There is a strange glitch bedeviling FS9. There are isolated moments when you are cruising along and suddenly FS9 shuts down unexpectedly and throws you to the desktop. No error message, no nothing.A fix circulated here on the forums from a German site relating to the change of seasons. However, even after applying the fix, the random exit still occurs for me. I wondering if it might actually be certain geographical spots in FS9. One occurrence to me was at about 34 miles East of Bergen, Norway on a flight from Oslo. I happened to have saved a mode right before the shutdown. I went back 4 times and got the same shutdown at the same spot. It was on the 5th time that I slewed the plane north of the spot and continued my flight to its destination uneventfully. There are other spots on the globe I have encountered. Another consistent one was at Mallorca on the taxiway on the way to runway 6L, both with Simwings scenery on and off.Basically, it should be up to Microsoft to issue a patch for this problem, but I doubt that they will. FS9 is a great program and we appreciate having it. However, we have spent a lot of money on all versions of Flight Simulator. If this was PMDG or Phoenix or LAGO or any other "payware" group, we'd all be screaming bloody murder demanding a patch. Somehow,because it's MS, we stay silent about it.Something is causing it. I've read too many posts here on the forums about the problem. It's great that some "simmers" are trying to find a fix for it. I wish I had the programming skills to do the detective work, but I will have to rely on some genius making the discovery and fix.BTW I have a very high end machine with all the bells and whistles and I have applied all the known "tweaks" to FS9. Normally FS9 works great on this rig.Lee

Over the past 3 months or so there have been a lot of posts about the sudden CTDs.Apart from the "seasonal" bug ,the other main cause seems to have been to do with addon scenery .One specific one which caused me exactly the problem you have now was the "Improved Railroad " installation(now fixed),but there have been instances for simmers that have seemed to point to various addon sceneries.I suggest you uninstall addons one at a time - working backwards from the last added and see if the problem goes away.Nearly always these CTDs seem to happen at the same geographical spot each time - indicating possibly a particular bad scenery file.Good luckDave

Dave, You raise an interesting thought. Perhaps it could be related to add on sceneries. Perhaps, in the rush to upgrade sceneries from FS2002 to FS2004, some little problems have crept in. I will try slowly de-activating 3rd party sceneries around each occurance to see if the matter goes away.Lee

I agree with Dave. I have had not a single CTD since I installed FS2004. Well, not one that wasn't induced by aftermarket addons... and that isn't MS's problem to fix. That would be the place to start, working toward checking your RAM sticks as I traced a fault on a friends machine to a dodgy stick which was causing exactly the CTD's you describe. Basically, it looked like the texture was putting in the next `batch` of textures as one crossed from one texture `plate` to the next, and eventually the bad memory created an invalid page fault and immediate CTD. There was no consistency in the error message but if the flight was started from the same place the error ocurred consistently, but if you started somewhere else and flew across the same boundary, nothing happened. Very frustrating! We tried everything including a reinstall of FS before we eventaully fond a little utility that tests the RAM. It's a tiny 15kb file called `memtest` I think.Hope you find the cause.Allcott

My memory is clean, I did check it with memtest. I think more and more that the culprit is 3rd party sceneries or addons. The trick is to establish a pattern of occurrences at certain locations. So far the sceneries I've had occurrences with are the new Norway airports between Oslo and Stavanger/Bergen, the Simwings Mallorca taxiing to runway 6L, the Fly to Brasil 6 scenery at Congonhas on the main tarmac and the new Helsinki airport scenery. I'm going to try those same spots with those sceneries activated and then de-activated.I'd be curious if anyone else has add CTDs in the same locations.However, if there are reports of CTDs in default non 3rd party scenery areas, then possibly it might be worth removing all the texture addons, like autogen replacement and airport replacement textures to see if any of those might be affecting FS9.It would be nice to find the cause, because I know someone will fix it. Or, we just avoid those spots.Remember the FS2002 France weather glitch?Lee

