Hi.I had the same problem with FS9 and FSX just hanging. Only way to get out was to reboot, and no indication as to why the application stopped. Found the problem with my PC was that one of the CPU's was overloading causing the hangup. I have a quad core set up and using CTRL ALT DEL I set the infinity mask for FS9 to use the 4th core exclusively. Split other apps like FSC,Active Sky etc to run on other cores and bingo no more hangups. You have to set up the infinity mask each time you start FS9 or FSX or you can use a simple programme like zoneLINK Multicore Optimizer to do the job for you. Set up the cores as you wish and set the rules as you do so and the programme does the rest.I set up the cores like this; 1 Core for normal background programmes, 2 and 3 Cores for Active Sky,FSCommander and other FS related apps and set the 4th Core exclusively for FS9 or FSX. Works fine for me,..give it a try.Loadman. :(

Nope...just crashed again on a NZAA to NFNA flight...same old same old... lighted keyboard goes black, mouse goes dead and sound loops. Nothing but a hard reboot will get the system back up and running. What does the loss of USB inputs indicate? And why does it only occur in FS9? If it was a system problem, I would think it would show up at other times?Y'know...I never had these problems with my old CRT? Seriously, it's all seemed to have started after getting the ASUS 26" LCD...does that ring any bells?Pardon me while I pull the icepick out of my eye...and then stuff it in my left ear. :(

That's odd, I just had two CTDs flying NFFN to NZAA, both times around 20nm from NFFN. The flight before, I flew to NFFN from PHNL, and the MD-11 FMC told me that ILS02 was untunable, so I earnt my virtual pay and did a manual landing and thought no more about it. Maybe FS9 has a problem around here?Here's the full list of what was active, maybe there's a clue here?Win 7 x64FS9.1PMDG MD-11 with latest navigraph airacREX2004FSGenesis meshGEPROASV6.5RC4.2Cheers, SLuggy

Hi.I had the same problem with FS9 and FSX just hanging. Only way to get out was to reboot, and no indication as to why the application stopped. Found the problem with my PC was that one of the CPU's was overloading causing the hangup. I have a quad core set up and using CTRL ALT DEL I set the infinity mask for FS9 to use the 4th core exclusively. Split other apps like FSC,Active Sky etc to run on other cores and bingo no more hangups. You have to set up the infinity mask each time you start FS9 or FSX or you can use a simple programme like zoneLINK Multicore Optimizer to do the job for you. Set up the cores as you wish and set the rules as you do so and the programme does the rest.I set up the cores like this; 1 Core for normal background programmes, 2 and 3 Cores for Active Sky,FSCommander and other FS related apps and set the 4th Core exclusively for FS9 or FSX. Works fine for me,..give it a try.Loadman. :(

I'm with you there, Loadman :( . I set mine up quite differently, however...FS9 get cores 1, 2 & 3, exclusively, everything else gets core 0...but I don't run much besides FS9 and my VA's ACARS. I have read several posts where people tell us that FS9 won't use more than 1 core...total BS that! I have the graphs for CPU usage and CPU core temperatures to prove that it certainly will!I'm up to 4 flights without a single lock-up issue...although I did have a problem approaching EGWW...terrain.dll failure. That one was easy, delete UK2000 EGKK freeware scenery. I've heard of nothing BUT problems with error messages of the "terrain.dll" and "G3D.dll" types caused by their scenery. This one was from their AFCAD file that I forgot to remove.Fingers, toes and a few others crossed over here :(

I have read several posts where people tell us that FS9 won't use more than 1 core...total BS that! I have the graphs for CPU usage and CPU core temperatures to prove that it certainly will!

Vic...what you are seeing is the single FS9 thread being swapped around between those three cores by Windows. FS9 is indeed running on all three of those cores...true...but only on one at a time as the thread is repeatedly swapped around from core to core. The overhead of all that swapping between cores actually decreases performance from what it would be if constrained to run exclusively on one.RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Never heard it explained quite that way, Bob. I'll leave it alone then...maybe it will improve the darn stutters...never have been able to get rid of those when turning or panning around on the ground.Thanks!

Never heard it explained quite that way, Bob. I'll leave it alone then...maybe it will improve the darn stutters...never have been able to get rid of those when turning or panning around on the ground.Thanks!

