Arrrrghhh, dont like things like this because it generally involves me having to re-install my entire FS (days of work despite backing up stuff!)

 

I recently attempted to install the new Xi'an scenery available on avsim. When I next opened FS9 after pasting it into my addon scenery folders and effects folders etc, it updated scenery files as usual when you install new sceneries, but then I got this message:

 

Error - FS9

Failed to read from file

 

It then crashed to desktop. Any subsequent attempts to open flight sim have resulted in the same error message and CTD. I have deleted all of the files added with the Xi'an Scenery (bearing in mind its not even entered into my Scenery.cfg yet as it crashed before i could manually enter it), but still I'm getting the same results.

 

Any ideas on what is the culprit here and how I can figure out which file is causing the problem?

 

Hope you can help

 

Many thanks

Nobody at all?

Hello Anthony.

 

When I next opened FS9 after pasting it into my addon scenery folders and effects folders etc, it updated scenery files as usual when you install new sceneries, but then I got this message:

 

Error - FS9

Failed to read from file

 

It then crashed to desktop. Any subsequent attempts to open flight sim have resulted in the same error message and CTD. I have deleted all of the files added with the Xi'an Scenery (bearing in mind its not even entered into my Scenery.cfg yet as it crashed before i could manually enter it), but still I'm getting the same results.

 

Any ideas on what is the culprit here and how I can figure out which file is causing the problem?

 

If FS automatically updated scenery files after you installed the new stuff then it recognised the stuff you'd pasted. If you pasted into ../addon scenery/scenery/.. then you wouldn't get a new scenery layer in your config file anyway. Regardless, it might be worth checking your scenery.cfg hasn't been damaged... or lost. If you're lucky there may be a backup in your docs & settings folder. There are free utilities available that will rebuild (to an extent) a messy scenery.cfg

 

You haven't told us what OS you have, nor given any real detail about which files you put into which folders. Does the error message give any more info, such as which file can't be read? (We could certainly do with more info...)

 

If you extracted the zip file to a temporary folder then you may have to re-extract the zip file so you have a clean set with which to compare your damaged FS9 installation. Extracting direct to your FS9 folder isn't recommended.

 

I'm at my work PC here, and about to head home, but hopefully someone else will have more suggestions.

 

Cheers,

D

I agree with Dave, unless you added the files to an existing scenery folder that was already activated in the Scenery Library FS should not have re-indexed the scenery files.

 

There is nothing in this addon that should cause your problem, it works fine for me. Looks pretty nice too.

 

Something else is going on, possibly an issue with your hard drive.

 

regards,

Joe

, it updated scenery files as usual when you install new sceneries, but then I got this message:

 

Error - FS9

Failed to read from file

 

It then crashed to desktop. Any subsequent attempts to open flight sim have resulted in the same error message and CTD. I have deleted all of the files added with the Xi'an Scenery (bearing in mind its not even entered into my Scenery.cfg yet as it crashed before i could manually enter it), but still I'm getting the same results.

 

Any ideas on what is the culprit here and how I can figure out which file is causing the problem?

 

Hope you can help

 

Many thanks

 

I sometimes get the same error message, when I start FSX, and my PC has been on for many days.

Re-booting the PC has always corrected the issue, and allowed FSX to load.

 

I am guilty of not tracking down what is causing the issue -- I know I should. !!

 

---------

In any case, you asked "How do I find out what file the error message is talking about"

 

Typical Windows Does not tell you !!!

 

When this next happens, you might try this.

 

Close the sim.

Download and run sysinternals PROCMON.

Start FS9, and select PROCMON to filter and only show FS9.exe processes.

 

Procmon will show all Registry and file accesses.

 

You are interested in File Accesses, and ones that FAIL with an error.

 

When you get the error message in the Sim look around that time in the Procmon event list, and identify any files that are failing to load. It's going to be one of those.

Many thanks for you help so far guys.

 

I have downloaded the Procmon programme, and when filtering it doesn't show anything to have 'FAIL'ed. It does show quite a few that have a result of 'NAME NOT FOUND' (9748 of them to be exact, is this normal?!).

 

You're absolutely right, I hadnt thought about it, but yes, if I hadnt added the area to my scenery.cfg beforehand then it wouldnt have updated the scenery files on loading if I had just copied and pasted from the zip files to the sim's folders. Before all of this I had deleted an AFCAD file from a folder because it was doubling up on another afcad (RJTT Haneda) and so kept reverting to one that I didnt want, I think i had to rename it or something- really ought to keep track of what I do in FS9!

