Fellows, last night I experienced something I have never had happen in FSX prior to these two times with the NGX or any other a/c. I had it happen twice last night and it seems the results can somewhat be duplicated since it was a similiar situation I was in when it happened both times. I had experience a few of the panel freezes in prior HF versions, but in all of those I was always able to exit FSX, where as in this case I couldn't even get out of FSX and required a complete reboot.1st - I was doing a flight from KFLL to KMCO using the route ARKES1 ARKES LLNCH BAIRN2, departing KFLL 27R and arriving KMCO ILS 35L, cruise altitude FL220. Here's what happened. I took off from 27R, hand flew the first few minutes of the departure, then at around 10,000' engaged the AP w/LNAV and VNAV taking it the rest of the way, and I sat there until passing thru 18,000' to reset the altimeter to STD. After that I got up from the computer to get something to eat keeping in mind its a short flight and I would need to get back soon to reset the MCP Alt. Well, I got a little side tracked in the kitchem and when I can back to the computer I was already past the runway and was enroute to the missed approach hold at OVIDO. I took a seat, opened the FMC and reselected my approach and was getting rid of the discos when all of the sudden the plane and FSX completely froze, exect the sound was stuck. I tried to CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up task mamanger, hit ESC, ALT-TAB, basically tried everything I could to exit out of FSX but couldn't do it and ended up having to shut the computer down and reboot.Once I was rebooted, started ASE again and restarted FSX again, I did the whole flight from start to end no problem. Then after landing at KMCO I proceeded on to fly to KBUF and that went fine with no issue.2nd - I decided to start one more long flight from KBUF after I had landed from the flight from KFLL. The flight was from KBUF to KLAX, departing runway 5, using the route FWA J64 BDF IRK J96 SLN DRK J231 TNP SEAVU2, landing KLAX ILS 24L, cruise FL360. Took off runway 5, flew upto 18,000' feet, reset the altimeter, and then went to take a short nap, keeping in mind I needed to be up in four hours to start the descent. I ended up over sleeping and woke up when I was way past the T/D so I hit the HOLD button and selected NEXT and was going to use the upcomming intersection as a holding point to start my descent. As soon as I went to put that intersection into the HOLD blank that you get when you do a NEXT HOLD, the whole thing locked up again like it did when I had the lockup from KFLL to KMCO earlier in the evening and like that time, I had to shut the computer down just to get out of FSX.So, it seems like from those two flights the NGX doesn't like to overfly the T/D at the cruise altitude, especially when you are way past and way too high, and as soon as you start to mess with the FMC it results in a complete lock up as it had for me.Granted this isn't how I normally fly by setting the AP and walking away from the computer to eat or sleep and I usually sit thru the whole flight to monitor what is going on and at time even use 2X or 4X time compression. That being said, there seems to be an issue if you get caught high and long from the T/D as it had happened in my case. Granted what it did was wrong, but I wouldn't think it should cause the computer to lock up completely.Just wanted to note this for Ryan or any of the PMDG team members to have a look at while they work on SP1. Note that I did specify this happened with HF4 but I had never tried this scenario with any of the other versions since I am never late on my arrivals, so I am not sure if this would have happened with any other HF'es installed.Sean Campbell

Sean, I'm getting an occasional lock up and when I look in the event logs it seems related to the Windows Instrumentation Service. I disabled the service, haven't had another freeze, but now my AI traffic doesnt work. Can you check your logs to see if it may have been similar? They may be completely unrelated, since mine seems to be related to AI traffic and not NGX directly.

Sean, I'm getting an occasional lock up and when I look in the event logs it seems related to the Windows Instrumentation Service. I disabled the service, haven't had another freeze, but now my AI traffic doesnt work. Can you check your logs to see if it may have been similar? They may be completely unrelated, since mine seems to be related to AI traffic and not NGX directly.

Chris, how and where do I check the event logs in Win XP? BTW, I wasn't using a drop of AI when this happened, neither UT2 or WOAI, which is what I normally have running.The reason I though the lockup happened was mainly due to the fact that it happened on both flights when I did about the same thing, ie overflying my descent points by a large margin. Granted when I fly the a/c properly I never have any lockup like I described, excecpt for the 3 or 4 panel freezes I had in prior HF'es.Sean

Ok, sounds like we're working on different crashes. Event logs in XP are under: Control Panel/ Administrative tools/ event viewer From there you can look through application and system even logs and see if you can see the specific error that occurred at the time of the crash. Thats about all the help I can be there. Most of it's Greek to me, but it's pointed me in the right direction. It might help you track down the cause.

Ok, sounds like we're working on different crashes. Event logs in XP are under: Control Panel/ Administrative tools/ event viewer From there you can look through application and system even logs and see if you can see the specific error that occurred at the time of the crash. Thats about all the help I can be there. Most of it's Greek to me, but it's pointed me in the right direction. It might help you track down the cause.

Yep it must be a different issue.I checked the log in the area you mentioned and no issues reported. I think the freeze/lockup is just something to do with the a/c or FMC. Fortunately when I fly the a/c properly and dont leave it unattended like I did in both of those circumstances, it behaves fine and I have no such problem.Sean Campbell

I had two similar freezes last night where the sound continued. I did not notice a pattern and both were before TOD. I had no previous freezes. Running Hotfix 4.

I'm also getting a freeze where the sound continues.EIDW-> EGCC From the event log.The program fsx.exe version 10.0.61472.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel. Process ID: f28 Start Time: 01cc812fe7a2cae9 Termination Time: 218 Application Path: D:\FSX\fsx.exe Report Id:No mention of PMDG dll's here though.

Just had my first post-HF4 lockup. Actually never had any lockup before, only freezes, but they seem resolved now. I always had the impression that having the aircraft loaded for a long time and doing a ton of things without reloading anything in the meantime does no good. In this particular case I was shooting a number of approaches in succession, maybe around ten or so. Well the most recent one resulted in a sudden and complete FSX crash upon final track intercept. Sound was still there, just the whole thing was frozen (no, not like the other freezes, as there only the panel would freeze while the sim remained totally functional).

I think we have something new. I had zero problems before HF4. I think I will sit tight (fly other payware) until SP1.

I was in error about my previous post. Flew two flights with no problems.