I hope that someone can shed some light on this...I seem to get a system lock-up when running FS2004 for around an hour or so. I am running W98SE with all the updates. Is there a general issue with FS9 in this matter?Thanks in advance,Cheers!Mitch R.

I'm not in the forums much these days due to illness and other issues, but seeing a plea for help, let's see what I can offer.I have 98SE--no problems with lockups--you can rule the O/S out.But that leaves a lot of ground to cover. What are your system specs? What are your FS2004 settings? Have you applied the Autogen fix (renamed the default.xml) and the seasonal CTD fix? Both of those fixes (they can be found by searching the forum) resolve the only two FS2004 related potential lockups I know.Assuming you've done the above, if you were a FS2002 user and never had the problem with FS2002, you may have a marginal memory chip. FS2004 uses more memory than FS2002. Or, you could have a heat problem. Blowing a table fan at the computer might clear up/isolate that as a cause.Last, a virus scanner or any other applet loaded into the system could be conflicting. I start 98SE with only the volume control in my system tray.I'm afraid there's a lot of ground to cover--hopefully this post may help get you started...Regards,John

I was running into constant lockups after an hour or so of flying, running windows XP, came to find out after updating drivers the fs9.cfg file had TWO instances of [display]removed the 1st and put the 2nd in its place and everything was back to normal.Also try updating sound drivers and anything else such as the latest directx version

Hello John and all,First, John, hope you are feeling better and perhaps have gotten some reassuring news.Secondly, on the lockups, as John mentioned all those things, I can just reaffirm on one item. HEAT! If you are running about an hour, and have sliders some what maxed out . . . your using alot of cpu and graphic card power, and creating tons of heat.Even with my system, (I'm going to water cooling next week with a cute little setup which cools the gpu and cpu and is dead solid!), I have heat related problems at times.Last week, our air unit went out for about two hours . . . temp in my office rose about 25 degrees and sure enough, although all temps were within limits, I got a lockup . . . and it was gpu related. I pulled out another 10cm fan, located it atop of the gpu and sure enough, problem went away! System:P4 3.4 OC"d to 3.74Asus P4C800 E Deluxe MBKingston PC 3200 Hyperram with heat sinksIBM 7200 HD (2) 40gigGeForce Ti4600 128 . . . (ATI Radon 9800 out for repair)Ixoide Aluminum case with 6 case fansadditional fans:two on 500watt power supplyone on each HDone on CPUone on ram sticksadditional drawing inadditional drawing outadditional blowing on back side of gpuNow, unless I missed my count, that's 14 10cm fans a goin . .(who needs turbo prop sounds?) and my cpu Never goes above 44 C nor the MB 34C, but the gpu obviously got hotter without that cool air from my ac vent.After the water cooling, I will get rid of the fans on the gpu, cpu, and the two additonal which blow across both of those . . . Then it's time to try to up the OC just a tad. I have a friend who has the same system, almost identical, and he went to the water and is now at 3.86 and holding steady, and boy, will FS9 cook with that kind of cpu power!Now when everything works properly, I can keep it running forever and with all maxed except AI traffic -- 50%, (for some reason MY traffic really tears down the fps on this unit), and never drop below 27 fps locked at 30.Anyways, (sorry, got off the beaten path there for an instant), , I'd go for the heat issue if you are running and after an hour it dies.Best to all,Clay

Hi John!Thank you for that great information to look out for. Also thank you to the others below you that also offered great help.I do have a virus program in the background, but usually have it disabled. Heat....hmmm....I will take off the side of the box and see if I get any further lock-ups. Again, thanks for the info, all, and John, I hope that you feel much better real soon!Cheers!Mitch R.

As Clay said heat could be a problem. Not sure what part of the world you are in, but summer temps could have something to do with it. I know I try to use my computer less when we have extremely warm weather.A few years ago I had a video card fail on me after a particularly warm weather period. It had worked fine for years, until one night when I was playing games for a long time on a very hot night. That night and every time after, the video card would cause any game to crash. My new PC has enough cooling for normal conditions, but during very hot weather I often get temperature warnings.

Hi Clay,Your posting is a great revelation for me! I have suspected GPU heat-related issues with the occasional crashes to desktop and worse-blank blue or black screens I get intermittently for FS2004 for several months now. During the winter, I had no problems or hardly any of any crashes but starting around 2-3 months ago (I assume with the warmer summer temps) I started getting those dreaded black/blue screens. I have a temperature sensor system and measure the room temperature at around 25-27 Celcius even with my air conditioner on (in the living room, so the air has to travel a "U" shape to get to my computer room). I have a double fan blowing air down the corridor where my room is located to help push the air-conditioned air to my computer room but this does not seem to help too much.The crashes occur almost exclusively with add-on aircraft, airports, and high-resolution mesh 76 or 38M. I don't recall a crash with the default 747-400 for example, even with an add-on panel (by Gerard Lafaye) but with the POSKY 747-400, I have to use the DEFAULT microsoft panel as FS crashes regularly with Gerard Lafaye's panel.Here are my system specs:*ASUS A7N8X-E DELUXE motherboard*AMD ATHLONG XP 3200+ CPU*Kingston HyperX DDR 333 SDRAM (but timings changed to 2-3-3-7 in the BIOS as the default timings of 2-2-2-5 caused FS to crash to desktop)*ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB video card (retail box)*Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card*430-Watt Antec power supply*Antec case with 5 case fans plus 2 power supply fans built-in*Two ATA hard drives** Now for my question to you as you seem to be using third-party cooling systems: Do you think it is difficult to try to replace the default ATI cooling fan with one that has a blower to the outside for example? Have you used such a blower-baosed GPU cooling fan and was it making any difference in your crashes; was it tricky to replace the default fan with the third-party fan? (warranty will be void if we mess-up and the GPU burns...)John