Captains,I admit to being a little confused about the two CTD fixes I have seen advocated on this forum. I know about the Seasonal CTD fix(the one where you replace textures, and replace the terrain.cfg), and I also know about the one where you replace certain values in the terrain.cfg file. But I am still left with questions:1) Can I avoid using one or both of the fixes during all seasons but fall and spring, or should I use them all year long?2) I realize that these fixes will change minor visual things(esp the Seasonal one), but will I really notice them as a guy who spends most of his time at 30000+ ft and just comes down for a landing?3) Why wont MS fix these problems? ;)

Hi,I too have had CTD issues, but they are ALWAYS cured by using the maskclass fix.In answer to your question, I have the maskclass fix applied all of the time, I can't be bothered to change it back and back again.2) the visual impact of these changes seem very small to me, I just loose a bit of the "blending" around airports and different ground textures.3) HAHAHA, now that is a great question, my opinion is, that MS, like many, many people on these forum believe there is no problem, a lot of people put these issues down to faulty setups or dodgy addons, and they, like MS, would rather stick there head in the sand.The bottom line is, there is definatly an issue with seasonal CTD's, no if's, no but's, and I for one hope that MS sort it out, but I am not holding my breath for a patch, in fact I believe the CTD patch will be FS10.CheersDan.

Hi Fred,Well me too... I developed the CTD recently, but interestingly, only the PMDGB1900 and the Eaglesoft Citation were affected. In the case of the B1900 it would cause the CTD as soon as the VC was selected at a specific airport, whilst the Citation caused the problem as I overflew the same area. I had recently added third party scenery to that area (i.e. NZNS Airport). So I removed all of my add-on scenery from the scenery library but retained the 150mtr New Zealand mesh file and now FS9 is back to normal. The B1900 starts and operates perfectly normally and also the Citation. I have not had a single CTD since removing the third party scenery (where's some wood when you need it).My next step is to reinstall the scenery that I removed - but this time step by step, first the scenery then the AFCAD file until FS9 generates the CTD. There was another post in this forum describing the posters "feeling" that AFCAD's could be at the root of the problem but he gave no justification, so I am open minded. He may have a point, but there has been a lot of speculation.So I am a happy camper now, the B1900 and the Citation both oeprating as intended... bliss.

Progress,I reinstalled the Nelson (NZNS) add-on and sure enough FS9 generates a CTD. I did not install the AFCAD though, so I would say that certainly my problem is this specific add-on scenery rather than the AFCAD file. In the readme for that scenery package it mentions "ONE FINAL NOTE ... THIS SCENERY MAY REQUIRE VOD/APT2.6 TYPE Texture addons , as standard for most addons". I am sure that I installed those textures.During one of the CTD instances, I was left with FS9 displaying the cockpit and the "Report to Microsoft" dialog behind the main FS9 screen and so out of sight. Whilst the screen was occupied by FS9, the mouse cursor turned to an hourglass when it as placed over scenery and a normal cursor when placed over the panel (of PMDGB1900). This led me to think that it was the scenery texture that was causing the problem (at least for me). If this problem is occuring on machines that all have add-on scenery installed, what is the chance that VOD/APT2.6 might be a common link?I have no solid basis for that assertion it is just a thought!

I think you guys are falling into the same trap most people fell into when the seasonal CTD was first discovered.Those of us who regualarly fly with third party mesh or landclass first noticed this last year in the Autumn.My first experience was with Holger's wonderful BC Lakes Fix and add on scenery for the Canadian Rocky's. At first I thought that it was obviously a problem with the addon, since unchecking the add-on fixed the issue.But then folks started having this CTD in other places. People who had no addon mesh or enhanced scenery or land class.The seasonal CTD is a result of (based on my very little knowledge of scenery design) a combination of a certain combination of textures which are blended or Masked by the Airport textures. When the "magic" combo of the these "textures" occur, the CTD occurs.We called it the "seasonal" CTD, because it seemed to appear mostly in "seasonal" transitions. Of course this is totally "inaccurate" because the "textures" are used year round at different times and different places globally. So while they may occur during a certain period in one region, they will appear somewhere else during another time. So the CTD is not limited to only seasonal transistions. It seems, however that the CTD most commonly occurs in mountainous regions, and may be a result of a specific texture used to cover those areas.I never installed the "replacement textures" that were part of the fix, but I did to the MaskClassMap value replacements (Change all instances of MaskClassMap=3 and MaskClassMap=1 to MaskClassMap=0) and it has worked for me. The biggest side effect, I have seen is the loss of the "clearcut" areas for power lines, which I thought were cheesy anyway. The reason you may find it in addon scenery is because the scenery author may have used the "textures" in question to improve tha area, and thus artificially caused the problem. However, the same fix should work for addon's as well as stock scenery.

Thank you for your responses gentlemen!

What altitude and how far from your destination airport did you folks get the CTD? I recently had two freeze ups and am wondering if I am now getting the same problem. Never happened before and I do not have any third party scenery. All default. Only thing I installed recently was ultimate traffic.thanksBill

It should be remembered that the Seasonal CTD manifests itself with the quick crash to desktop. No warning, no report to MS... nothing. One moment you're flying along happy as can be, and in the next instant you're looking at the desktop. That's it!Any other CTD could be caused by any number of factors... other software (add-ons to FS), hardware, virus... you name it.Hope this helps,Greg

Well then I may not have the CTD but some other problem as when I freeze up after a while I get the send report error message. For the life of me I cant figure why this is happening all of a sudden. I dont use 3rd party scenery or aircraft and the only recent addition was the GA portion of Ultimate traffic.Will just have to wait and see.ThanksBill

I am getting a CTD now, but this one is nasty, loud corrupted noise coming from the speakers forcing me to manually turn off the computer. The only thing I've installed are the fsgenesis US landclass, the west and rockies meshes, and some replacement sky and cloud textures. Suddenly i get a CTD flying any plane. default lear, 747, c130 hercules, oh well!Sorry is there any other fix besides changing over a thousand entries in the scenery.cfg???

Hi Alex,This sounds like a hardware issue to me. Just as a test you could remove the left cover of your case to allow fresh air into the computer. Adding a small household table fan to the test doesn't hurt. Fly like this for a couple days, then post back with your results.Good luck,Greg

This is all new hardware, maybe the gf fx5950ultra cards onboard fan is failing? how can I find out?

One more question I have wondered about on the topic of CTD:I've experienced CTD on approach to KPDX, possibly some others. But I've also had my ILS, speed etc go nuts on short final to KSLC among others using PMDG and DF C310 ie various aircraft at various airports but always on final. Any chance these are the same as the CTD problem or different severity manifestations of the same CTD problem? I saw a couple of posts on this here on Avsim so I don't think it's just my system. If they're different problems, are there known fixes for the going nuts problem? I hadn't seen any posted. Thanks -- Dick Bixler