UTIL.DLL Crash over NW India - any clues

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Hi Jure,As you may have seen from my earlier reply I tried a stripped-down scenery.cfg but the problem remains.What you say about GE makes sense and I would try restoring the defaults but because I copied FS9 in its entirety to my new computer the Registry entries aren't present to allow GE to run. But as you say, GE is unlikely to be the problem.I also moved all non-default DLLs to a temporary folder and it made no difference. FS9 crashes at the same time when loaded from an autosave. The clock on the default 737 confirms this.It has to be related to the location. The fact that I flew all the way from EGLL to 40 miles from Singapore before hitting this problem today suggests it's location specific. And yesterday's crashes were all within a few miles of OPFA.Time to think about this some more but if you have any more suggestions I'll be pleased to hear them.Thanks.

[Jure 36]

Ray,what about X:Flight Simulator 9Sceneryxxxxxxscenery folders? Have you - or better, some installer - replaced one of the .bgl's there? Since this is Asia, concentrate on the X:Flight Simulator 9SceneryAsiascenery. The newest date you should see there is June 6th 2003. If there is anything newer, it could well be, that one of the files was overwritten by something. Also, please check folders Base, Generic and World. There HAS to be one rogue file that's causing this. Have you tried changing the season? It may sound weird, but you never know... Jure

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Hi Jure,In fs9sceneryasiascenery I have 15 BGLs dated 12 Jan 07 and later. I'm pretty sure these relate to the 9Dragons scenery. 6 original BGLs have been replaced by modified ones.This may be a coincidence but of the few hits I had yesterday looking for UTIL.DLL problems one involved the 9Dragons scenery. But this only happened when you started at VHHX and then moved to another airport.Genericscenery also has recent BGLs - one named 9D_VHHX_IGS_Approach.BGL. This, and the ones above will still be getting loaded even if I disable the 9Dragons scenery won't they?World/scenery has some relating to VOZ which I uninstalled a while back but nothing for 9Dragons.It seems the next logical thing to do is to uninstall 9Dragons VHHX and take it from there.Thanks for your help, it's much appreciated. :-)

[Jure 36]

Hi Ray,hm... I wouldn't go as far as uninstalling 9Dragons. If you are careful, you can temporarily install original .bgl's back just to see what will happen. That goes for Asia/Scenery. The file for the IGS approach in Generic/Scenery can simply be renamed to something like 9D_VHHX_IGS_Approach.xxx and it will not get loaded. Just to be on the safe side, disable ONLY 9Dragons scenery in Scenery .cfg. Obviously, the files in 9Dragons folders are ok, since you have already tried to run FS9 with stripped down scenery.cfg. Maybe one of the .bgl's in Asia/Scenery is to blame? World/Scenery contains modified files? Or added files by VOZ? I would clean that as well.FS can be weird, generating error thousands of miles away from the actual problem area. Keep us posted. Fingers crossed... :)Jure

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Hi Jure,Firstly, yes, I did try changing the season but it made no difference.It occurred to me that with that minimal scenery.cfg I'm only loading BGLs in WorldScenery and BaseScenery. The asiascenery files are not getting loaded are they?I temporarily moved to another folder all BGLs created after 31/12/2003 from base/scenery and worldscenery but the problem persisted.So I decided to disable the Default Terrain entry - sceneryworld. I got a message about a non-existent folder but was able to load the flight.It's stopped the error! :-) Now the tricky bit. Finding the rogue file or files. Is it going to be a BGL or one in the worldtexture folder? The problem is I have 34,399 files in that folder.It contains 4164 AGN files, a VOZ bat file, 30,231 BMPs, 1 txt file, 1 .db file and 1 .zip - original water textures. Is yours a comparable size?Got any ideas on how to proceed now? I think I have some remnants of VOZ remaining but not sure if they're responsible and how to identify them. Can bad texture files cause a CTD or is a BGL still likely to be responsible?Thanks.

