Oh,the joys of FSX! It must be the most infuriating or unstable flight simulator platform I've ever encountered and that is going back to FS95.Great on visuals,etc but abysmal stability.After deriving much pleasure on my previous flight using the PMDG 747-400X,and wanting to pick up from the airport I last landed at,all I did was add a PMDG MD-11 Garuda Indonesia repaint,and immediately,FSX refused to start.EventViewer said it was an unknown module causing the fault.So,rebuilt FSX.cfg,and FSX this time got to that awful music stage.At Fly Now,FSX crashed again.So,uninstalled all PMDG aircraft,removed every reference to PMDG in the Registry,ran a Registry Defrag,a Registry Clean,uninstalled other aircraft add-ons except sceneries,but now when I get to selecting Fly Now,FSX again goes into error mode.EventViewer states it is the visualfx.dll that is the culprit.Short of tearing my hair out,and having to reinstall FSX and everything else with it,in which case,I will just revert to the rock-steady FS2004,has anyone any idea how to fix this problem?All answers appreciated.Thanks in advance.

Hi Rick,Maybe an antivirus program?I had an antivirus fail dlls before, had to actually uninstall the program fully, disabling it wasnt enough.David Ranieri.

Hi Rick,Maybe an antivirus program?I had an antivirus fail dlls before, had to actually uninstall the program fully, disabling it wasnt enough.David Ranieri.

Hi David.Thanks for your suggestion,but I have already tried that route,and uninstalled/reinstalled my AV program.Besides,the AV program was having no effect on FSX right up to yesterday's successful PMDG flight.All this kicked off when I tried to install a repaint,and again,I've had no FSX issues before.So why this particular Garuda repaint should cause such an issue baffles me.I've even tried copying a substitute visualfx.dll file to no effect.

EventViewer states it is the visualfx.dll that is the culprit.Short of tearing my hair out,and having to reinstall FSX and everything else with it,in which case,I will just revert to the rock-steady FS2004,has anyone any idea how to fix this problem?All answers appreciated.Thanks in advance.

Reverting to FS9 may be more hazardous to your flight simming as I conducted a Google search for visualfx.dll and found that almost all of the CTD incidents were when individuals were using FS9 (and there were a lot of CTD's with this dll!!). Check the date of your copy as an updated one was issued by Microsoft in SP2/Acceleration (Version 10.0.61637.0 dated 9/26/2007. The original was dated 9/9/2006). It should be in your main FSX directory. I seriously doubt any PMDG aircraft caused your problem. Did you repair FSX and then forget to also do a repair of SP1 and/or SP2/Acceleration? You didn't mention doing a repair or reinstall of FSX but just a thought as to why you might be getting this error. Perhaps too you didn't install SP1 or SP2. Sorry you are having so many problems. Hopefully this will fix the issue.Best regards,Jim

Reverting to FS9 may be more hazardous to your flight simming as I conducted a Google search for visualfx.dll and found that almost all of the CTD incidents were when individuals were using FS9 (and there were a lot of CTD's with this dll!!). Check the date of your copy as an updated one was issued by Microsoft in SP2/Acceleration (Version 10.0.61637.0 dated 9/26/2007. The original was dated 9/9/2006). It should be in your main FSX directory. I seriously doubt any PMDG aircraft caused your problem. Did you repair FSX and then forget to also do a repair of SP1 and/or SP2/Acceleration? You didn't mention doing a repair or reinstall of FSX but just a thought as to why you might be getting this error. Perhaps too you didn't install SP1 or SP2. Sorry you are having so many problems. Hopefully this will fix the issue.Best regards,Jim

Hi Jim.Thanks for your input.In fact,I deleted the FSX.cfg but did not touch the SP1 or SP as you have pointed out.I also carried out a reinstall of FSX hoping that would cure the problem.No such luck.Same visualfx.dll crash.In the end,as no further suggestions/tips were forthcoming through this Forum to get me out of jail,I bit the bullet and did a complete clean-out of FSX,Add-ons,sceneries,etc,etc,then completely flushed the Registry of every possible reference to FSX.Then carried out a completely brand new FSX install;re-Activation which gave me kittens as it refused to activate but did so on a 2nd try,test FSX,reboot;SP1,test,reboot;SP2,test,reboot.Only then did I reinstall a PMDG add-on.So far,so good,touch wood.Now I have the onerous task of re-installing everything once more.If I ever get this visualfx.dll CTD once again,I'll just kick this Microsoft product as far as I can do so!