pmdg 737NGX lock,freeze,black screen problem

[oscar19681 0]

Dear all, for me the same problem untill last week when I updated my ram with an extra 4mb (2x2mb). My ram total is now 8mb and seems to be working well, especcially for the ngx. Before the upgrade I had:fully distorted screen after switching eye-points, missing and/or partly transparant virtual cockpit, black screen, frozen game wich only could be stopped with ctrl/alt/del. I have a logitech G19 game keyboard with a used ram indicator.Before the upgrade when everything was loaded for the sim the indicator was almost compleet to the right. Sometimes I got the famous "not enough memory" announcement and I had to start all over again. As an indicator how critical it was: when fx loaded with the ngx and I only just started vlc player the game crashed. With my 8mb the ram indicator on the G19 is now a little bit OVER the half. Thus indicating how "heavy" the ngx is. I have tested the system while in flight changing screens/eyepoint and even swich several time from full view to windowed view and swiching to the map, no problemo so far... For me it was worth the 60 euro's.Kind regards from the Netherlands,Mark Carrickmy system specs: old stuff

Then pmdg should state in the system requirements that it needs 8 gb of ram and not 2gb of ram ör 4 with addon scenary etc (which i dont have)"OS: Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7 (latest service packs), Flight Simulator X with SP2 or Acceleration installed.Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD equivalentRAM: 2GB if only running the NGX, 4GB if running other addons (scenery, traffic etc)Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible with 512MB of video memory (examples: Nvidia 8800GT, AMD/ATI Radeon 4870)" I keep having this problem and i starting to get seriously frustrated with it. I didnt have these problems with stock fsx aircrafts so it must be a pmdg issue and i want it sorted out asap because this is starting to suck the plessure out of flying this addon. I meet in all the minimum and most of the recommended requirements yet is still get problems with is all the time. I had the black screen / grafic glitch 3 times today and after the 3rd time i decided to just not attempt to fly anymore. There is nothing more frustrating when starting up cold and dark and completly setting up you aircraft only to get the messed up grafics when having a peak in external view . ending the flight and reloading a save is not enough . i have to restart fsx completly to get rid of the problem. I coul offcourse buy another 4 GB like mark did but that doesnt garentuee that the problem is solved and i dont think this has anything to do with the problem at all. I,m starting to loos hope here and thats to bad because when the 737ngx does work i reallt do love it.Oscar Klein

[vonmar 123]

I have FSX acceration (sorry i forgot to mentions this ) and pmdgngx , fspassanger and a couple days ago installed fsrecorder and the aes basepack demoversion . But the problems existed before installing fsrecorder and the aes basepack.Oscar Klein

Do you have all this running when testing PMDG now?Just to verify .. you have 2 GB PC?What OS do you have?What folder (path) is FSX in?In your first post you said: "In the beggining there were no problems exepect maybe the occasional FSX problem here and there."What kind of FSX problems?If you only run FSX (no weather programs or scenery etc) and PMDGNGX (without time acceleration) .. is all ok?

[oscar19681 0]

Do you have all this running when testing PMDG now?Just to verify .. you have 2 GB PC?What OS do you have?What folder (path) is FSX in?In your first post you said: "In the beggining there were no problems exepect maybe the occasional FSX problem here and there."What kind of FSX problems?If you only run FSX (no weather programs or scenery etc) and PMDGNGX (without time acceleration) .. is all ok?

AMD Phenom 9650 Quad-Core Processor2.3 GHz Performance Rated at: 4.60 GHz4 GB of ramMicrosoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition 32-bitATI Radeon HD 4600 Series withg 2,3 GB video ram44.9 GB of disk spaceNo the problem exits when not running fspax , fsrecorder and the aes basepack at all.Like i said before in a previous post i have windows vista 32 bitThe path is h: program files / Microsoft games / microsoft flight simulator XWith fsx problems i mean that all of the sudden my keyboard settings were suddenly messed up out of the blue in mid flight and the some rare CTD,swhen running without time acceration the problems still happens . It happend when i do something with the fsx menu.Oscar

[vonmar 123]

