Hi there!

I still like to fly my good old FS9 from time to time. I have so many addons installed and I just love the smoothness of the sim with complex airliners like the Leonardo SH Maddog or the iFly 737 with maxed out settings!

But since a few days I have a strange problem:

As soon as my Win XP Professional (SP3) is booted up completely, I get a bluescreen (IRQL less or equal, also mentioning afd.sys) which leads to a reboot of my machine. This becomes an endless loop. Only way to get rid of it, is to boot up in safe mode, uninstall the driver of the integrated WLAN and thereafter, everything works flawlessly. I downloaded the latest driver for the Realtek RTL 8187 on a different machine, installed it and as soon as the machine goes online again, the bluescreen appears. I am using Microsoft Security Essentials and I never had that problem in 5 years of using this machine.

What could be the problem here?

I really would love to be able to go online again, since I want to buy the QW Avro for FS9 and use my network setup again!

Thanks in advance and greets,

Michael

Hello Michael. I did a quick read up on afd.sys: from a GOOGLE search: http://titlerequired.com/2011/11/25/quick-fix-afd-sys-afd-service-is-missing-windows-xp/ is interesting and may be related to your problem. The initial problem may have started with a virus and may be reoccuring because of persistant registry entries. Use your different machine to research this and I think you should be able to find the cure.

 

Regards,

Mel

Thanks for the fast answer!

But afd.sys is also a normal Windows process, isn't it? I certainly did a Google search already (afd.sys + bluescreen) and found quite many entries which lead me to the driver of the network card. As long as I don't go online (network driver uninstalled) everything works like a charm. But after reinstalling the network driver and selecting my WLAN connection at home, I got the bluescreen immediately. May I download a different antivirus program and install it on the FS9 machine to see if there are any infections?

Hi all! I had blue screen blues on both my hard drives while running FS2004,found my hardware sound accelerator was not on max,go start/run type dxdiag/click on sound check setting.

Cheers hope this helps.

Thanks for your answer! The thing is, that I am not able to run FS9 at all as long as my machine goes online. The moment that happens, after booting up WinXP, the bluescreen appears. I found out, with booting in safe mode, that the network (driver/hardware/being online) seems to be the problem. When I uninstall the network driver or disable the onboard network hardware, everything works without any problems...

"I downloaded the latest driver for the Realtek RTL 8187 on a different machine,"

 

Is this machine on your home network?

Is it a WinXP machine also?

 

This all does not sound like a MSFS 9.1 problem.

Yes, all the machines are part of my home network. And the machine I downloaded the driver with is a MacBook.

Sorry if I chose the wrong subforum! This error is defentily related to some hardware/driver/virus problem. But since it's on my FS9 computer and I thought that I am probably not the only one that suffered from an afd.sys problem, I thought this place could be the proper one. Sorry again, and feel free to move it to the correct place.

Any further help is appreciated! Not being able to go online means not being able to use Active Sky, FSC9 and finally, not being able to buy the QW Avro.

So, thanks for your effort and help!

Your FS9.1 WinXP PC could be removed from the home network (isolated) .. so it does not infect or cause problems with your other PCs.

 

Then you could run the XP stand alone (only deal with one OS instead of multiple OS's / hardware/software mixes) .. and connect it to the internet to troubleshoot.

 

I assume the WinXP was your original PC and not connected to any home network because you have used FS9 for a long time..

Thanks for your answer!

Here is my setup:

Desktop computer with 2 bootable HDD (selectable via BIOS)

1 HDD has WinXP and FS9 on it

1 HDD has Win Vista and FSX on it

This machine is connected via WLAN and router to the internet and a laptop computer with Win Vista that runs Active Sky and FSC9 via simconnect and WideServer. That worked flawlessly for the last 5 years.

When I boot up Win7, the desktop machine has no problems at all, when I boot up WinXP, the blusecreen appears the second the machine goes online. While connecting to the WLAN and receiving the IP address, everything is still okay. The moment the connection is established, the system freezes for a moment, the blue screen appears and the system is being rebooted.

That happened from one day to the other. I changed nothing in the hardware setup. Today, I uninstalled Microsoft Security Essentials and installed Avira AntiVir (free version) instead. I did that with the network adapter being disabled in the BIOS, so everything worked flawlessly. I did a complete virus scan without any problems.

I enabled the WLAN adapter again, rebooted the system, and there it was again: BSOD... IRQL less or equal...

That´s pretty frustrating. My FS9 installation is quite big with a lot of pay- and freeware add ons installed. If this problem can´t be solved, FS9 will be most probably history for me...

You have an advanced PC/Network/setup with mixed OS's and one very old (WinXP) OS ("That worked flawlessly for the last 5 years.").

 

Maybe time for a new OS (or new PC+Win7-64) and run through the setups (FS9/addons) .. we all have had to do it ... sooner or later.

 

My "old" Vista PC is on my home network as a workstation with AS2012 and ASE.

 

I had to resetup FS9/FSX/addons on the new server Win7-64 .... also.

If this problem can´t be solved, FS9 will be most probably history for me...

 

Don't give up, Michael!

 

For the last few weeks I have been also going through very serious problems. :good:

Both Graphics (jaggies, blurries) problems and (too) frequent BSOD's.

I am fighting since I love this hobby and FSX or Flight are no solution.

Don't give up, Michael!

 

Thanks for the encouraging words!

But to be realistic, FSX became my main sim, and I will hopefully be able to buy a new machine this summer.

Actually I wanted to keep the old machine with FS9 on it, to give it a spin from time to time. But if I cannot find a solution for this problem, I definitely won´t do all the work again to install FS9 from the scratch. Doing this with FSX will be absolutely enough. ;-)

This is a mixed setup for sure, and WinXP is really old now! But since exactly this setup worked perfectly for such a long time, I am quite annoyed that such a problem just pops up from one the to the other.

I've also had some weird issues with FS9 suddenly, and I think a recent Windows Update is the culprit.

If all else fails, why not find a Restore Point prior to your troubles starting, and see?

 

Do remember to back up files that you want to keep, like aircraft.cfg that will be removed.

Hi everybody!

I found the solution for the problem!

On another Google search I found a quite old entry on a computer forum (from 2006) where an user had a similar problem with his WinXP. The solution that was suggested was, to add some Dword entries and values to the section related to the AFD process in the registry. I did that, and what can I say? The system is completely stable again!

I already downloaded the QW Avro and liveries for it, did a few test patterns while Active Sky was injecting the weather within the network, and so far, I had no BSOD.

I really wonder how such a problem can occur from one moment to the other, but anyways, I am back again with FS9.

Thanks to all of you!

Greets,

Michael

Miahael,

 

That is great news.

 

Why not post the registry fix / solution here for other pilots to use?