Vic;What kind of HDD are you using? Is FS on the same disk drive as Windoze?Those stutters when panning/turning are usually an indication that your disk system can't keep up on the textures...turning in close proximity to scenery causes a storm of texture file loads. If you see a stutter when turning, but not if you quickly turn that way again (i.e. s-turning back-forth on a wide taxiway) that's an indication you have a disk system bottleneck...the sim stutters when the texture is first loaded from disk, but does not stutter during subsequent turns because the texture is now loaded in the memory cache.The solution is to run FS on a separate fast HDD (NOT a separate partition on the same physical disk). If your mobo has multiple disk controllers (most do) it's often of some benefit to put the separate FS drive on a separate controller from the OS drive...that's usually easily accomplished by plugging the SATA cable into one of the sockets controlled by the secondary HDD controller. I've seen the WD Velociraptor, which is a very fast 300 GB 10,000 RPM drive, for less than $200 in the last month or two.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

That pretty much describes my stutters, with AI aircraft textures included with scenery texture stutters. Yes, they will be fine when I quickly return to that view as, as you said, they are still loaded in memory. The problem is I'm already running FS9 as you suggest...it's on it's own HDD, a 10,000 RPM, 78 gb WD Raptor...has been for over 3 years. I don't know if the 2 drives (OS and FS9) are on seperate controllers or not. I take it that the two plugs they are connected to could conceivably be on the same controller...not sure on that one, Bob? I regularly run a "NAME" type defrag with OOS V8 Pro...which should keep the files sorted by directory/name, for somewhat quicker access? I also notice some stutters, though not nearly as annoying, when ATC sound starts or other sound related files play. VicWindows XP Pro (SP2, 32 bit)ASUS Rampage Extreme x48Intel C2Q 9650 3.0ghz4gb OCZ RAMBFG GTX260, 896mb(C:720, S:1480, M:1220, mhz)SoundMAX X-fiASUS VW266H lcd flat panel

That's odd, I just had two CTDs flying NFFN to NZAA, both times around 20nm from NFFN. The flight before, I flew to NFFN from PHNL, and the MD-11 FMC told me that ILS02 was untunable, so I earnt my virtual pay and did a manual landing and thought no more about it. Maybe FS9 has a problem around here?Here's the full list of what was active, maybe there's a clue here?Win 7 x64FS9.1PMDG MD-11 with latest navigraph airacREX2004FSGenesis meshGEPROASV6.5RC4.2Cheers, SLuggy

SLuggy, do you have any addon scenery in that area...even an AFCAD for one of the airports around that area? Although my problems are pretty much proven to be my too extreme GPU overclocking, I have had many issues with scenery. Usually it's addon scenery that has a texture file which already exists in another folder. If there is a "Roof2.BMP" (as an example) in an addon scenery's "texture" folder and that same file also exists in another folder (including the default FS "texture" folder) it always causes me problems. Also you are only allowed 2 AFCADS for any airport...the "Stock" and one modified. Any more than that will also cause problems.

hey Victor,Sorry to bump that thread, but I've been reading and searching forums about freeze problem part of the night, and this morning I saw you active in the flytampa thread,so I thought I'd ask if you sorted your freeze issues? Because I havent, I still have lockups from time to time, and I cant stand it anylonger I think.I have a similar PC as yours, GTX260 and 4GB RAM using the 3GB switch and userva2560.I am starting to doubt the GTX260 even non OC - Asus branded.Have you lowered the TBM entry finally? I'm going to try this out, sounds interesting. I had it set to 300.

hey Victor,Sorry to bump that thread, but I've been reading and searching forums about freeze problem part of the night, and this morning I saw you active in the flytampa thread,so I thought I'd ask if you sorted your freeze issues? Because I havent, I still have lockups from time to time, and I cant stand it anylonger I think.I have a similar PC as yours, GTX260 and 4GB RAM using the 3GB switch and userva2560.I am starting to doubt the GTX260 even non OC - Asus branded.Have you lowered the TBM entry finally? I'm going to try this out, sounds interesting. I had it set to 300.

Arnaud, I haven't had a lockup in awhile...and I'm not sure what may have fixed it? I got rid of the "3gb switch" in the Boot.ini as Mr. Scott suggested. I dropped my TBM from 400 to 300. I no longer force FS9 to run on 3 of my 4 CPU cores. I'm now back to using a previous, more aggressive, OC on the GTX260 and a preset CPU OC on the ASUS Mobo...all seems to be well...go figure. As I told SLuggy I would look at texture duplicates and duplicate AFCAD's first, in your case. Now I'm working on the stutters I get when panning as described to Bob, above. I'm going to try hooking up the FS9 HDD to another controller. I have 3 on this mobo, 1 SATA, 1ESATA and 1 setup for what ASUS calls "HDD Speeding". That is basically 2 connections to a controller already set up for a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array. I'll try the ESATA connection to see if that makes a difference, if it does I may buy 2 HDD's and install FS9 in a RAID 0 config.