AMD Phenom 9650 Quad-Core Processor2.3 GHz Performance Rated at: 4.60 GHz4 GB of ram**** A 32 bit OS cannot use all of this 4GM. Did you know that?Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition 32-bitATI Radeon HD 4600 Series withg 2,3 GB video ram44.9 GB of disk spaceNo the problem exits when not running fspax , fsrecorder and the aes basepack at all.****** Ok, do you think one of these programs is causing problems? Not running these programs makes FSX and PMDGNGX run ok with your 4GB memory.Like i said before in a previous post i have windows vista 32 bit.**** Ok, FSX is also a 32 bit app.The path is h: program files / Microsoft games / microsoft flight simulator X*** This is a bad location to install FSX.With fsx problems i mean that all of the sudden my keyboard settings were suddenly messed up out of the blue in mid flight and the some rare CTD,swhen running without time acceration the problems still happens . It happend when i do something with the fsx menu.*** The FSX "menu" problem should not be a PMDGNGX problem.**** Do not use time acceleration until your system is error free.**** I never use it.

[jaybird210 0]

let me just say that these issues are happening for me too, and i don't think it's an issue with insufficient memory.i have:windows 7 professional, 64bitIntel i716GB Ramnvidia geforce gtx 570 1.2gbi think these specs should be enough, but the same thing is happening for me with pmdg 737-800 ngx.it happened after the first install, so i uninstalled and re-installed. then it was going fine for a while.then i added some liveries (from the PMDG site, and correctly selected the 747-800 with WL, and installed for the 737-800 with WL using the livery manager)and now i'm seeing the same issues again. as soon as i change screens to the external view and come back. i either have partial graphics or a black screen. in both cases i still have sound and it sounds like the screen changes (external / internal) are working (judging from the sound), but it never fully recovers.i checked task manager, and i have plenty of unused RAM, so that is not an issue. and i also have no overclocking on my machine.the only thing i can think of at this point that i haven't tried, is to uninstall all of FSX and re-install directly under C: as the pmdg introduction suggests. since with Windows vista and 7, there are permission restrictions with software installed under the Program Files or Program Files(86x) directories. i also haven't given FSX.exe admin permission yet, which i will try first (since it's a quick easy setting).i also haven't done all the modifications in the FSX.cfg file that the introduction suggests, so that may be a reason for me as well. if have done all the FSX internal settings changes that they suggested.i did notice that removing once removing the High Res 3-D VC in the Aircraft settings it seemed to allow me to change view without any problems, but shortly after it did crash so not sure...and with my hardware, i don't think i should need to restrict graphic settings. :Pi hope this helps, and if anyone has any constructive input that might help, will appreciate it.i totally agree with Oscar, this is very annoying and frustrating. taking away for a great add-on plane for which i've seen a glimpse of its awesomeness in before it's almost certain demise... cheers,Jay

[vonmar 123]

Jay,You mentioned several things with your setup that could be re-done ...IMO, you should go ahead and do them.

[Bob Scott 7,743]

If you have bufferpools set to 0, that's a known factor for graphics system instability--it works miracles, but ONLY in a fairly limited set of circumstances, and if your CPU overruns the video card at all during a sim session, bad things like black screen crashes can and will happen.That said, running a high performance add-on like this one may push an otherwise stable setup using BP=0 out of stability. If the NGX is having these problems on an untweaked system running at stock clocks that's a problem, but instability on an overclocked, heavily-tweaked FSX install just introduces too many possible causes.

[oscar19681 0]