Lee,I have just found my first CTD location recently myself. I was doing a flight from New York to Washington DC. I had autosave working and no matter what I try I cannot get past a certain location without a CTD. I tried changing seasons, aircraft, times of day, addon dlls (including autosave), etc -- but haven't had any luck yet. I don't have much addon scenery or textures apart from Simfliers KIAD, but I was still over New York -- perhaps too far away from DC for thier scenery to be causing the issue. I haven't had a chance yet to disable it and try again.If I find anything out I'll post it here -- perhaps someone in the community will figure something out...Steve

Just in relation to memtest, I would point out that just because a module passes all the memtest tests, this does not guarantee it will neccessarily be stable in Windows at the same settings. I'm not implying your memory is at fault here, but I can categorically state that the other poster is correct - over agressive memory timings are absolutely a cause of CtDs. I would still temporarily relax the memory timings so as to absolutely eliminate this possibility from the equation.

I had FS2004 for about a week and a half now now and I have had the CTD happen to me too. One was on a flight from Amsterdam to Milan, the crash happened as I started to desend to land at Milan (I do have a Milan scenery)The other CTD happened on a flight from Chicago to Boston. I was cursing along at 33,000 feet and it just crashed. I think it crashed when I was over Ohio (I wasn't paying attention to were I was when it crashed) I do have a KCLE scsenry.

Hmmmm.first time for me on FS2004 also on December 21...LGA to BOS over the HFD VOR with a command to decend from ATC...blank screen,CTD and a message about a "ATC.DLL" and a Send Error Report. Have not duplicated the flight yet. Anybody see thsi...Lots of new scenery files installed, LGA, BOS, Nights, Lights, Water, etc...etc...

Lee, I found your Norwegian CTD spot myself, at roughly N60 34 E6 35 as I approached ENBM. I have no add on scenery so it seems an inherent glitch in FS9.BlairCYOW

I wonder if Microsoft knows about this? If they don't do you think we should all write to them to let them know about it? Maybe they will make (or are making) a patch for this glitch.

Curious if you've applied the Terrain.cfg tweak and you get the Norwegian CTD.... Also, since someone mentioned an ATC.dll error, I wonder what happens if AI is off.... Last question--is the gps displayed in any of these scenarios? I have removed the gps from most panels, and only bring it up by hotkey, as initially I was getting a few CTD's with a Malibu which I had linked to FS2004's gps. Once I removed the gps from direct display on the panel, those CTD's seemed to go away....-John

Just a word of agreement with Jon... A couple of years ago I had a marginal stick which couldn't keep up with my memory timings, but it ran through memtest with flying colors. I'd launch Windows, and 9 times out of 10 it'd crash with a "registry corrupt" error. I replaced the chip and have had stable sailing ever since, at least in terms of those types of errors. Windows has a way of really proving a memory chip's bona fides...-John

Hi all,I applied the german patch (for the seasonal bug) a couple of weeks ago, and CTD minimized a lot, but I'm still getting a few. I then decided to do some tests during the weekend, including memory test and also reinstallation of the whole system, with everything default, no addons. Everything went fine. No memory, power, hardware etc. problems. On my first flight I received a CTD (flying in July), without any error messages. The sim just turned off. Period. This was made on a new system, P. IV 2.8, Mobo Intel 875pbz, 1Gb ram (hyperx 3500 from Kingston) Ati 9800 Pro, cat. 3.10, etc. etc. The worse part: no addons. It is indeed very strange. Regards,Gabriel.

Sorry for the delay getting back here. I took a few days off teh computer for the holidays. :-)My CTD in Norway occurred with no terrain.cfg tweak, had AI at zero and was in an add on Beech Staggerwing without a GPS. The CTD happened three times at the exact same spot. FS disappered completely and instantaneously. I think it is the fastest process my P3 1.0 Ghz computer has ever performed!BlairCYOW