Yet another random lockups question

[Guest gollum65]

I know, there are about a million threads on this forum about random lock ups. I've read many. I've tried most of the ideas posted in them, with varying success.Here are my specs:AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ECS Nforce6M-A Mainboard2 GBs RAM (2 1 G sticks that match)ATI X1900GT Video Card w/ 256 Ram (I think)(Sapphire brand)Windows XP Home with all needed updates and SPs applied (including the /3GB switch, which doesn't seem to matter to my system)FS9.1 with all patches and updates, and will all settings pretty much maxed outMy Problem:I have random lockups where FS9 freezes solid almost every flight. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for it. There's no warning. There are no error messages. It doesn't CTD, it just freezes and sits there until I end task on FS9.I could be sitting at the gate 2 minutes after I start FS9, or I could be at FL370 an hour into a flight. I may be near a payware airport, or hundreds of miles from one. I might be in payware aircraft, or it could be a POSKY plane or similar freeware. The only thing that's common is it happens practically every time I try to fly.Diagnostics Attempted:I just finished running Memtest 86+ and it passed with no errors.I use Memstatus to watch what my computer is doing, and I get the following results with FS9, Squawkbox, and ActiveSky 6.5 Running:System Memory Used: ~700 MB (about 34%)(Reports 2064 Total System Memory)Video Memory Used: ~80MB (about 12%)(Reports 756 available, which seems wrong??)CPU Usage: Core 1 is usually close to max, about 95%, core 2 seems to stay around 40%I do have Orthos, but I'm afraid to use it unless I have to because A) It needs ~24 hours to verify "stability", and :( because I'd prefer not to stress my CPU that much unless absolutely necessary.I don't know offhand what temps anything runs at as I don't have any monitoring software installed. I can say that I don't think anything gets dangerously hot, but of course it does heat up as I use more resources.I have 1 other game that has problems. Guild Wars, an Everquest type of MMORPG game used to run, but now won't, complaining about some kind of "hardware failure" that I can't seem to find.The ONLY thing that seems to help at all is if I delete FS9.CFG, I can complete a flight the next time I start FS. The time after that, I'm back to locking up again.Any help, advise, or suggestions you guys have would be GREATLY appreciated!PS: I used to run Vista and FSX on this machine, but they were in a constant battle to see which one was more UNSTABLE, so I killed them both and went back to XP and FS9:*

[Johan_Dees 84]

Tell us about possible addons?AES is known for troubles, maybe some airports are..We need more information.. drivers ? etc..JohanA LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, AND A LITTLE MORE ACTION PLEASE..http://www.jdserver.mine.nu/johanGlobal Logistics VAhttp://www.jdserver.mine.nu/va

[Guest gollum65]

Thanks for the reply Johan.Other then the previously mentioned ActiveSky 6.5 (and I don't use AS Graphics), and Squawkbox, I have a number of payware aircaft (LDS 763 & Eaglesoft CX are my primary uses) and 2 payware airports (Cloud9 LAX & EHAM). In addition I have a number of "higher end" freeware airports such as FRF Dallas, George Grimshaw's Boston, and ISD project LIRF. Plus I have probably about a half dozen "lesser known" freeware airport sceneries installed (I hate flying to default FS airports)I should also mention that I use some of the modified texture files that were meant to reduce resource impact on the computer and increase frame rates, such as TreeX for FS9, Photograss, and Real Skies.And I've had all these add ons installed for months, and FS worked flawlessly for a long time. Nothing new was installed when this problem started happening. No changes to FS were made. I'm a pretty predictable pilot in that I fly mostly to the same places with the same aircraft, so once I got everything installed in FS9, there wasn't much more I had to do.Regarding drivers, I keep my system up to date with all the latest drivers, and I check quite often. For the ATI card, I have the 8-5 drivers installed. For my Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio (forgot to list that part), I have the 5.12 drivers from March, '08. And my controller is a Saitek X-45 and that just uses pretty much standard Windows drivers.Obviously something has changed either on my computer, or in my FS9 install. Since deleting the fs9.cfg fixes it for one use, I'm starting to think it's just a corrupt FS9 install and it kills the .cfg every time it tries to use it. I'm hoping this isn't the case as I don't want to have to do a complete re-install. :(

[Guest lgvpilot1]

What, if any Ai are you using? ,sometimes just one ai aircraft can bring your flight to a halt .Mark

[Guest gollum65]

I don't use AI. I fly on VATSIM. Sometimes it's NoI. :D

[Guest gollum65]

This morning I made 2 adjustments to FS, then tried again. First, I removed the /3GB switch. And second, I uninstalled an Aerosoft airport someone had recently given me as payment for services rendered, since someone mentioned that AES was causing problems. It wasn't an AES airport, but i figured it was worth a shot.Then I tried the same flight I had attempted yesterday morning, and just like yesterday, FS locked up about 1 hour into the flight. I was cruising at FL370 and FS just froze up solid.I don't know if it helps, or matters, but when this happens I noticed that core 1 is pegged at 100%, while core 2 drops to almost no activity.If nobody has any ideas, I guess I'm stuck with having to reinstall FS9 and my addons again? :-grr

[Guest J154M]

Hey Gollum65,I've been having these problems for ages! Speaking to Microsoft at the moment about it. Check out my topic if it helps you.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=48087&page=2Have you re-installed FS yet? I wouldn't bother if you've already done so.I worry that its my GFX card which is causing it (Inno3d GE Force 8800GTS).So far I've been told to remove all AI aircraft and reboot the sim and try some flights, if that works, reinstall all AI aircraft bit by bit to see which one is causing the problem, its usually down to corrupt texture files.Same for addon scenery, when I removed all scenery, the sim worked fine. I can do flights no problem now so far though it randomly locked yesterday!!Add your addons bit by bit to see which one is causing the lock.My sim lock triggered when I opened the GPS, opened the weather, Traffic, AI options, moved the water detail up to high and just general flying around. Hope this helps and get back to me.Jamie.

[Guest gollum65]

Thanks for the response. To be honest, your problems look and sound more like video card problems then I think mine do. But I haven't ruled the video card out yet either.I do have a couple more fixes in mind that I'm going to try later this week when I have time to fly again. I'll post again when I try them.