It's his 2 AFCADs causing this.

You're very sure of this. This is not necessarily the problem. In fact, for some airports in my install, I've got five or six afcads I simply haven't bothered to clean out. I get no CTDs from my AFCADs - those duplicates have NEVER been the problem when I have had problems.

 

So far, the OP has not yet followed basic trouble-shooting practice and worked to identify the particular concern - except to scan for duplicate afcads, which IMO is an over-hyped non-problem in 99% of CTDs. The best and most helpful BASIC trouble-shooting step to take is to directly load the offending scenery and observe at what point the loading ceases and the sim crashes. If the crash occurs in the preload prior to scenery loading, the problem is some disagreement between the sim and your aircraft. Early loading is basic stuff like landclass, then mesh, then sceneries. If the crash occurs while the sim says it is loading "Terrain," the problem is an airport. If not, then local airport scenery is simply not the problem.

In the past, I've had CTDs due to corrupted mesh files, especially after defragging my HD. Airport and terrain textures are generally not preloaded  - thus, you see textures popping in on occasion if your HD is slow or your pan-rate is fast. If it is a texture problem (which on occasion it has been for me), your sim will wait to crash until after scenery loading is complete. Autogen, however, is preloaded ("Adjusting scenery objects" includes both object library placement and autogen.), so if you have a bad .agn, your sim will crash near the conclusion of scenery preload during the "adjusting scenery objects" segment.

If your problem is the scenery, it is probably best just to reinstall the whole scenery area from scratch. (Don't just overwrite - sometimes Windows is flaky about that.) But you needn't modify the scenery area - if it worked in the past, it will work again. What happened was that a .bgl became corrupt. It did not just suddenly develop a new conflict with something it has cooperated with before.

 

So far, the OP has not yet followed basic trouble-shooting practice and worked to identify the particular concern - except to scan for duplicate afcads, which IMO is an over-hyped non-problem in 99% of CTDs. The best and most helpful BASIC trouble-shooting step to take is to directly load the offending scenery and observe at what point the loading ceases and the sim crashes. If the crash occurs in the preload prior to scenery loading, the problem is some disagreement between the sim and your aircraft. Early loading is basic stuff like landclass, then mesh, then sceneries. If the crash occurs while the sim says it is loading "Terrain," the problem is an airport. If not, then local airport scenery is simply not the problem.

 

 

 

From what I understood he is not getting a CTD/freeze while loading, he is getting them while he is flying?? particularly when he gets close to a specific addon airport.....one that I assume has plenty of detail and plenty of traffic.......which his 2 gigs of ram cant handle which causes the program to stop functioning.

From what I understood he is not getting a CTD/freeze while loading, he is getting them while he is flying?? particularly when he gets close to a specific addon airport.....one that I assume has plenty of detail and plenty of traffic.......which his 2 gigs of ram cant handle which causes the program to stop functioning.

And loading a fresh flight from an airport within the affected area is still the best way to troubleshoot. Jskorna is probably correct that it is not an OOM, so the CTD is almost certainly recreatable using that practice, which allows for more precise and accurate identification and repair of the issue.

FS9 will run fine on 2 gigs of ram. It will run fine on 1 gig of ram. The FS9.exe modification has nothing to do with the amount of onboard ram he use. He's not having a CTD, he system is freezing or crashing when he gets near a certain area.

FS9 will run fine on 2 gigs of ram. It will run fine on 1 gig of ram. The FS9.exe modification has nothing to do with the amount of onboard ram he use. He's not having a CTD, he system is freezing or crashing when he gets near a certain area.

Exactly!

CTD = Crash To Desktop. Unless an error message is displayed, all crashes can be called CTD. And initial diagnostic techniques apply for all of them. Therefore, the two comments above by Bickmack and Jskorna are essentially meaningless and do not alter the recommended technique for troubleshooting and solving the issue at hand.

They may be misunderstanding the meaning of the term. If the issue were, say, an OOM error, FS9 would display an error message to that effect as it shut down.

FS9 will run fine on 2 gigs of ram. It will run fine on 1 gig of ram. The FS9.exe modification has nothing to do with the amount of onboard ram he use. He's not having a CTD, he system is freezing or crashing when he gets near a certain area.

You are absolutely correct that fs9 will run just fine on 1 or 2 gigs of ram....... Until you start loading up multiple airport upgrades, and environment upgrades etc. etc. which many or most of us have. When you get too many of these upgrades into a small area your 2 gigs of ram don't stand a chance of keeping up and your game can become unstable......for the record as stated earlier a CTD is a crash, is a freeze, they are all refered to as a CTD

That being said....... CTDs caused by too many addons in a small area which overwhelms your systems memory can give many different messages at the time of the crash/freeze/CTD not just the typical OOM message , actually sometimes there is no message at all just the program stops and goes back to the desktop

I am a fairly new member here at avsim but I have been simming for ...... A while. Perhaps you could have a read through this thread which features many avsim members who garner a little more respect than I do talking about this very problem http://forum.avsim.net/topic/344119-large-address-aware-4-gig-patch-better-instructions/

There is a remark in that thread that echos my earlier statement (I think it was Dillon).... And he says WHY would you be satisfied with 2 gigs of ram out of your hardware?

If you have the very good freeware Bermuda installed read the accompanying docs. Go to "known problems" and act as advised. Hope this resolves your problem too. B)

PS. It's the barges or golfers screwing you!!

Jim is almost certainly correct and to find the solution we need to dodge the red herrings that are flapping around in front of our eyes.