Well, thanks for your reply Victor, although I'm a bit disppointed since getting rid of the 3Gb switch is out of the question for me, as it frees me from OOMs (as I fly mainly heavies to major hubs).More importantly, I did have lockups way before I added the 3Gb switch. The freezes started just after I got my new computer, much more powerful than my previous one.I tend to think that some fs9.cfg settings I had on the old PC dont suit the new one, so I am searching.The freezes or total lockups cannot be due to textures or duplicates AFCADs, faulty textures will eventually cause CTDs, same for AFCADs , but not total random freezes. A while ago I had to chase some duplicated AFCADS that gave me consistent CTDs near HongKong. But that was only CTDs, I am more concerned about my hardware lockups.Only once I had the chance to get back to the desktop after a freeze, and although the OS was kinda dead (nothing functionning), I could see the cause of the problem, 'nv' as nvidia in the evnent log. Doesnt mean necessarily that my drivers are corrupted, but 'something' that the video drivers couldnt cope with caused the lockup. I suspect my texture_bandwidth_multi entry that I had set to 400 to be a possible cause of the freeze, I lowered it to 80 with a max frame rate at 27, and am still testing. I also just found in my fs9.cfg, and dont understand how it is, I have the texture_maxload set at 1024 which is non sense I believe.Since you removed the 3GB switch have you ever had OOMs?About your stutters, does these happen everywhere? I dont have stutters, except in places where are some textures mipped out of imagetool (there is a famous scenery designer on the market known for that). And I solved the stutters by reworking the faulty textures with DXTBmp.

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, Arnaud. It's a timely topic for me since I completed a new build and just getting fs9 up and running on it. I have had texture corruption issues and freezes with much of the symptoms previously described in strider's initial post. Interestingly, I'm also running a GTX 260 Super OC from Gigabyte with the most current driver installed. I've had one CTD when the texture corruption occured while in windows mode. I've since done all flying in full screen and consistently get at least temporary freezes (10-20 seconds in duration) followed by texture corruption (which can be cleared by doing a 'scenery refresh') and occasionally, enough to be really annoying, terminal lockups requiring a hard boot.It's really frustrating because, otherwise, my new system literally and figuratively FLIES! My upgrade has been everything I hoped for, but for this (and an audio driver corruption issue) glitch. If you run across any solutions, please be sure to post!I'm wondering how important all of the GTX 260's video RAM really is for fs9? I use gpu-z utility and I've never seen it showing using more than 240mb max during a session. (Photoscenery, default C-182) I can still return my video card to Newegg. Of course, I guess the question would be what would I replace it with?

Arnaud, I have to say that I have almost never had a true "CTD" with FS9...with any of my last 3 systems (this one included). Also, I have only had one, true, OOM and that was in the PMDG MD-11 and that was caused by a duplicate texture, I think. The explanation I was given is that FS9 will use LOTS of memory if it "sees" a duplicate texture? I don't necessarily agree that duplicate textures will only cause CTD's, and not lockups. Most of my lockups were corrected by searching for, finding and then removing a duplicate texture. I then reflew the exact same flights without issue. Others seem to have been caused by "UK2000" scenery...always near one of these sceneries. Removing all UK2000 sceneries have solved my problems in Great Britain. Now, all that being said, I have yet to try the PMDG MD-11 with the 3GB switch removed...I will try it this weekend, see how it goes and report back. My lockups come in 2 forms...one results in some graphic corruption and hasn't happened in quite awhile:I haven't had it in awhile and I'm not sure what fixed it. The gang at Guru3D initially had me reduce my GTX260 OC but I've gone back to the original, more aggressive OC since...without any problems. I wonder if the other changes I've made corrected this one (removing the 3GB switch, allowing FS9 only 1 CPU core, etc.).The 2nd type of lockup has no graphic corruption, sound looping, my keyboard and mouse go dead and nothing but a hard reboot will recover this situation. Interestingly, I have a backlit Logitech keyboard and it goes dark in this situation...loss of USB power? I downloaded a patch for the ASUS Mobo, which had to do with USB, and maybe that helped.I realize every system is different, Arnaud, but, as you can see, on my system a duplicate texture does not result in a CTD, but a lockup. The other interesting point, if I remember correctly, is that while I found and removed a duplicate after the MD-11 OOM...it occured within 30 miles of "UK2000" scenery...HMMmmmm. Another thing I've discovered is that "FSPause" does not like full screen mode on my machine, and will cause a freeze every time in that mode. I always have to revert to windowed mode if I plan on using FSPause on a long flight. Neither here nor there, I know, but thought I would throw that in. It's becoming obvious that no one thing has caused my lockups? With the fact that a duplicate texture has almost never produced a CTD on my system, but rather lockups, I have to stick by my first recommendation to you...look for dupes, Arnaud. Let's, at least, eliminate that as a culprit and then we can move on to something else?Desertwind...It sounds like you may have separate issues, as I did, causing your problems. The temporary freezes which can be fixed with the "R" key stroke sounds like something different than the issues causing your hard freezes? I know I'm sounding like a broken record but...delete any duplicate textures and then let's see what happens? I'm still very happy with my GTX260 and would hold off on returning it, just yet. Good choice on shopping at Newegg, BTW...they're great. Can you send us more info on your system? If somebody ever makes a flight simulator, a TRUE simulator, for the X-box or PS3, I think they will become billionaires!! :(

