FSX Hanging Mid Flight

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Sure, I hear what you're saying Jim, but I am referring to the 'multiple menu accessed' freezes, not OOM freezes or crashes. My FSX would freeze when I accessed the menu in flight. Since adding the file it has never done it since. Sure, I've had the usual CTDs and freezes due to overtaxing my system, but as you quite rightly say, that is a different issue.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

 

 

Try this fix - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947246

 

 This fix does not apply to Win 7 x64 or Win 8.

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

but I am referring to the 'multiple menu accessed' freezes, not OOM freezes or crashes.

 

I'm not talking about OOM's either.  Just multiple menu accessed freezes.  But many who believe in the uiautomationcore.dll placebo, are telling others that it will fix all of their crashes which really irritates the heck out of me.  They have no proof.  I have the proof.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 This fix does not apply to Win 7 x64 or Win 8.

Good catch!  It's hard to see they mentioned Vista 64 bit but not Win 7 or Win 8 64 bit.  Could it mean they say it fixes both (32/64 bit?).  But I agree it does not specially state the 64 bit versions of Windows 7/8.  Perhaps this is the reason it did not work for those who have tried it.

 

Best regards,

Jim

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

So, the bottom line is:  No placebo like uiautomationcore.dll is going to save you from fsx freezes or ctd's

 

 

Amen to that. If one is experiences crashes, the best approach is to turn your settings down step by step and get rid of as many tweaks to fsx.cfg as possible. I am almost hesitant to say these CTDs can even be considered as being caused by bugs in FSX, since the code is so old. The hardware and Windows OS have both moved on so far from the time when FSX was written and its hard to fault ACES for that. The moral of the story is that is you want drive an old car, be nice to it.

 

I had a perfectly fine running FSX  under Win7 x64 and one day I decided to tinker and add the:

 

MultiSamplesPerPixel=

MultiSampleQuality=

 

settings to my FSX.cfg  file just to see whether those tweaks would work the same as using the same settings in nVidia Inspector. This was before Steve posted his test of the two entries last year in his DX10 blog, so I had no idea what the heck I was doing. Well, all I accomplished was creating nice reproducible CTDs in FSX after about 30 minutes of flying. And no event recorded in the Window event database. Just an unusable flight sim. I took the settings out and everything went back to normal.

 

 

Good catch! 

 

Someone else noticed this before and posted it in another thread, which I just happened to read. Apparently, the problem was fixed by MS in Win 7 64 and Win 8, as the heap sizes are larger.

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

settings to my FSX.cfg file just to see whether those tweaks would work the same as using the same settings in nVidia Inspector. This was before Steve posted his test of the two entries last year in his DX10 blog, so I had no idea what the heck I was doing. Well, all I accomplished was creating nice reproducible CTDs in FSX after about 30 minutes of flying. And no event recorded in the Window event database. Just an unusable flight sim. I took the settings out and everything went back to normal.

 

Good advice.  I was looking at your system specs and thought at first I was looking at a Cray system but it's not all that powerful but the cpu cost a lot of pennies.  I suspect you overclocked to 3.2 as I see the norm is 2.67GHz.  Anyway, you certainly have enough memory and plenty of cores!!

 

Best regards,

Jim

[dcgator29 37]

Just because you never had menu crashes doesn't mean that others didn't. Your uiautomationcore.dll must not be conflicting with FSX for whatever reason. I do know, and I'm sure many others, that placing the vista uiautomationcore in the fsx folder fixed these menu crashes on a brand new default installation of FSX. You seem to know a lot about FSX and ctd's, but you're wrong on this issue. You need to stop perpetuating that it is "placebo" and will not fix their menu crashes.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Good advice.  I was looking at your system specs and thought at first I was looking at a Cray system but it's not all that powerful but the cpu cost a lot of pennies.  I suspect you overclocked to 3.2 as I see the norm is 2.67GHz.  Anyway, you certainly have enough memory and plenty of cores!!

 

Best regards,

Jim

I bought it originally for GIS  work and video editing. It's really not that great for FSX, because most of the cores aren't used for much. I can get the OC up to 4.0 on air, but all that extra heat shortens the life of the RAM and CPUs. The EVGA SR-2 mobo is great piece of kit, even after 3 years.

[jambo50 15]

 

 

Make sure you have your Page File enabled for each HDD that FSX products are located.  I recommend System Managed Size but some are adventurous and come up with their own size

 

Jim, thank you for sharing this golden nugget of info! I kept having the hanging issue as well and multiple searches on the forum have yielded nothing. If what i gather from this statement is correct, here is what I have done:

 

I have FSX installed on an SSD as recommended. I have a large collection of ORBX, AI traffic, and photoscenery which nearly fills the SSD killing its performance. So I moved the ORBX and AI files and photoscenery into my HDD (which has tons of space) and created symbolic links to the appropriate FSX directories (got this information on how to do it somewhere on the forum).

The HDD is my OS disk, so by default it has a paging file already enabled and with system managed size (8GB it set). After reading this statement I enabled a page file on my SSD (again system managed and 8GB).