 

CTD - what do we mean by this? Its a grossly over-used and mis-used term. If FS closes down and gives an error message this is not really a "CTD" - the software is "crashing" in the way it should. If FS just vanishes off your screen, that is a better explanation of "Crash to Desktop". This is usually caused by something external to FS - other software, hardware, drivers etc.

 

But msyairtran has given a list of two files that allegedly caused the error. I don't know where this came from because FS will report the DLL that failed and caused the crash - if you visit my site (address in footer) this will show how you get this information from FS when a software crash occurs. With that information you are on a far better course to identifying the cause.

 

On the matter of multiple AFD files, in principle it isn't a problem but if just one of them has slightly different co-ordinates then it is a big problem! FS can cope with one only if this is the case. From my observations a quantity of commercial and third-party AFD files for the USA do have varying co-ordinates - I suspect their developers think they are doing a good thing by using the real base co-ordinates even though the airport is in the right place but it achieves nothing other than to create issues of this sort.

 

Other things to consider are mis-placed or defective Landclass or Terrain files but it is probably better to not stab in the dark until msyairtran can report exactly which DLL is involved.

 

I agree that the "4 GB patch" mentioned can be of great benefit but that should be for later - its pointless making unnecessary changes until the true issue is identified.

 

John

 

 

John......Thank you for enlightening me on my reckless unauthorized use of the term CTD :rolleyes:

And thank you for acknowledging that my suggestion of the 4GB patch wasn't an attempt to coerce the OP into DLing some sort of virus that would destroy his install (as implied by one of the earlier posts)

From a diagnostic perspective I respectfully disagree with your suggestion to hold off applying this useful little tool, with the simplicity of what it does and the fact that it really doesn't change anything within your install, then why not rule out RAM right up front? If it's not the problem then it wont have any impact on further attempts to diagnose the problem. If it is the culprit then you haven't had to chase your tail too far.

If "Jim is almost certainly correct" then I have to agree with ematheson that the best way to start looking would be to load up a flight at the airport in question.......but I think if that were the case then the original post would have likely read "cant load my KBWI or KIAD scenery" not that his install is "CTDing" around the East Coast.....in an area where he has multiple scenery upgrades in a relatively small area (go back to my earlier link and scroll down to the last post on the thread and this is exactly the scenario discussed).......It is also exactly the same as my situation.....for years I struggled with my install becoming unstable when I flew in an area where I have a lot of addons installed (of course it was my favourite area to fly <_< )......it used freeze, crash, CTD, and SOMETIMES give me OOM messages. This problem and the same symptoms spanned over 3 different computers and I would get the same problems in the same area (not airport...."area")...........I FINALLY heard about the patch and I haven't had a single problem since.

I am really confused about why everyone seems so adamant that my suggestion is SO far off base :huh:

 

 

From a diagnostic perspective I respectfully disagree with your suggestion to hold off applying this useful little tool, with the simplicity of what it does and the fact that it really doesn't change anything within your install, then why not rule out RAM right up front?

Only because its always best to deal with one thing at a time - and it has already been demonstrated  that lack of available memory isn't the issue because FS will tell you if it is . . .

 

Let's see what msyairtran can tell us about the DLL that failed first.

 

Best wishes,

 

John

Jim is almost certainly correct and to find the solution we need to dodge the red herrings that are flapping around in front of our eyes.

 

CTD - what do we mean by this? Its a grossly over-used and mis-used term. If FS closes down and gives an error message this is not really a "CTD" - the software is "crashing" in the way it should. If FS just vanishes off your screen, that is a better explanation of "Crash to Desktop". This is usually caused by something external to FS - other software, hardware, drivers etc.

 

But msyairtran has given a list of two files that allegedly caused the error. I don't know where this came from because FS will report the DLL that failed and caused the crash - if you visit my site (address in footer) this will show how you get this information from FS when a software crash occurs. With that information you are on a far better course to identifying the cause.

 

On the matter of multiple AFD files, in principle it isn't a problem but if just one of them has slightly different co-ordinates then it is a big problem! FS can cope with one only if this is the case. From my observations a quantity of commercial and third-party AFD files for the USA do have varying co-ordinates - I suspect their developers think they are doing a good thing by using the real base co-ordinates even though the airport is in the right place but it achieves nothing other than to create issues of this sort.

 

Other things to consider are mis-placed or defective Landclass or Terrain files but it is probably better to not stab in the dark until msyairtran can report exactly which DLL is involved.

 

I agree that the "4 GB patch" mentioned can be of great benefit but that should be for later - its pointless making unnecessary changes until the true issue is identified.

 

John

Very well written. A lot of people use the CTD term not having a clue of what it means. I think his problem is a corrupt bgl or LC file, but the only way to know is to disable all addons and turn them back on one by one until the problem pops up again. At this point modifying the fs9.exe will not resolve anything.

Very well written. A lot of people use the CTD term not having a clue of what it means. I think his problem is a corrupt bgl or LC file, but the only way to know is to disable all addons and turn them back on one by one until the problem pops up again. At this point modifying the fs9.exe will not resolve anything.

Agreed.

 

I will point out that I suggested this as the first reply to the OP posting 10 days ago. if he wants help I suggest he does as suggested and reports back.

 

Peter

Ok I just had a chance to run test. Its still freezing around the IAD area. I went back to default for IAD and checked the airport around it with scanafc and didn't find any double AFCADS. I disabled UT and that wasn't it. I also disabled my DC JFK BWI and still got the freeze.

Disable every single add-on scenery installed and then try.