let me just say that these issues are happening for me too, and i don't think it's an issue with insufficient memory.i have:windows 7 professional, 64bitIntel i716GB Ramnvidia geforce gtx 570 1.2gbi think these specs should be enough, but the same thing is happening for me with pmdg 737-800 ngx.it happened after the first install, so i uninstalled and re-installed. then it was going fine for a while.then i added some liveries (from the PMDG site, and correctly selected the 747-800 with WL, and installed for the 737-800 with WL using the livery manager)and now i'm seeing the same issues again. as soon as i change screens to the external view and come back. i either have partial graphics or a black screen. in both cases i still have sound and it sounds like the screen changes (external / internal) are working (judging from the sound), but it never fully recovers.i checked task manager, and i have plenty of unused RAM, so that is not an issue. and i also have no overclocking on my machine.the only thing i can think of at this point that i haven't tried, is to uninstall all of FSX and re-install directly under C: as the pmdg introduction suggests. since with Windows vista and 7, there are permission restrictions with software installed under the Program Files or Program Files(86x) directories. i also haven't given FSX.exe admin permission yet, which i will try first (since it's a quick easy setting).i also haven't done all the modifications in the FSX.cfg file that the introduction suggests, so that may be a reason for me as well. if have done all the FSX internal settings changes that they suggested.i did notice that removing once removing the High Res 3-D VC in the Aircraft settings it seemed to allow me to change view without any problems, but shortly after it did crash so not sure...and with my hardware, i don't think i should need to restrict graphic settings. :Pi hope this helps, and if anyone has any constructive input that might help, will appreciate it.i totally agree with Oscar, this is very annoying and frustrating. taking away for a great add-on plane for which i've seen a glimpse of its awesomeness in before it's almost certain demise...cheers,Jay

Well i have done al the changes in the cfg and everything else in the introduction manual. I also run the program as administrator but it still doesnt make any difference. The irritating fact is that the problem seems completly random. I might have 2 flights without any problems whatsoever and then all of the sudden the problem persists for a while.Oscar

[jaybird210 0]

hi Oscar,for me it seemed to almost always happen when i would change screens. anything from going to external view, checking map, or running replay would cause my screen to either go black or come back to the cockpit about 70% of the components missing and just staring outside.i've reinstalled all components, and installed FSX outside the Program Files directory (created C:FSX and installed there). I also applied all the PMDG Introduction recommended performance tweaks (fsx.cfg file [including the web tweak] and settings updates) and gave the fsx.exe admin permissions.unfortunately i haven't had time to try a full flight yet, but so far, i've taken off and flown around for a bit. tried everything from map view, external view, and instant reply, and each time i was able to come back to the cockpit without issue. (also i only tried with the 900 w/ WL. still afraid to try the 800, that's what i was using before when it would crap out...). but so far so good.not sure if it was installing outside the program files or the performance settings that helped but looking much better.i hope to be able to try a couple full flights tonight and i'll try with the 4x and 8x sim speeds as well.i'll conclude my test by installing some liveries which was the last thing i tried before my problems started happening.i noticed that in your PC setup, you have FSX installed under Program Files. i'm not sure if that could be the reason, and i haven't tested enough yet to say if moving it out has solved my issue. i realize that will be a big pain to reinstall, so i would only recommend it as a last ditch effort. the PMDG intro does recommend it, but it doesn't sound like they make it a requirement as long as your fsx.exe has adminin rights. anyway, i'll let u know after a few more flights if i see more stability. as you say, it's so random that it's hard to say yet at this point.cheers,Jay

[oscar19681 0]

hi Oscar,for me it seemed to almost always happen when i would change screens. anything from going to external view, checking map, or running replay would cause my screen to either go black or come back to the cockpit about 70% of the components missing and just staring outside.i've reinstalled all components, and installed FSX outside the Program Files directory (created C:FSX and installed there). I also applied all the PMDG Introduction recommended performance tweaks (fsx.cfg file [including the web tweak] and settings updates) and gave the fsx.exe admin permissions.unfortunately i haven't had time to try a full flight yet, but so far, i've taken off and flown around for a bit. tried everything from map view, external view, and instant reply, and each time i was able to come back to the cockpit without issue. (also i only tried with the 900 w/ WL. still afraid to try the 800, that's what i was using before when it would crap out...). but so far so good.not sure if it was installing outside the program files or the performance settings that helped but looking much better.i hope to be able to try a couple full flights tonight and i'll try with the 4x and 8x sim speeds as well.i'll conclude my test by installing some liveries which was the last thing i tried before my problems started happening.i noticed that in your PC setup, you have FSX installed under Program Files. i'm not sure if that could be the reason, and i haven't tested enough yet to say if moving it out has solved my issue. i realize that will be a big pain to reinstall, so i would only recommend it as a last ditch effort. the PMDG intro does recommend it, but it doesn't sound like they make it a requirement as long as your fsx.exe has adminin rights. anyway, i'll let u know after a few more flights if i see more stability. as you say, it's so random that it's hard to say yet at this point.cheers,Jay

Yes please keep me up-dated. Its the love to this project that keep me trying to play without trouble. But as it is now i get 2 to 3 flight attempts with grafic problems and 1 flight without problems. Needles to say its quite discouraging having to to fly this way. But right now there seems no other option.

