Before I finally throw in the towel and pull the plug on Microsoft's FSX once and for all, I will attempt to try and find a solution herein. So, am asking for some plausible solutions.

 

Scenario. Loaded the PMDG MD-11;loaded an FSC-created flightplan into the FMS; loaded EFB;no flight-saving or weather programs running.Took off from SAEZ in broad daylight, over 4 hours into the flight, at cruise level FL350, left aircraft flying on AP, and sound can be heard clearly. Go back to check flight progress, sound still there, but now no aircraft. Just a black screen. Tried cycling through A and S views, nothing doing. Just a black screen.

 

Task Manager, shows FSX as Not Responding, rest all Running. Now this scenario has been going on repeatedly when either a short way or a long way into a flight. Only yesterday used Word Not Allowed's tweak, updated video drivers, Nvidia Inspector, and was getting excellent FPS as a result of around 26-29fps.

 

So, what is causing FSX to behave like this? I'm at a point where I reckon, I'll just call it quits and sell or even give away everything related to FSX to a charity.

 

I'm so fed-up with a flight sim platform that is worse than any other previous version. Did Microsoft really screw-up with this one?

Hmmm do you have power saving turned on? Or screensaver? Standby mode?

 

I had something similar and my system was having an argument with itself because it was trying to go to standby and my fsx would not let it.

 

Also check that there are no updates or processes that kick in at random times that make your system enter into conflict and thus you get no display.

 

Ugh, doesn't sound good.

 

It's probably one of those things that drives one completely nuts.

Only one things comes to mind - do you have uiautomationcore.dll in your fsx folder? You know about that bug, right?

 

I would, before I give anything to charity, do a windows reinstall, do a step by step install, and then go slowly installing my addons.

 

Your computer is also not the newest, so I would be tempted to think it might be that too... wouldn't be the first time the PSU has given up, for example.

Could be a dodgy GFX driver. Personally I never use beta drivers, only WHQL approved drivers

Will, what a star you are. That was one aspect I never ever gave thought to. Yes, indeed, I do have that Aquarium screensaver but that only kicks in 45 mins into idle,and a flight in other words, FSX, was running,so Win7 was not in idle mode.

 

Will try disabling that screensaver and see what the result is. No, all Windows Updating or any updating is totally disabled.

 

Thanks once more.

Agree with Word Not Allowed. Without seeing what actually occured it may be difficult. Before putting all the fault of FSX, Could be a hardware issue.

Ugh, doesn't sound good.

 

It's probably one of those things that drives one completely nuts.

Only one things comes to mind - do you have uiautomationcore.dll in your fsx folder? You know about that bug, right?

 

I would, before I give anything to charity, do a windows reinstall, do a step by step install, and then go slowly installing my addons.

 

Your computer is also not the newest, so I would be tempted to think it might be that too... wouldn't be the first time the PSU has given up, for example.

Thanks Srdan. Already have that. First thing I did after Nick's tweaks.

 

Agreed, the CPU may be a bit old as I'm awaiting a GPU for my new i5-2500K based rig, it has to suffice for now. And the PSU has never given me any trouble before I completely wiped my last FSX installation clean. It's a very good make and a rock-steady make too.

 

But your suggestions are valid. Will go down that route as a last resort before I throw in the towel.

Will go down that route as a last resort before I throw in the towel.

 

Yes. Giving up must be a last resort

Could be a dodgy GFX driver. Personally I never use beta drivers, only WHQL approved drivers

I had my doubts about that beta driver but the next one up were for 680 cards, so settled for the beta. But this same problem also occurred with the WHQL 296 drivers so it cannot, reasonably, be just because it's a beta driver.

 

Agree with Word Not Allowed. Without seeing what actually occured it may be difficult. Before putting all the fault of FSX, Could be a hardware issue.

If it was a hardware issue, would I not see EventVwr throw up something related to it? I have run extensive Prime95 tests and other benchmarks and none of them have thrown up a hardware issue.

 

Yes. Giving up must be a last resort

Srdan, you too are a star. You ALWAYS encourage. Thanks, pal.

Sorry to hear you are still having some problems Rick! I have read about a lot of people having problems with a black screen after long flights (4 hours or more). I could be caused by system overheating, wrong CPU/Memory voltages and timings, or, the most common cause is the virtual memory (page file) setting. I have found that FSX runs the best with the 'system managed size' setting rather than someone making their own settings. So, check out your virtual memory setting and move it to system managed size if set to something else. Hope you find a solution!

 

Best regards,

Jim

Are you running the standard fixes and tweaks, like Word Not Allowed mentioned? Means uiautomationcore, Highmemfix, FSX with admin rights tagged, FSX excluded in any protection soft, Windows UAC, Data Execution Prevention.

 

What does your Windows event log show after this has happened?

 

Are you running any other games or demanding software which could act as some sort of stability test? That black screen may arise with some Nvidia driver reset, but that may show up in the event log.

 

The stable or not so stable hardware is a huge variable. Could mean anything and nothing. Is that scenario from your first post a typical one and do you always receive a black screen or is it changing on the symptoms?

 

Any patterns like this or that plane or route over certain addons?

 

Does it change when you run your hardware at default speeds?

Thanks for that valueable input, Jim. Now, there indeed is food for thought.

 

System is mildly O'cd, has a 400mm fan atop, three 200mm fans in front, plus another 200mm behind, so overheating, h'mmm. I have left the rig encoding video files for much longer than running FSX and had no issues.

 

Now that you have mentioned VM, I had the pagefile moved to another partition. Could that have caused something like this?

Sounds like either the animationcore.dll fix or highmemfix entry is missing from your fsx

Are you running the standard fixes and tweaks, like Word Not Allowed mentioned? Means uiautomationcore, Highmemfix, FSX with admin rights tagged, FSX excluded in any protection soft, Windows UAC, Data Execution Prevention.

 

What does your Windows event log show after this has happened?

 

Are you running any other games or demanding software which could act as some sort of stability test? That black screen may arise with some Nvidia driver reset, but that may show up in the event log.

 

The stable or not so stable hardware is a huge variable. Could mean anything and nothing. Is that scenario from your first post a typical one and do you always receive a black screen or is it changing on the symptoms?

 

Any patterns like this or that plane or route over certain addons?

 

Does it change when you run your hardware at default speeds?

Hi CoolP. Yes to that.

 

Nothing in EventLog, first place I looked.

 

First time I've seen that black screen when I was still in daylight just before the end of the Brazilian border, since I updated the Nvidia driver as per Srdan's latest tweak, which I have followed to the line. In fact I posted him thanking him for that particular tweak.

 

Happens with any plane on a medium to long flight.

 

Sounds like either the animationcore.dll fix or highmemfix entry is missing from your fsx

Only checked it yesterday after Word Not Allowed's tweak. Both entries there.

 

Thank you gentlemen for your outstanding contributions to this. I'm truly overwhelmed and appreciative.

Happens with any plane on a medium to long flight.

 

This actually tells me that we can probably rule out scenery or aircraft errors. I would even exclude FSX here (=not FSX fault). It's only the behaviour that causes the FSX to malfunction.

I believe it's hardware or windows fault. Going completely clean is what I would do. Then doing every known hardcore computer test out there. CPU, GPU, HDD, Memtest... the whole nine yards. Couple of days of hardcore testing. On a clean machine.