FSX just doesn't give any brakes. When I though I had the beast tamed (no more g3d errors, CTDs, OOMs,..) suddenly those black screens appear - the screen goes completely black but the sound is still playing. I can end the flight (if I press ESC when it goes black I can see the end flight and continue flight buttons) but in FSX interface window where the airplane should be is also black. If I restart FSX all is back to normal (no computer restart needed). The weird part is this happens a few minutes after I press pause (P). It happened a few times while flying but it always happens if I pause the sim or don't do anything - yesterday I loaded A2A 172 at KCMW and went to make a coffee.. when I was back in 5 minutes.. black screen. Didn't touch the computer at all in the mean time. I also did a 3 and a half hour flight yesterday without pausing... no black screen! I already tried a couple of different drivers but the problem remains. No report about the crash in Event viewer. I'm not saying it's the pause (I can't imagine why would pausing cause anything?!), that's just the only connection I have so far. Anybody with similar experience or know about possible solution?

Squawkbox - If you are using Squawkbox and running it internally there is a bug when you receive a private message FSX freezes, goes black, and crashes. Check their forum.

FSInn – Same issue might happen as with the Squawkbox.

 

Sometimes an addon program, like a weather program, will call home and see if there product is legal or they will check for updates or download current information, like new weather and maybe it was in the process of doing this and you hit the pause button.  I had this happen to me several times in my old Sandy Bridge system (I have the Haswell system now).  I could reproduce it 100% of the time though if I enabled my weather program (AS2012).  At mid-flight, the sim would freeze up.  I would do a ctrl-alt-del and go to the Task Manager and stop AS2012 from running and, after some laborious work, finally get back into the flight and it would resume.  I assume it was trying to update the weather data and had an issue.  I fixed it by not starting up AS2012 and just using the default weather program instead (AS2012 is the default weather program even though it is not started before a flight sim session).  I do not have this issue with my new Haswell system though. 

 

If you have the BufferPools setting in your Fsx.cfg, I would suspect this to be the issue.

 

Best regards,

Jim

I don't use Squakbox or FSInn. I do use AS2012, though I'd swear that at some point I eliminated that one from the equation but after trying "everything" I can't be really sure anymore. I'll fly with REX wx for a while. I also use BP, I got it from one of the guides:

[bUFFERPOOLS]
UsePools=1
Poolsize=8388608
RejectThreshold=262144

It really helps, I hope it's not the source of the problem. I'll try to reproduce the problem (which is not a problem :smile: ) with and without the BP entry.

Thanks for the pointers, I hope I'll get to the bottom of this.

It appears that bufferpools were the troublemaker. I removed the BP entry completely and no more black screens.

Thanks for coming back with your fix.  Did you try the RejectThreshold=126976?  The figure you used was high.  If that doesn't work, leave the BP out of your config.  It just does not work well for many (like me).

 

Best regards,

Jim

Well it worked fine for me for years but I guess other "goodies" (g3d CTDs, OOMs,...) just hit first. Now that I don't have problems with others anymore this black screen thing came out. I'll try with the lower RT value (I don't remember where I got mine from). I'm now realizing that maybe I don't really need BP because those flights I did in the last few days without it were as smooth as flights before with BP. Maybe all those new things (1/2 refresh rate in NI, DX10 fix,...) improved FSX performance to that point that I don't need it anymore.

Hi Tomaz,

 

Do you have the Uiautomationcore.dll in your main fsx directory.  A wrong version will cause your problem too.  You need to have Version 6.0.5840.16386 installed. If you do not remove the dll or use the wrong version, you will get a freeze, an apphang, or ctd. The correct version is located in the AVSIM Software and Hardware Guide - http://forum.avsim.n...-software-guide. Click on the latest version of the guide. Once you download the version you will have to rename it to Uiautomationcore.dll and then drop it in your Main FSX folder.  (I just discovered some fsx add installs the wrong version in your main FSX folder).

 

Best regards,

Jim

Had the exact same thing just happen while flying the PMDG 737NGX, turned out that my video card drivers had been automatically updated but were incompatible with my FSX settings, had to roll back my drivers to the original, once I did this situation normal. Latest isn't necessarily best.

Good info.  I do not install that auto update (Nvidia Experience) program as I do not want auto updates.  However, I have installed the latest and greatest driver manually and have not seen any problems (yet).

 

Best regards,

Jim

Hi Tomaz,

 

Do you have the Uiautomationcore.dll in your main fsx directory.  A wrong version will cause your problem too.  You need to have Version 6.0.5840.16386 installed. If you do not remove the dll or use the wrong version, you will get a freeze, an apphang, or ctd. The correct version is located in the AVSIM Software and Hardware Guide - http://forum.avsim.n...-software-guide. Click on the latest version of the guide. Once you download the version you will have to rename it to Uiautomationcore.dll and then drop it in your Main FSX folder.  (I just discovered some fsx add installs the wrong version in your main FSX folder).

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Indeed I had the ..18000 version. I'll try with this one from the guide... but as I said, so far, after about 5 quite long flights aroung FTX PNW, NRM,.. no more black screens. So, I'm pretty sure it was the BP. I'll report if anything new happens.