Everyone having this issue - what exact sound chipset are you using? I'd like to see if there's some sort of commonality here (Soundmax vs. Realtek is what I'm thinking) - I have a Realtek chip on my mobo and I've never seen this, saw others mentioning Soundmax... Everyone's sound drivers are up to date too? (Soundmax updates will be at the mobo maker's site, Realtek posts drivers themselves at http://www.realtek.com.tw and they're updated on a nearly weekly basis, I usually update every 3 or 4 revisions or so, I honestly have no idea what they're changing that often...)

Asus Rampage II Extreme with SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio and most "recent" driver (03/20/08) 6.10.2.6480 from Asus Global Website on Vista 64 Home Premium with FSX SP2 here.Planes affected: 747 and MD11

Ryan,I have also experienced this issue with the onboard SoundMax chipset as well as my Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi.Bob Modrowski

Everyone having this issue - what exact sound chipset are you using? I'd like to see if there's some sort of commonality here (Soundmax vs. Realtek is what I'm thinking) - I have a Realtek chip on my mobo and I've never seen this, saw others mentioning Soundmax... Everyone's sound drivers are up to date too? (Soundmax updates will be at the mobo maker's site, Realtek posts drivers themselves at http://www.realtek.com.tw and they're updated on a nearly weekly basis, I usually update every 3 or 4 revisions or so, I honestly have no idea what they're changing that often...)

Ryan,I have a SoundMax on-board as well. Asus P6T Deluxe v.1 mobo. Driver Details:Driver Provider: MicrosoftDriver Date: 6/21/2006Driver version: 6.0.6002.16659Digital Signer: microsoft windowsEverest reports the following: High Definition Audio Codec Name Analog Devices AD2000BCodec ID 11D4989Bh / 10438372hCodec Revision 00100300hCodec Type AudioSupported Sound Formats 8 kHz, 11 kHz, 16 kHz, 22 kHz, 32 kHz, 44 kHz, 48 kHz, 88 kHz, 96 kHz, 176 kHz, 192 kHz, 16-bit, 20-bit, 24-bitDevice Properties Device Description Analog Devices AD2000BDevice Description (Windows) High Definition Audio DeviceDevice Type AudioBus Type HDAUDIODevice ID 11D4-989BSubsystem ID 1043-8372Revision 1003Hardware ID HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_11D4&DEV_989B&SUBSYS_10438372&REV_1003If you need any further info, I'll be keepings tabs... :( Jay

Everyone having this issue - what exact sound chipset are you using? I'd like to see if there's some sort of commonality here (Soundmax vs. Realtek is what I'm thinking) - I have a Realtek chip on my mobo and I've never seen this, saw others mentioning Soundmax... Everyone's sound drivers are up to date too? (Soundmax updates will be at the mobo maker's site, Realtek posts drivers themselves at http://www.realtek.com.tw and they're updated on a nearly weekly basis, I usually update every 3 or 4 revisions or so, I honestly have no idea what they're changing that often...)

Ryan,I have this problem with a Soundblaster XFI Titanium Fatality PCI-Express Sound Card. Rest of my specs are in the signature below.As a side note, the problem only occurs in Vista on my system. I have reverted back to XP-64 and have not seen the problem at all for about 3 months now. When running Vista, I can't get 15 minutes into a flight before the screen goes black. Both MD-11 and 747x. No other planes do it and I have most of the big payware addon iarcraft. As a test last weekend, I tried a brand new Vista 64 load with clean FSX/wSP2 and nothing but the 747x. I set up a flight and went to save it and the screen went black when returning from the save window. Unfortunately, I can't try the sound quality reduction since the soundblaster driver (latest as of 11 March) does not go below 16 bit 44100 kHz.

DarylDisabling sound acceleration was one the first things I thought of, ages ago (along with disabling any other kind of acceleration I could think of). The trouble is that the DXDiag applet no longer lets you turn off the sound accleration (on my PCs with Vista onwards, anyway). This is with a variety of sound drivers, including so-called WHQL ones. So you could well be right - but unless or until we get back the ability to disable sound acceleration, it's not a viable solution.Incidentally, I'm sorry you've been getting this problem with the 767X: it's always been absolutely reliable for me.Tim

We will never see sound acceleration slider in Vista. The Vista audio stack does not use DirectSound acceleration. See the following link for more info:http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/bo...message.id=1694

Man I wonder if going to XPx64 would be the better option?- Chris

Ryan,I have this problem with a Soundblaster XFI Titanium Fatality PCI-Express Sound Card. Rest of my specs are in the signature below.As a side note, the problem only occurs in Vista on my system. I have reverted back to XP-64 and have not seen the problem at all for about 3 months now. When running Vista, I can't get 15 minutes into a flight before the screen goes black. Both MD-11 and 747x. No other planes do it and I have most of the big payware addon iarcraft. As a test last weekend, I tried a brand new Vista 64 load with clean FSX/wSP2 and nothing but the 747x. I set up a flight and went to save it and the screen went black when returning from the save window. Unfortunately, I can't try the sound quality reduction since the soundblaster driver (latest as of 11 March) does not go below 16 bit 44100 kHz.

