll crash" as there are a lot of threads discussing this error. Since you had your web browser running while running FS9, I suspect (after reading many Google threads) your web browser is at fault (Microsoft does a lot of updating to plug identified security problems). It may also be memory module problems or improperly system memory settings (I have my page file set at 'System Managed Size'). If you have another page file setting, then I suggest changing it to system managed size and see if that fixes the problem. I also checked over at Microsoft.com and searched their Knowledge Base and there are over 200 possible solutions to this problem. It appears this error msg comes up with practically every piece of software developed (there were no hits for 'Flight Simulator' and 'ntdll.dll' though). You know your system best, what was recently installed/uninstalled, your hardware, etc., and you may identify a similar problem with a solution. I might add I frequently run FS9 with my web browser open and have never experienced a FS9 crash. I apologize for reiterating information concerning searches as you more than likely have taken those steps but I thought I would mention things I have done to try to help you. Good luck and I hope you find a fix soon.Best regards,Jim

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks for your many good pieces of advice Jim, I think you may be right that this could be a hardware issue (memory settings etc).Haven't had the time though to dig very deep into this problem yet but will do and will post here if I find a cure for the problem.All the best,

[Guest delsutton]

I've had plenty of these incidences too, although I'm not certain it's the same.In my case, sometimes when I minimize then go to restore FSX it freezes my desktop so it looks like the system has hung. However, it is still running. By accident I hit the ESC key the last time it happened and it brought up the FSX window asking if you want to end flight or continue flying. Simply clicking Continue brought everything back to life. Works every time now.

[WebMaximus 372]

OK, that's interesting but my problem is with FS9 and not FSX but maybe your trick would work in FS9 as well :-)

[Paul J 349]

>I've had plenty of these incidences too, although I'm not>certain it's the same.>>In my case, sometimes when I minimize then go to restore FSX>it freezes my desktop so it looks like the system has hung.>However, it is still running. By accident I hit the ESC key>the last time it happened and it brought up the FSX window>asking if you want to end flight or continue flying. Simply>clicking Continue brought everything back to life. Works every>time now. From my earlier post #50. .Did you try right-clicking on the process (fsx.exe or fs9.exe) in Task Manager, and selecting "bring to front"?I haven't seen this problem with FS9, but certainly - fsx becomes a background process when you buzz off to launch - say Active Sky, Track IR, or whatever. It seems that clicking on its taskbar icon to restore it to the screen, or using Alt-Tab doesn't work the way it should. Anyway - "bring to front" will do it.