I just realized, CTD =Crash-To-Desktop. Now, I just never have true crash to desktop problems which by my definition means that one second you are flying, the next, you are at your desktop without so much as a polite good-bye!, just BAM! .... What I get are the equally as rude BLACK screen, a lot of harddrive activity followed by a famous microsoft error message window with the usual options to look at the offending files, ect.ect. My QUESTION would be, is there a known difference between these two events. I thought that true CTDs were texture/season related (hence the now famous various German fix and masklandclass fixes) so that if you don't have true CTDs then it's not texture related. If so, then are there any separate reasons identified for the black screen errors??? or are they considered one in the same? (THis is so confusing!)Randy Jura, KPDX

A crash is a crash- they are the same thing. Not all errors happen the same way, but if the end result is that the program terminates unexpectadly- it's a CTD.

I have experienced multiple ctd situations. Black screen, no error messages, error messages, and even complete reboot of my system without any warning. It is certainly a mystery !!!Regards,Gabriel.

Hi,-- My explanation may not be exactly correct. It's all complicated and a little over my head! If someone else knows more correct explanation then please by all means correct me. Perhaps Jean Luc of RealityXP? Hehe. --No, I wuld say they are not they are not the same type of crash. As Christian said a crash is a crash yet there are different types of errors that can occur with software running on a computer. Such as a Fatal Exception, Invalid Page Fault(a.k.a. Page Fault Error) or a General Protection Fault(GPF). There are probably other types of errors too. Sometimes the OS can trap the error and produce a dump of the contents of the microprocessor's internal registers and system memory(ram) that the software was using at the time. Other times the kernel(the very core of the OS) is unable to trap the error resulting in a CTD. If I'm not mistaken, if an error occurs where an area of memory that is being used by the kernel is overwrriten by some software that is running then you might get a BSOD(Blue Screen of Death) or a hard lock-up of the system, usually due to a badly written device driver. I believe this is because device drivers run in Kernel mode (Ring 0) and are given access to the HAL, Hardware Abstraction Layer.Source of info: www.webopedia.comFatal Exception:A type of program error that requires that the program responsible for the error be shut down. Software applications communicate with operating systems and other applications through layers of code. An exception is an error alert that communicates the problem across the layers. When an error is detected, the exception is sent through the layers of code one by one until code is found that can handle the error. If no code has been included in any layer of the program to handle the specific error, the exception will travel through all the layers, create a fatal exception error, terminate the application and may even shut down the operating system.For example, a program may request that the operating system reserve a block of memory for the program's use. If the operating system is unable to honor the request - if the memory request is too large or if there is not enough available memory - it will send a memory exception to the layer that made the request. The exception will continue to travel through the layers until it is dealt with. If the program does not catch the exception, because the programmer did not write code to handle that particular exception, the exception makes its way to the top layer and the operating system recognizes it as an unhandled exception and shuts down the program, resulting in a fatal exception error. Well-designed software, however, handles all exceptions.Invalid Page Fault:A page fault that produces an error. Page fault errors can occur for any of the following reasons:The virtual memory system becomes unstable due to a shortage of physical memory (RAM)The virtual memory system becomes unstable due to a shortage of free disk space.The virtual memory area is corrupted by a misbehaving application.An application attempts to access data that is being modified by another running application(this is probably the most common occurence).General Protection Fault:A computer condition that causes a Windows application to crash. The most common cause of a GPF is two applications trying to use the same block of memory, or more specifically, one application trying to use memory assigned to another application.HAL:Short for hardware abstraction layer, programming in an operating system that functions as an interface between a system

Great post Jim/ Very clear. Thanks.

Hi,Sure thing. I'm glad you liked it and you are welcome. :)Cheers,Jim