I have owned Microsoft flight sim 2004 since December. To make a long story short. It crashes to the desk top. I have reformatted my drive 10 times , reinstalled flight sim2004 20 times, purchased three different cards ati radeon 7500 first( Bad frame rates) 9600se second ( still crashing , now 9800pro. I have installed the latest directx drivers 9b and the latest ati 44 drivers. I am sure there is alot of ATI users out there with no problems. I now have great frame rates but sometimes 5 minutes, 10 or maybe 30...Crash. I have been on the phone with microsoft many times as well. I have spent 10-12 hrs a day seven days a week since I got this sim and no luck. I just can't take this any more. My ram tested good at my computer service center....here are my specs : Asus A7N8X deluxe MB, AMD 2800xp barton processor, 1 gig dual channel ddr pc3200 ram, Windows2000 pro, Where am I going wrong?? I am willing to make this up to any fellow simmers that can figure this problem out. I have done everything I can think of in tweeks, cfg files, bios settings, video cards and endless test after test. Hundreds of dollars later I am still screwed!!! I am fed up with talking to microsoft because I have to go over the whole thing everytime I call them, and they treat me like a person not knowing anything about CPU'S. I built all of my systems like most simmers do. I am just plain obsessed in making this thing work. Thank you all for listening to me ramble on. I look forward to your replies. Thanks again! J. Moss

God is busy with Easter, try again next weekend.

Fs2004 crashes off a clean install? If that is the case, it sounds like a hardware problem. Are you running a clean install, or are you tweaking right away? If so, try the game off a clean install, and see what happens. You mention tweaks. With that setup, you shouldn't need them. Just leave everything as is, and see what happens.

Hi. Gods busy. Im one of his minions. Several others are present as well. An intervention is probably possible...so relax...put the knife away...back away slowly from the PC.Now.What you dont say is whether you have enough ventilation and enough power to the PC. You have a lot of heat seekers in there, and the AMD's run hot anyway. What you are describing sounds like a heat problem. Do any other games work? If so, run one of them for awhile, then go into the bios and check your hardware monitor to see what the temps are. You might do well with some additional cooling.The other side of cooling is making sure you have a power source with enough watts to run the monster. 350 Watts at least.One other thing to check...make sure your PC is not so overstuffed with extra stuff that the CPU fan can get good cooling. I had a problem once because I had positioned a hard disk in the way of aCPU fan...so that the heat from the Hard disk got sucked right onto the CPU...not good. its almost ALWAYS something simple.Whatever it is...Im willing to bet its hardware. Go to a different PC shop if you yourself dont have a clue or the time to fool with it.Good luckEric

>then go into the bios and check your hardware monitor to see what the temps are.http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2betateam.jpg

I checked the temps and all is running fine, also, my case is open with a fan on it plus three others in the case. I just saw a ctd fix by joachim in the forums, but the site is in german.( I should have taken that many years ago in school.) Is there any links translated that you might know of? I don't even know if this a a sesonal bug or not. I remember trying the land class fix and it did not work, but I am willing to try anything. I have also tried the sim on a fresh install with no tweeks as well and....... well you know. No luck. Thanks to all for any help you can give me.

Some people have cured this problem by removing one stick of 512 RAM if you are running 1 gig of RAM. This causes certain systems to run more stable, with only slight performance loss.Best of luck, John M.

>God is busy with Easter, try again next weekend. That was good :-bigangel *:-* LOL :-lol

Hi jmoss,I'm not God... still trying to qualify to be a disciple. :-) Like others here my first thought was heat, but you seem to have ruled that out. Gotsa's suggestion of using Asus Probe is a good one, but I find it a bit dodgy on my A7N8X Dlx Rev 2.0. I prefer Motherboard Monitor. http://mbm.livewiredev.com/What kind of PSU are you using? Have you done any testing of it?With regard to the "joachim" fix... that deals with the seasonal CTD's many have experienced with FS9. Another option is the Terrain.cfg tweak. http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...77&topic_id=315And even if a store told me my memory was OK, I'd still check it using Prime95 (a Google search will get you to it).Keep us posted with your situation,

Hi John,I forgot about the memory - for example, there is a known problem with the A7N8X and Kingston RAM with Hynix modules, which leads to exactly the symptoms described. Check exactly which RAM you have and who manufactured the modules (the ICs on the RAM PCB). Hynix chips definitely have problems with the Asus board, but there are a few others as well. Contact your RAM manufacturer and find out if there are known problems with your particular RAM sticks.Cheers,Gosta.http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2betateam.jpg

My moneys on the PSU- do like Greg suggested install Motherboard Monitor and check the voltages - in particular the +3.3 and +5V rails.MBM will produce a text log )you can configure the interval , number of entries etc) . Set this up then go and run FS - when it crashes ,look at the log see if the were sudden variations in voltages/temps etc.In some cases a drop in the 3.3 and 5V of 2 or 3% is enough to cause these problems.Dave

"In some cases a drop in the 3.3 and 5V of 2 or 3% is enough to cause these problems."Yep, Dave... all the reason I need to not think twice about dropping $120.00 on a quality PSU. :-)

One addition thought that you might try: if you are running with fastwrites ON then turn them OFF and see if that makes a difference. In the ATI Control Panel, that will be listed as SMARTGART. Some systems ( mine included) are unstable with fastwrites enabled and rock-steady otherwise.Good luck with it.Ed GreenKCLThttp://www.panelshop.com/images/DEV.jpg

I just want to take a moment and thank all of you who care enough to post suggestions to help other simmers with problems. I have to say it's nice to see there are people who care. Anyway, I have to back up. I acually got the problem to go away back in mid January, then I saw a post on redundant cfg entries for video cards effecting frame rates. I saw in my config both my ( at the time) 9600 series card and, below that aways the 7500 series card. I removed the old card entry(7500) and............. CRASH. Since then, I did a fresh install into a new directory and can't get rid of the CTD'S. This happened the day we turned the clocks up. Maybe it is a seasonal ctd that is going to make me crazy after all. I am determined to fix this problem no matter what it takes.

Try this simple three step program:Apply the German terrain fix. See thread above. You can find instructions and the link in many, many previous threads.Check for any duplicate AFCADs for the same airport. Make sure each airport only uses one AFCAD or none at all, just the default.Take out addon mesh sceneries one by one to see if one of them might be the cause.These three steps have virtually eliminated my CTDs.Lee