[Jure 36]

Hi Ray,you are right, if you disabled everything in the scenery.cfg, then Asia files would not load. So you kept only World and Base and got the CTD again? My Worldscenery has 100 files, but a few are extra.Worldtexture has 26,751 files, but that includes texture files for Project Canarias photoreal scenery.Here's an idea: rename your Worldscenery folder to something else and install default .bgl's from your FS9 disk to a brand new worldscenery folder. If you get a CTD, then do the same with the Worldtextures folder. I would say that a .bgl is to blame (and easier to debug because of lesser volume of files), but I am no expert. I keep a clean install of FS9 just for such purposes on one of my hard disks.Maybe it would be worth checking the main FS9 folder for extra .dll files? Although I do not know how a .dll file could cause such a localized CTD...Hopefully, someone else will chime in if this doesn't work. Jure

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Hi Jure,Thank you for your continued help with this exasperating problem.you are right, if you disabled everything in the scenery.cfg, then Asia files would not load. So you kept only World and Base and got the CTD again?That's correct. Disabling the World (terrain) entry stopped the CTD.Here's an idea: rename your Worldscenery folder to something else and install default .bgl's from your FS9 disk to a brand new worldscenery folder. If you get a CTD, then do the same with the Worldtextures folder. I would say that a .bgl is to blame (and easier to debug because of lesser volume of files), but I am no expert.Is it possible to copy files from the CDs without running setup.exe? If so then I'll do as you suggest and only bring in default BGLs followed by default textures.If I can't easily find these files or copy them I'll rename my FS9 folder to FS9CURRENT and install a virgin FS9 to FS9. Then I'll rename that new FS9 folder to FS9VIRGIN and my original back to FS9. That stops the registry getting wrong paths and gives me a virgin FS9 albeit without the 9.1 patch which hopefully didn't include any files from these folders. To be on the safe side I should probably install the patch though.Then I'll rename worldscenery in my original install and copy the virgin one over. The I'll do the same with worldtexture if necessary. With perseverence it should be possible to identify which BGL is responsible.Before I do any of this I will check the FS9 folder for any DLLs. I'm not sure if those get loaded or not but checking and renaming any is a simple action.At least the problem has been whittled down to one of two areas. I've closed things down for the night so I'll try this tomorrow.Thanks.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Hi Jure,I'm afraid I'm like a dog with a bone. I decided to install a clean copy of FS9 plus the patch. I copied my test flight over and ran it. No problems. Good.Next I renamed sceneryworldscenery in my original setup and copied the virgin one. Still got the crash. :-(So I put the original sceneryworldscenery back and renamed/copied sceneryworldtexture. Ran the test. Bingo! No crash.So it's something in that worldtexture folder. Trouble is my original has 34000+ but the default has 3880 or so. I also have the Canarias scenery.I need to try copying blocks of files over and test each time. It's a royal pain but at least the problem area has been identified. I'll continue with this Monday evening and report back.Yiu've been a real help with all this. I'm reasonably proficient with FS9 but the key was your suggestion to use a barebones scenery.cfg.That's all for tonight.:-wave

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Hi again Jure,I took time off work to sort this out. I thought I'd nailed the offending file - 008b2m11.bmp - as FS9 was okay without it but crashed with it. Surprisingly it was an original from 2003 so I copied the one from my virgin install.Sadly it didn't fix the problem. I think it may have something to do with Ground Environment textures so I've restored worldtexture back from where GE backed it up.Good news! That's fixed the problem both at OPFA and also 40 miles from WSSS where I hit the problem again. :-hahHopefully installing GE textures will not bring the problem back. I'll find out later tonight or tomorrow. Whenever I can pluck up the courage.Thanks for your help on this. Couldn't have done it without you! Have a beer on me :-beerchugCheers,

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

I bit the bullet, installed Ground Environment and loaded my test flight to check for the UTIL.DLL error.Watching the second hand on the 737 clock was nerve racking as the moment approached. A couple of brief pauses gave me palpatations but the fight continued and no errors! I guess the pauses were files being loaded. This time FS was happy with them. :-)I also tried a take-off from OPFA and that too went without a problem.I think I can put this to bed now. Hopefully there'll be no further crashes. Fingers crossed!

[Jure 36]

Good morning, Ray!Great news! I'm really glad that you managed to find the cause. :)I'll have that beer, thank you, but I only nudged you a bit. :)It was Nevin, that got you started with his suggestion of a bare bone scenery.cfg. And you were correct about suspecting GE.... I must say that I frown upon your discovery, LOL, because it makes no sense to me that some odd GE texture should get corrupted somehow and cause an util.dll CTD in a very localized area. Strange... and yet you found it! Well, I learned something new, too. :)Good luck and happy flying!Jure

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Hello Jure,Firstly, I must apologise to Nevin. Sorry for not giving you due credit.:-doh Yes, I also find it strange that it should be down to a texture file or files. Only many flights will definitely prove this of course but the fact that I can fly in two areas that previously had problems is encouraging.Nice to have a happy ending!:-)