Any Freeware Scenery Causing Freezes/Crashes?

[tamba765 54]

I've also had these freezes for a couple of years now. I'm still having them on a new computer I had built exclusively for FSX. I've removed all mesh and scenery addons, including FS genesis and Ultimate terrain X. I removed the UI Automation core and updated the GPU drivers. VAS rarely exceeds 3 gigs and usually averages around 2.7 while running FSX with ASN, and online with VATSIM, using FSinn. I recently went for about a month with no problems at all and now suddenly I've experienced 3 freezes in the last 5 days, without changing anything! The freezes last around 8 minutes, like others have reported, and indicate Terrain.dll and Kernelbase.dlls.as the problem. The rest of the WhatIsHang report might as well be in Chinese, since I have no idea what all that gibberish means any way. Someone said that it could be a Sim Connect problem. If that was the case, wouldn't everyone be affected? It's my guess that some freeware scenery I downloaded from FlightSim.com over the last couple of years, is causing the problem. Sure I could disable all the addon scenery, but I would die of old age before I could ad each one on to see if it made a difference. I use FSX for a realistic flight experience, so going back to default scenery would severely diminish the realism, for me at least, since I was a real world Airline Pilot. Does anyone out there know of any freeware downloaded from FlightSim.com that has caused any freeze problems? This would be nice to know before I start performing scenery surgery? Thanks.

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

Sure I could disable all the addon scenery, but I would die of old age before I could ad each one on to see if it made a difference.

 

It is just a recommendation as you need to investigate what might be causing your crash(es).  There is no known "magic bullet" fix for these strange occurrences.  It is not difficult at all to disable all of your addon scenery and, if the crashes/freezes stop, then it must be one of those sceneries.  In the AVSIM CTD Guide we recommend you enable your add-ons 3-4 at a time until the crash reoccurs.  You shouldn't have a lot of scenery add-ons enabled anyway.  Just the ones you will be using during a flight session. 

 

 

 

The freezes last around 8 minutes, like others have reported, and indicate Terrain.dll and Kernelbase.dlls.as the problem.

 

I have had a lot of fsx freezes/lockups but never stayed long enough to see if the freeze would go away after 8 minutes until last month when I heard a lot of discussions about this issue.  I had a freeze last month and decided not to do anything for at least 8 minutes.  No joy.  I waited 20 minutes.  Still no joy.  I had to use the task manager to get out of FSX.  I think most of the people, including you, who are getting these freezes/ctd's are due to vector scenery data like Ultimate Terrain.  If you are seeing terrain.dll as the faulting module, then you did not have a freeze but a CTD.  Look at any programs like Ultimate Terrain or maybe Orbx's new vector data programs.

 

The kernelbase.dll is memory related.  Most likely you are running out of virtual address space as you just have too many programs running.  You only have 4GB's with a 64 bit system and Windows uses it too.  So FSX, your addons, and Windows are competing for this address space.

 

As I mentioned earlier I had a freeze/lockup and occasional CTD (ntdll.dll and stackhash modules).  Turned out to be MyTrafficX, the latest version has an issue.  I ran Process Monitor to find this problem (for me and many others).  Perhaps that's a solution for you too as it will give you an idea as to what was running in the minute that you suffered a freeze or crash.  Here's how I set up Process Monitor:  I would start it up just before takeoff (you have to turn it on after FSX is at least at the Startup screen so it can "see" it).  Once open, you need to click on Filter.  Change Architecture to Process Name and then go to the blank space and scroll down to FSX.exe then click on Add and then OK.  Process Monitor should now be showing only FSX stuff loading.  Now go to full screen and go fly.  During the flight I wrote down the time I saw a "glitch" in the flight, like a one or two second stutter.  Of course, if it freezes or CTD's, write down the time then you need to get to the Process Monitor and click Ctrl+E.  This will capture all the events that occurred during your flight session.  Every nanosecond.  Now you can scroll through to the time(s) you saw a glitch or FSX froze up or crashed. During the times I wrote down, I saw that MyTrafficX was loading aircraft, schedules, and scenery and assumed it was the issue.  I disabled it on a subsequent flight and no crashes or freezes.  I enabled it and got a freeze or crash.  The most important thing is writing down the exact minute you saw the crash or 'glitch'.  There's a lot of data to go through. 

 

FSInn/FSCoPilot have caused freezes/crashes in the past and they need to be configured exactly as the developer has directed in his forum (on VATSIM I think).

 

Since this is a new issue I'm moving it to a new topic here in the CTD Forum.  It gets difficult to keep up with who had what issue.

 

Hope you can find your problem.

 

Best regards,

[tamba765 54]

This is NOT a VAS problem. As I said, it never gets anywhere near 4 gigs. Also, FSX unfreezes after 8 minutes, so this not a CTD.

I couldn't find anything in the Process Monitor the was labeled "filter". I just run it and keep an eye on the amount of memory being used. I have numerous small freeware scenery updates, but no large addon scenery programs running at this time. I'll follow your suggestion about deleting scenery, but sometimes I can go for weeks at a time with no freezes. Thanks for your response.