Thanks Victor,Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by 'lockups'. By lockups I certainly understood your second case: dead PC, hard reboot being the only solution.I have never heard of duplicates texture though. I've ran fs9 since its release in 2003 on 3 different machine without looking for dupes and never had issues.What are you refering to as duplicates textures?About OOMs, they always happen near airports. The first OOMs were approaching aerosofts great hubs. I bought some uk2000 sceneries not later that last month and didnt have OOMs but most likely because in the meanwhile I had installed the 3gb switch.What's really of interest to me in what you write is the trick to allow fs9 on one CPU core only. I've had read few posts about it in the past but never paid more attention because by then I did run an old single core p4. That sounds like making sense to me.CTDs: the original CTDs were just what they mean: crash to desktop! FS closes without warning and without a single error message and you're on the desltop.I sometime had FS crashes, normal crash with some errror message and an entry in the eventlog, those crashes caused by duplicate AFCADs, 32bit texure without alpha channel etc...I can clearly see the graphic corruption on your screenshot, I dont have that particular problem. On the other hand I do have some problems with sounds too sometime.Anyhow, I will continue to investigate and try to keep track of what I'm doing and report when I get rid of the problem.And, Desertwinds, you're absolutely right, it IS frustrating. As you say, except those freeze, my new PC also FLIES :(

I am experiencing the following problem, which occurs occasionally but not always. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction.I will have FS9, and my entire system lock up. The sound goes into a "loop", I lose the keyboard and mouse and there is nothing I can do but a hard reboot. There is nothing listed in Event Viewer. I have backed off slightly on my GPU overclock, for lack of any idea what else is causing this. Note that my GPU temps are fine when this happens so I'm not sure I should blame the GPU OC?Any ideas as to what may be causing this? Vic

I am so glad to see someone else that has had this problem. I never posted my problem on any forum, I was having total freeze ups, sound loops with no keyboard and no mouse.I went out and bought new Corsair memory. 90.00 bucks worth.I have an ATI X1950XTX 512 DDR4, it checked out fine after days of testing.Memory checked out fine after days of testing.So, I replaced the hard drive.That didn't help.I replaced the SATA ribbon with a high dollar FOXCONN.Nope.I pulled my hair out.I kept on running test.Well, I finally figured it out. Sorta.It was either...........No offense to the author of FSUIPC or the program AI Smooth.I pulled both of these out of my DLL folder and my computer rocks.I think it would fly FSX with great frame rates.If I put AI Smooth or FSUIPC 3.7 or any FSUIPC, my computer locks up.I am not sure what program is the offender, so I leave them both out.Hope this helps.R. MartinP.S. I think it to be, after more testing, AI Smooth 1.1. FSUIPC didn't seem to be the culprit by itself, only when coupled with AI Smooth.I am still testing.Not to mention my night textures are so crisp, I cant describe it.My day textures look better also.My video card is locked at 25 FPS and it wants to blow out of my computer.I am still testing, but no problems at all on 3 hour flights with six take offs and landings.This is only after discarding above mentioned programs.My flight sim computer a Dedicated Flight sim computer used for no other purpose, no anti virus programs, just Windows XP.ANTAC CASEIntel 975 Bad Axe MBIntel 660 P4 3.60 Extreme Edition H.T. single coreVideo card: ATI X1950XTXHard drive: 500 gig single platter Western Digital Black Edition7 case fans 4 gigs of Corsair gaming memoryand other odds and ends.