[jaybird210 0]

i still haven't been able to do more than 2 more flights, and so far so good. i've changed screens, opened maps, changed speeds (only up to 4x so far, haven't tried 8x which makes the screens reload when coming back), and also saved a game and restored the saved state successfully. so far it has been running smoothly.i still haven't had a chance to try installing a livery from the pmdg site. i'm afraid now that it's all stable that it will revert me to the unstable state. :)just to recap the actions that i took:

• uninstalled FSX from the Program Files dir, and re-installed outside Program Files to C:FSX
• granted admin rights to fsx.exe
• updated FSX.cfg Graphics parameters (HIGHMEMFX=1 & TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096)
• optimized FSX.cfg via http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

the HIGHMEMFIX setting in the FSX.cfg file seems to be a key point as they mention in the introduction that this is needed to prevent seeing a "skeleton plane" under certain high graphic-load circumstances, and i wonder if the partial cockpits or black screens are worse case scenarios of this. tho i guess u already have this parameter set, so that may not be it.the only clear difference i see between your setup and mine now is the installation in the Program Files directory, but PMDG doesn't state this as a requirement, so i find it hard to believe that this would be the culprit. if u're willing to do this, it might be worth a try, but it might be a lot of work (especially if u have game progress that u want to save) that ultimately may not fix the issue.

[petedob 3]

My PC OS specs are:AMD Phenom™ 9650 Quad-Core Processor2.3 GHz Performance Rated at: 4.60 GHz3.5 GB of ramMicrosoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition Service Pack 2 (build 6002), 32-bitATI Radeon HD 4600 Series withg 2,3 GB video ram44.9 GB of disk spaceMy path to fsx is h: progam files / microsof games / flight simulator xI norrmaly close everything that is not needed to run the game , i have the logitech software running for my joystick but that about it.I had another grafics glitch after acclerating time , when i decalerated time all but my middle mfg turned black as if they were turned of or without juice , but when i clicked them with the mouse to inflate teh mfd they seemed to be working, but only when i clicked them so they still showed up black in the screen intself , after that i accerated time and decallerated to make my aproach and guess what , my grafics were all screwed up again. There are flights when everything goes as planned but on the next flight i get these problems sometimes 3 times in one session.Oscar Klein.

Oscar & Nigel,If you have ENB series files running with the NGX, that may be the source of your black screens.Pete

[oscar19681 0]

Oscar & Nigel,If you have ENB series files running with the NGX, that may be the source of your black screens.Pete

What are ENB series files?

[NoPilot 0]

Oscar & Nigel,If you have ENB series files running with the NGX, that may be the source of your black screens.Pete

Hi Pete,Yes I had ENBSeries running for a while when I started having problems but after removing it the problems still persisted for me.The two main things I did that helped get rid of the problem was...1. Updated to the latest graphics drivers (in my case it was ATI Catalyst 12.1 for Win7 x64).2. Updated to the latest Windows updates.The second one actually happened by accident (I normally have Windows Update turned off due to bad experiences in the past) but it helped get rid of the problem.An interesting point to mention.... I tried using the ENB Series again to see if it would work after the updates but on the first flight, the problem came back. I removed ENB and all was good again.There's a million different versions of the ENBSeries program floating around. My guess is there's a few dodgy ones out there.If anyone's using ENB without any problems, It would be great if you could share the link where you downloaded it from.

[Jetstream96 20]

I have some problem too. Sometimes the screen freezes and then a "fatal error" or "run out of memory" occur. I experience small freezes when I am 200-0 ft above runway (during a approach). While this happens every time, it sometimes crashes. I think it is because a overload of computer resources, but that cannot explain such a problem. I use:- Win 7 SP1 - No ENB- latest graphics driverSomeone can help me?