CTD after a few hours of flying

[Guest 747-400 luva]

HiI'm stressed. I am starting to get annoyed with FSX. No matter what I do it keeps crashing. It flies for a couple of hours and then crashes and has done since the start. I have changed from WinVista 64 to WinXp and it still crashes. I have reinstalled FSX so many times and it still crashesthe only add on at the moment that is on is PMDG 747-400X. I have both SP1/2 to see if it will help but still crashing. I do not know what to do anymore. Has anyone had troubles with the video card that I have and had troubles with. If anyone has the same problems that I have and they fixed PLEASE HELP! It will be appreciated very much.Evan

[Guest JIMJAM]

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[Highmike 68]

I had this problem when FSX was released back in 06. I could fly for maybe 20 minutes and then the whole system would lock up and I had to cold boot. It turned out to be a CPU temperature thing. If you're having summer weather now you might try taking the side covers off your box and pointing a fan at it. It's winter for me now so I don't have a worry, but I've got an air conditioner now for the summer months. It seems FSX is a real resource hog which drives up the temperature.Mike.

[mjrhealth 820]

Yes, FSx will stress everything in your pc where other games wont, so make sure you have heaps of ventilation in your pc and if it crashes again reboot and chech you cpu and video card temps.

[Guest triangle]

Yep, I am betting you have a hardware issue - get SpeedFan downloaded and running and start to monitor your CPU, core and system temp. I recently had a series of FSX CTDs within 10 mins of loading it up - a new, cooler case, PSU and better CPU fan later and all is well again. SpeedFan showed my temps were getting too high.Andrew

[Guest firehawk44]

You haven't stated yet what the error message states when it crashes. If you don't see a message, check your event viewer and see if it shows a cause of the crash. Overheating or hardware problems will bring down any system but, if it's just FSX crashing, you're probably getting the infamous out of memory (OOM) error. It causes crashes after just a few minutes of flying to several hours depending on the complexity of the aircraft or scenery being used. PMDG aircraft are pretty memory intensive. I hope you properly applied the /3GB switch for your XP or Vista OS. If you are not familiar with the OOM error, do a search on the FSX forum using OOM as your keyword and look for an excellent guide for fixing OOM errors by Bill Leaming.If you have properly applied the /3GB fix for your system AND the FSX.exe, then make sure you have defragged your hard drive. FSX is scattered all over your harddrive when installed and defragging your harddrive regularly will bring those files back into proper order where FSX can read them more efficiently. You need to do this if and when you install FSX Acceleration too!Make sure your virtual memory or page file is set properly. I strongly recommend using "System Managed Size". Many individuals try to tweak their system by setting their own size but I have found the OS manages it the best. Video cards will not bring down your system unless they are defective. If it is working properly for other applications on your system, it is not defective. The card drivers, if not properly installed, will bring down FSX (and any other game/application). Most people will see the error message such as "Display Driver has stopped working and is responding again" and that can be fixed by proper installation of the display drivers, using the latest WHQL version, and making sure the /3GB switch is properly applied. There were several Microsoft "hotfixes" that fixed this problem too but those should be installed if you keep your OS updated.Lastly, if all else fails, I would check your memory modules and make sure none are defective.Hope this helps.Jim