A real challenge for the gurus

[Guest FS_freak]

Here it goes: After almost two years of trouble free FS2002 simming, all of the sudden all sorts of funny (and not so funny) things start to happen. First of all and without warning, I started getting these "error opening GPS_engine" messages which are momentarily solved by restarting FS2002. Shortly after that when changing aircrafts they all started sinking into the ground generating a crash situation. I searched all mainstream forums always getting contact point modification instructions which did not apply to me because this seems to happen with every default or 3rd party aircraft, mainly props. Afterwards, I started having a really weird problem when flying on Vatsim. I would appear on the controller's scope and in Servinfo, many miles away from my current location. I'd be sitting at a gate on a specific airport and ATC would tell my I was way out in the middle of the ocean.Following advise, I deleted FS2002.cfg and FSUIPC.ini allowing the program to generate them when loading. That did not help. Then I went to the next level: I renamed my original FS2002 directory to FS2002old and then reinstalled the sim. On the fresh installation I copied the mandatory modules (FSsound and FSUIPC) and added Oleksiy's Dash 8 as the only third party software. Smooth behaviour until I decided to connect to Vatsim just to get the current weather. As soon as I tried to change to another prop after updating weather, the sink and crash situation returned. I tried slewing to higher altitudes to try to recover but the plane does a steep bank and enters an unending spiral before eventually plowing into the ground. Selecting default flights in cessnas takes me to dead engine cockpits that also enter the afore mentioned unrecoverable spirals.So I decided to reinstall FS2002 once more. I renamed the existing installation and proceeded, but this time without adding anything besides FSUIPC and FSSound. After a while the same thing happened: attempted Vatsim real weather, changed to another prop and encountered ground crashes or mid air spirals. As a last resource tonight I will try to install FS2002 again, without adding any modules or third party software and without entering Vatsim. If the same thing happens I will have to find another hobby or format my hard drive :-eek My specs: Win XP pro, Athlon 650Mhz, ASUSK7VM, 256 RAM, Maxtor 20GB HD, etc. (No hardware upgrades in the last 2 yrs)Thanks in advance for any advise.Mauricio

[wsieffert 0]

When these type things start happening out of the blue, it is time to look at your computer system. Did you pick up a virus that may be changing files; Have you used up your hardrive so that the Windows swap file is having a hard time find disk space; Have you conducted maintenance on your computer lately, scandisk, defrag, empty your I.E. or Netscapte cache, delete all the old cookies, and history files, empty the temp folder in Windows.I would try some of those things before giving up, especially virus scan.Does your computer exhibit any of these problems with other programs? Have you updated WinXP with SP1 and pre-SP2; have you updated your drivers for your controller chips, sound, graphics adapter, directX?

[Guest FS_freak]

Thanks a lot for ur reply wsieffert. Matter of fact, I did update WinXP internet explorer with the SP1 pack. No other recent updates. Could that have something to do with it? I run Mcafee anti virus with the latest Dat files and no, no problem with any other programs. Just FS2002.

[Guest seev_39]

>After almost two years of trouble free FS2002 >My specs: Win XP pro, Athlon 650Mhz, ASUSK7VM, 256 RAM, >MauricioHi Mauricio,I Can add one advise. Since you have win-xp pro o/s you can do a "restore" to an earlier date when your system worked o.k. I did it several times and it saved my guts. Don't be afraid of restoring - it works great in win-xp and you can always go back to the last date.Another thing, the problem can be because of a lousy add-on. Happened to me once with a Cessna-152 that had a corrupted guage file.Seev

[Guest FS_freak]

Thanks Seev. I tried to restore but although system restore is active within XP, I have no automatically created restore points available in the past two weeks. I use my computer every day. Even odder is the fact that before updating IE, I manually created a restore point that is not available either. I ended up restoring IE to it's previous version using the add/remove programs aplet. Yesterday something funny happened. I was trying to play back a video CD when my puter locked. After a while I got an infected file alarm from Mcafee. However I could not delete or isolate the file because XP was locked. I rebooted and performed a full scan for viruses without detecting any infected files. Then I went on to reinstall FS2002 after which I tested all the default aircraft in three different fields with no crashes. So I installed FSUIPC to see if that was the culprit. Again the simm worked without flaws. I am starting to suspect strongly that there is something very wrong with network flying, specially after seeing an archived post from someone else who had the exact same problem after attempting to fly with live ATC. My erratic behaviour always comes up after getting real weather from Vatsim using Squawkbox. And then there's the thing with conflicting locations when anttempting to fly on line. Weird, since I had been flying Live ATC for some time now without encountering problems of any sort. I am going to exclude all other possible causes before I attempt to connect to Vatsim again. Meanwhile it would be nice to hear from someone who understands this SB-Vatsim deal in detail. Could it have something to do with FS2002's weather engine interfering with real weather downloaded from Vatsim? I think there