KyleAsus have published a new set of beta drivers for Windows 7 for the P6T Deluxe v2. I found that these recognised the card in my Rampage Extreme and "enabled" the 8000Hz option. You might try giving them a go just in case. Tim

I just completed a 3hr flight w/ no problems at all! I ran my usual addons and FSRecorder.

I just completed a 3hr flight w/ no problems at all! I ran my usual addons and FSRecorder.

What quality setting were you using on your XFI Titanium? I have the same card and it won't go below 44,100.

KyleAsus have published a new set of beta drivers for Windows 7 for the P6T Deluxe v2. I found that these recognised the card in my Rampage Extreme and "enabled" the 8000Hz option. You might try giving them a go just in case. Tim

That was my next step. Install Windows 7, and use the MB sound instead of the Soundblaster. I tried Windows 7 last week (with soundblaster) and it had the same black screen issue after going to the menu.

What quality setting were you using on your XFI Titanium? I have the same card and it won't go below 44,100.

I'm using the lowest setting that the card will allow which is 16bit 44100Hz. That setting has seem to work well for me so far.

I'm using the lowest setting that the card will allow which is 16bit 44100Hz. That setting has seem to work well for me so far.

Interesting, because that setting definitely did NOT work for me. I had to lower it to 16,000 or lower to get it 100% reliable, which it has been so far. Now, I understand that you don't have that option available to you. Have you attempted to 'break' it, such as going to the menu, or ALT-ENTER, or using instant replay at the end of your flight? I only mention doing those things for testing purposes. If you can complete all your flights without incident, then by all means consider it fixed!Perhaps we need to determine why some hardware/driver combos offer more quality settings than others. It never seemed to matter before, but if this turns out to be the only way we can reliably fly these a/c then we need to explore ways to get it working for as many people as possible. Yes, I know it's not really a 'fix', merely a work-a-round, but it works, has very little downside and that's good enough for me, at least.Jay

Everyone having this issue - what exact sound chipset are you using? I'd like to see if there's some sort of commonality here (Soundmax vs. Realtek is what I'm thinking) - I have a Realtek chip on my mobo and I've never seen this, saw others mentioning Soundmax... Everyone's sound drivers are up to date too? (Soundmax updates will be at the mobo maker's site, Realtek posts drivers themselves at http://www.realtek.com.tw and they're updated on a nearly weekly basis, I usually update every 3 or 4 revisions or so, I honestly have no idea what they're changing that often...)

Well hell, what'ya know!!!! For the first time in friggin' ages (years) I can now switch between full screen and window-mode by dropping the sound hardware acceleration to 'basic.' THANKS DARYL!!!!!!!Although I peform frequent upgrades with Asus motherboards, I have been migrating my Creative XFi XtremeGamer Pro 5.1 PCI audio card across all those builds. This has been over the last couple of years, shortley after FSX came out. No wonder the problem persisted across upgrades and different hardware (one audio card). B) :( B)[Edit - moments later ] Well almost - if the windows-key minimizes FSX from full screen to the taskbar button, it still will not restore to full screen, even with an alt-enter, without using my task-manager trick. Oh well, back to the drawing board and full hardware acceleration. :( :(

I did ALT-ENTER back and forth, use FSRecorder, and view a instant replay. I even ALT-TAB'd a few times and it would not break. Now I haven't gotten a chance to try it again, but I will

Wait, so you guys HAVE seen this on other products besides PMDG? (Nico said he saw it on a host of planes) That would tend to rule out anything in our code being responsible if it's not isolated to our airplanes...

Ryan, my issue is a totally black monitor. Occurs intermittently when switching to desktop via pushing the windows key on the keyboard or Alt+Tab. I have experienced the black screen issue in other aircraft than PMDG. Not a PMDG specific issue. I can sometimes recover from the black screen by repeatedly going to desk top and back to FSX. This issue may also present with corrupted textures in the form of missing panel, buildings and ground.A second type of failure I experience is a white screen. White screens are harder to recover from (almost never able to recover). I have not flown another aircraft besides the PMDG since this white screen issue manifested itself. (meaning I cannot compare to any other product and I am not saying it is a PMDG only issue)Black screens are experienced throughout the FSX world and there are many similar complaints stated on the internet respecting other applications.I see nothing specific to PMDG in this regard.See attached:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925722http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/Ya...?num=1240720938Read 4th post down:http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=28555http://flyawaysimulation.com/postt24192.html33rd post downhttp://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=28606http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t27643.htmlThis comment quoted from here:http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2008...vice-packs.aspxDojjan_pw said: Well to be more exact,, I formated my HD for a clean FSX,, Installed the latest DX and the latest drivers for my Video, Installed FSX-RTM then added: SP1 and Acceleration,, made some adjustments to the video driver and then reboot,, then everytime I start FSX and select flight or whatever,, I try to exit the simulator or go to the menys in it,, the only thing that happens is that I

Hi, just wanted to let you know, that I also have the same problems. One thing that I wanted to mention here in addition to all the many aspects already written in this thread is that Nvidia stated in its release notes to older driver versions, that minimizing FSX by pressing alt+tab doesn