Windows 7 & FS9 with PMDG MD-11

[woomera 1]

I installed MD-11 two days ago...great product but a persistent problem. When I want to load "cold and dark" from PMDG while FS9 is running, the screen goes dark. Also the screen went dark on final approach to Zurich in tutorial 1. Not sure if it's a problem with Win 7 or FS9 or a combo of the two. I'm running an Intel i7 3.02 Ghz with an ATI Radeon 5850 and its latest drivers. Would really appreciate the help and any suggestions. Thanks!Jerry Preston

[Turbine777 13]

Hi Jerry, A couple questions for ya;1 - What resolution are you running at? 2 - Have you upgraded your video card recently? (After the latest FS install).I have had this problem before with intermident black screens and I never figured out the exact issue. You're running an ATI card so this might not help, but... The things I did that may have fixed it was uninstall my video drivers, reboot in safe mode then run drivesweeper, manually delete my nvidia folders, reboot and install my drivers fresh.If yes, to #2, then you might want to rebuild your fs9 ini, or whichever file is equal to FSX's FSX.cfg (don't remember for 2004).My resolution was rather high and before I did the above I also cleared it by lowering my res, but it came back when I went back to my native.Not much help here since I had a similar issue, but with nvidia/FSX but hopefully this may help a bit.

[Benjamin J 751]

I have this problem in any Windows OS that's Vista and later. The only solution I could find is to make the screen windows: press alt-enter to do that. Then try again. The window should open up now and you can do all the panel state changing you want. This approach has worked for me for any window I wanted to open within FS9.About it going dark on approach to Zurich: I had that to once, and I had it with more planes. I always thought it was some fault in FS9, maybe because it couldn't handle all the detail or something? I really don't know... I sort of ignored it. Simply made sure I saved the flight every ten minutes or so, and that way, if FS9 would crash on me, I'd never have to go a long way back. Always worked for me...

[woomera 1]

Thanks Dan...I will give your ideas a try!Jerry Preston

Hi Jerry, A couple questions for ya;1 - What resolution are you running at? 2 - Have you upgraded your video card recently? (After the latest FS install).I have had this problem before with intermident black screens and I never figured out the exact issue. You're running an ATI card so this might not help, but... The things I did that may have fixed it was uninstall my video drivers, reboot in safe mode then run drivesweeper, manually delete my nvidia folders, reboot and install my drivers fresh.If yes, to #2, then you might want to rebuild your fs9 ini, or whichever file is equal to FSX's FSX.cfg (don't remember for 2004).My resolution was rather high and before I did the above I also cleared it by lowering my res, but it came back when I went back to my native.Not much help here since I had a similar issue, but with nvidia/FSX but hopefully this may help a bit.

[woomera 1]

Thanks for the tip...one of those basic steps (Alt-Enter) that I had totally forgotten. That took care of the problem!Thanks, Mate,Jerry Preston

I have this problem in any Windows OS that's Vista and later. The only solution I could find is to make the screen windows: press alt-enter to do that. Then try again. The window should open up now and you can do all the panel state changing you want. This approach has worked for me for any window I wanted to open within FS9.About it going dark on approach to Zurich: I had that to once, and I had it with more planes. I always thought it was some fault in FS9, maybe because it couldn't handle all the detail or something? I really don't know... I sort of ignored it. Simply made sure I saved the flight every ten minutes or so, and that way, if FS9 would crash on me, I'd never have to go a long way back. Always worked for me...

[Turbine777 13]

That's great advice, Benjamin. I never thought of that and actually do that quite often )Alt+Ent) but normally only have that issue when I first load into the sim (FSX).