 

I am running XP (old I know).

 

Files put into FS folders were a folder 'ZXLY' containing 'Scenery' and 'Texture' folders, plus the contents of the 'Effects' folder that came with the download pasted into the main FS9 'Effects' folder (as well as a file into the sub-folder called 'texture' in the FS9 'effects' folder).

 

Apologies if this is an incredibly convoluted message, I'm confusing myself now!

A little more info for you

I have sorted my scenery.cfg file using a utility to tidy it up, I tried deleting the entries for RJTT and all related areas, as well as deleting the files associated with them, this made no difference either (so i restored them to the FS folders but not back into scenery.cfg)

 

Unfortunately with this aspect of FS9 I'm pretty clueless....

Try opening the XP Event Viewer and look under the application logs and see if there was an error recorded on the time and date of the crash. If you cannot find any, try using the search function in the event viewer and look for fs9.

 

You might also try renaming your fs9.cfg, restarting fs9 and letting the config rebuild. This fixes a lot of issues.

 

If you can, get into the Scenery Library and disable Addon Scenery. You might have inadvertently removed a texture or .bgl file required by another scenery. You can also do this by opening the scenery.cfg and changing the addon scenery area from Active=True to =False. If that doesn't work, then you can try disabling all your commercial scenery by changing the Active line to False. Save the config then restart fs9. If it starts up okay, you have an issue with one of these sceneries and you'll need to start enabling them 3-4 at a time until the scenery is found.

 

Regarding the process monitor with 'Name Not Found' error, this is normal. The process monitor is difficult to use and interpret. Use the Event Viewer as Microsoft provided this so that individuals could investigate a crash.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Ok, I tried renaming my FS9.cfg, no luck after that

 

Using Event viewer it tells me that there was an error, and when i click on it this is what it tells me:

"The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: 7."

 

I tried changing all addon scenery entries in scenery.cfg Active=True to =False so that it was only reading Active=True for default sceneries, and again when opening FS9 I got the same message.

 

Very perplexed?

 

Can't thank you guys enough for trying to help so far, I really appreciate it. Keep those ideas coming......

Many thanks for you help so far guys.

 

I have downloaded the Procmon programme, and when filtering it doesn't show anything to have 'FAIL'ed. It does show quite a few that have a result of 'NAME NOT FOUND' (9748 of them to be exact, is this normal?!).

 

 

Yes, this is "Normal" .. but what you are probably looking for is one of the last "NAME NOT FOUND" errors, just before the Sim Crashed. -- maybe one that is in the Scenery path ?

 

This may give you a clue about what is going wrong, and what file might have got changed/deleted/overwritten etc

You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description

 

It appears the Event Viewer is not going to give you any information about why your computer crashed as you do not have the Administrative Rights to that data. Here's more info about that issue and how to fix it - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312216.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Hi.

 

On re-reading your original post I see you had the first error message before deleting anything. That suggests that some necessary file has become corrupt.

 

Try Jim's suggestion and in scenery.cfg in the main FS9 folder disable all your extra scenery layers (Active=False), leaving only the default layers as Active=True. It's always worth making a backup copy on your desktop before editing, especially if your keyboard skills are as poor as mine...

 

If the problem is gone, re-enable the layers a few at a time to home in on the culprit.

 

If the problem is still there with only the default layers active, you may need to re-extract various default files from your FS9 CDs. We'll worry about that later as there's a lot of stuff in there-- find out first if the problem is in default or extra layers, or in another folder such as ../Effects/..

 

Cheers,

D

After disabling all non-default scenery layers I still got the message. Strangely, the message has changed to something different now after a rebuild of my FS9.cfg telling me on startup that my computer is out of memory, which I know for a fact is absolutely not true. I believe I've had this issue before a long time ago and it required a complete re-installation taking days and days.

 

I remember reading somewhere that the 'Out of memory' message was a random one selected by windows or FS9 because it didnt have a related error message to the actual issue.

 

Its def not memory related, I have plenty of RAM, hard disk space and my page file is more than adequate so I'm not going to be changing anything relating to that.

 

Hmmm the mystery continues....

 

Thanks again for your advice thus far