B737-600 FS9 freezes while entering route

[Guest MikeKear]

I bought the FS9 B737-600 yesterday, to install on a new installation of Windows XP SP3. So it's the first PMDG product being installed on a fresh system. (I'll install my other PMDG products once I'm certain this is working ok). As i do when i install any complex addon, I did a test flight to check everything's working ok before i move on to add more things. When I am programming the FMC on my new B737-700, it freezes FS9. I have reinstalled with the 'repair' option, in case there was a problem with the installation, but the problem hasn't gone away. In fact it's freezing at the exact same point. I'm doing a flight from NZWN to NZCH - a nice short flight for a test. The route is NZWN ONIKA GOS MAN DOCMA NZCH. When i am entering the route, it gets to MAN, and there are several waypoints called MAN, so it shows the screen where i have to choose which MAN i want. (there's one in the northern hemisphere and the one i want to use - in New Zealand). But that's where it freezes. No matter where I click, nothing else will happen. The only way out is the three-finger-salute, open task manager and abort FS9 completely. I'm not sure whether the problem is in that screen, in my FS9 or elsewhere in the system, but it is relevant (i think) that the freeze always happens at the same point - where the 'choose which MAN waypoint you want' screen comes up.Does anyone have any ideas where i could look for diagnosing what the cause of the problem might be? I dont have enough information yet to pinpoint the culprit - there could be any of several reasons. And I dont want to go on to install liveries and my other PMDG products until i have this resolved. Cheers,Mike KearWindsor, NSW, Australia

[Guest MikeKear]

To add to this issue - i just tried to do a flight using the same route, but skip the MAN waypoint, in case there was some kind of corruption in the database with that waypoint. So i was programming NZWN ONIKA GOS DOCMA NZCH. However it froze again, when i tried to enter DOCMA. In other words, it froze at the third waypoint. Now i'm going to try another flight in another part of the world to see if that makes any difference. That ought to either confirm or eliminate the nav database as a culprit. Then I'll upgrade the database to the current AIRAC. I'm using the AIRAC data that came with the download of the B737-600/700 up till now.Cheers,Mike KearWindsor, NSW, Australia

[Guest MikeKear]

To add to this issue - i just tried to do a flight using the same route, but skip the MAN waypoint, in case there was some kind of corruption in the database with that waypoint. So i was programming NZWN ONIKA GOS DOCMA NZCH. However it froze again, when i tried to enter DOCMA. In other words, it froze at the third waypoint. Now i'm going to try another flight in another part of the world to see if that makes any difference. That ought to either confirm or eliminate the nav database as a culprit. Then I'll upgrade the database to the current AIRAC. I'm using the AIRAC data that came with the download of the B737-600/700 up till now.

THE SOLUTION: Thanks to Ryan Maziarz at PMDG for having enough flexibility in his thinking to find this. I got this route by using FS9's planner - i just clicked "Find Route" and the route it found was NZWN ONIKA GOS MAN DOCMA NZCH. But as it turns out, the PMDG B737 doesnt know of any waypoint GOS in the southern hemisphere. The only one it knows about is in Europe. So I was asking the B737 to fly 20,000 miles which of course it can't do. I dont know how Ryan figured that out, but when I used the real world route from NZWN to NZCH, it worked just fine. In summary, there was nothing at all wrong with the PMDG B737, but instead an error in FS9 or the Nav database but when I got round it everything worked fine.Thanks to Ryan for his clever lateral thinking.Cheers,Mike KearWindsor, NSW, Australia

[northridge 2]

You are not alone, and neither is PMDG, in having FS crash under "impossible" waypoints: I had it in an Airbus, after choosing the wrong waypoint of several offered to me: it took ages to figure out what was going wrong.