Hopefully I've got that right?

 

I've also applied the desktop heap fix, but I don't have a chance to fire up a test flight and let it run for a few hours. It's bed time for me here in the UK  Have to get up early for football (or soccer, some might prefer!).

 

Cheers

[FSMP 95]

If someone has already mention FSUIP,  I missed it,  so here goes.

 

( 1 ) Install the lastest version of FSUIPC,      It will prevent certain crashes,

(See FSUIPC documentation for details)  ..   THANKS PETER.

 

( 2 ) The CORRECT version of uiautomationcore.dll  WILL prevent crashes due to excessive view changes.

 

Does not hurt to occasionally run a dedicated memory test/ stress test program, like Memtest86 Pro.

 

Yes, memory can start to fail over time, and if it does,  and it will lead to all manner of issues , especially when running programs like FSX.

 

In my case. 

( a ) Laptop developed a bad memory stick after about 2 years.

( b ) New Desktop,  with high quality, high speed Ram,  had one of 3 sticks bad, from day 1.  ( Discovered after much frustration about day 60 ! )

 

It does happen  ...

[Rocky_53 1,566]

But many who believe in the uiautomationcore.dll placebo, are telling others that it will fix all of their crashes

Ahh, OK, I see what you mean, Apologies for misunderstanding. In that case, we're singing from the same hymn sheet :wink:

[lodestar 186]

just to be clear, i was referring to menu crashes only. It will fix only that, no other freezes and crashes. But if someone has other freezes and crashes, that is not reason to remove uiautomationcore.dll. Right version of Uiautomationcore.dll when is apllied in the right way, will do what it supposed to do, with no adverse effects. There is no need to say people to remove it, becouse this will very likely only add menu crashes problem.

 

People get into a trouble with uiautomationcore.dll when they use wrong version or/and instead of puting uiautomationcore.dll in main fsx folder, they are trying to replace OS uiautomationcore.dll or to add uiautomationcore.dll to registry

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Sure...

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

The HDD is my OS disk, so by default it has a paging file already enabled and with system managed size (8GB it set). After reading this statement I enabled a page file on my SSD (again system managed and 8GB).
Hopefully I've got that right?

 

I have the OS and FSX on my 245GB SSD but most of the addon scenery is on mechanical HDD's so I cannot comment on having the OS on a mechanical HDD with FSX on a solid state drive.  If you HDD's are fast 7200 or higher, then you should have no problems.  The important thing though is to have a page file on each HDD as well as the SSD.  I recently upgraded to the Haswell CPU and reinstalled Windows 7 and FSX (and all of my HDD's).  I had a page file on the SSD but not on the mechanical HDD's and I was receiving unexplained long pauses (stuttering) of about 1-2 seconds at a time when flying over my MSE V2 PhotoScenery.  Could not understand why I was getting these long pauses and never saw it on my previous system.  Then I enabled the page file on all my HDD's and, wa la, the pauses and stuttering went away!

 

I have found that system managed size works the best but many have decided to set their own page file and this might be the best way but it has to be done correctly and, if you are not computer smart, you could mess up the size and run into stuttering problems as I discussed above or your system could crash or freeze up.  The Windows default is system managed size for all HDD's.  You cannot go wrong with this setting! 

 

Best regards,

Jim

[FSMP 95]

The Microsoft Windows XP pagefile is used to extend the amount of computer memory available to applications and services so that they're not limited by the amount of physical RAM installed on the computer. Because the pagefile represents an extension of your physical RAM, anything you do to optimize the performance of the pagefile will have an impact on the overall performance of the computer.

 

 

The pagefile will fragment if there isn't enough contiguous hard disk space to hold the entire pagefile. This typically isn't the case when the operating system is first installed. But, by default, the operating system configures the pagefile to allocate space for itself dynamically. During the dynamic resizing, the file can end up fragmented because of a lack of contiguous disk space.

 

 

THEREFORE:

 

You could improve performance  by removing a fragmented pagefile and re-creating it in a way so that it doesn't subsequently fragment.

 

You'd do this by creating a static pagefile, which has the same minimum and maximum size.

 

This prevents the operating system from dynamically resizing the pagefile -- it's the dynamic resizing that causes an unfragmented pagefile to become fragmented.

 

Note:  a SSD is different to a Mechanical HD

The access time on a SSD is (almost) the same for any part of the SSD, as there is no mechanical movement necessary.   Therefore,  while a SSD can get Fragmented,  there is "little" or no performance slow down  when a SSD gets "Fragmented" .

 

So, if your Page File is on a SSD,  in theory, there is little difference  in a static or dynamic Page file.

 

However, if the Page file is Dynamic,  the OS  will need to manage that dynamic size, and that takes a finite time,

So, in theory, a Static SSD Page File will be faster  than a Dynamic SSD page file  -- although that difference will be very very small !!

[jjjallen 37]

Not to put too fine a point on the uiautomationcore.dll subject but it is ALWAYS a bad idea to replace system dlls with previous versions.  Just don't do it.

 

Cheers

jja