It's no surprise that FSX is crashing on people, especially when they try and push it more and more, far more than it was ever designed to handle. I haven't bothered buying the 777, as my system can barely handle the 737, and I'm definitely not going to start doing long-haul flights and have the system crash out when I come in for the landing, which frequently happened with the NGX. Also, I don't see the point buying new hardware, when FSX can't take advantage of it anyway.

 

X-Plane runs super smooth on the same hardware, but besides the scenery available for it (OSM and photo), the addons are pretty substandard and not worth the price (Except the new Saab, which is brilliant). Unfortunately, not many developers seem interested in developing for X-Plane, and until the large players (PMDG, OrbX, Flight1) start developing for X-Plane (which probably won't happen), then I've stopped buying from them. I don't see the point of supporting a dying product. I'm just one person, and my "protest" won't make any difference, but maybe one day developers will see that it's time to stop writing software for FSX and move on.

 

I wonder how much longer FSX can go on for before people just give up out of frustration.

Lol thats exactly what happened to me. I did a long haul flight landed and closed fsx. No problems or errors. Left my computer on and went to bed. Next morning windows did an automatic update and rebooted. Started up fsx clicked fly now and boom CTD. luckily I had a restore point right before the updates so I was good to go

 

Some of the CTD can also be hardware related. I had a crossfire setup with 2 7770 ati cards. I had crossfire off for FSX but I was still experiencing random CTD until I removed one card. Another instance I had 7850 that was OC from the manufacturer and it was always running hot. The fan would be running at 85%. I would get a random CTD halfway to my destination.

 

Now I'm just using a non OC ati and have not had any CTD anymore even with 15 hr flights

 

Ah, this was one of the critical things I disabled in my computer.  I stopped automatic updates.  Don't get em.  Now my anti-virus software (I run ESET Smart Security v6.0) will tell me when I need a critical Windows update and then I load ONLY the critical Windows updates....usually the major security fixes.  The rest of it, I don't put on the computer.  The reason is exactly what you put in the post above...had a Win 7 update, ran it and FSX crashed.  I got rid of all of the updates, then selected OFF automatic updates and now my AV software tells me when I have to do something.

 

Not everything MS puts out is 'vital' to the operation of your box and remember, especially with an older hardware build, saving every resource is critical.  Just a thought...

 

Cheers,

Dave

Anything further on P3D is going to result in bans. I've had it with these posts - our position on this is crystal clear and has been for literally years now. We CANNOT legally make and sell consumer entertainment products for P3D. End of story.