Hi. The past half dozen or so times I have tried to fly FS9 (and on and off prior to that), my flight has been cut short just before or just after take off by a sudden BSOD (well, they are all sudden of course!). I am working in a relatively remote area of the would and keep my sanity (partially, at least) by having my old Dell XPS M1730 laptop here to run FS9, but at this rate I am tempted to find another hobby, till I get back to the UK and my main FS PC anyway.

 

The laptop runs WinXP 64-bit. I suspect that all the 3rd. party FS9 software I have is a bit too much for the machine to cope with, but even so ... The BSOD occurs pretty much at random as far as I can tell, but always when doing something like opening FSNavigator or clicking some switch or other in the cockpit. I honestly can't recall exactly what triggers it, but it's not one thing - lots of different actions can apparently cause the blue screeen. Is it an nVidia driver issue perhaps?? Pretty sure it's software related, as if I run an out-of-the-box version of FS9 (but who wants to do that?) I never have any trouble.

 

My mini-crash dump file is here:

 

https://mega.co.nz/#!69wm0C7T!BxyMkmkB8x9YltYrJnohamtNVG_bnFX2AT5QNACFbjM

 

(You need to copy and paste that into the browser address bar, clicking on the link doesn't work)

 

Advice much appreciated as I am fed up of setting up complex flights, in PMDG etc. a/c and them nearly all ending with either an FS9 crash or a BSOD.

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Martin

What's wrong with running AppCrashView?  Provides much more information.

 

Best regards,

Hi. I already looked at the files with 'BlueScreenView' (is AppCrash view much different?). I got that the driver responsible is ntoskrnl.exe and I saw that the BSOD was 'IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL'... Googling that gives me endless possibilities/causes/solutions.. I'll keep looking but I am not even sure now if this is a software or hardware problem. (WhoCrashed says probably software, but I am no nearer to finding, for instance, what driver I'd need to update - video drivers?? Not sure there's much choice for this O/S now)

Hi. I already looked at the files with 'BlueScreenView' (is AppCrash view much different?). I got that the driver responsible is ntoskrnl.exe and I saw that the BSOD was 'IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL'... Googling that gives me endless possibilities/causes/solutions.. I'll keep looking but I am not even sure now if this is a software or hardware problem. (WhoCrashed says probably software, but I am no nearer to finding, for instance, what driver I'd need to update - video drivers?? Not sure there's much choice for this O/S now)

Ah!  A BSOD!  It means you have a wrong voltage setting in your BIOS (DRAM or CPU).  If you return your BSOD setting back to the Optimal Defaults, it should go away.  You can also try different voltages and see if that fixes the problem. 

 

Best regards,

Hi Jim,

 

Thanks - could you tell me though how you connect the information in the dump file with the laptop's voltage setting. I don't think I have ever changed it from Dell's default to be honest.

 

Martin

In FSX (I know, you are running FS9), most of the IRQL_NOT_LESS_EQUAL errors are caused by a bad overclock (i.e., too high or too low voltage settings).  I simply screwed up with your OP as I was more concerned about viewing the dmp file and the xml file that came with it and didn't really read your OP all that closely.  I didn't see BSOD but you clearly stated it.  I apologize.  Still, if you had a desktop and it was overclocked, I would still suspect a bad voltage setting. 

 

Since it could also be a bad driver causing this problem, I would download and run one of those driver scanners and see if all of your drivers are up-to-date as this BSOD is sometimes caused by a bad driver.

 

Best regards,

OK Jim, no worries. I have already replaced the video driver (with a clean install) so I'll see how that goes first. If I still get BSOD I'll do as you suggest re a full driver scan

(Driver Booster 2 reports all my drivers are up to date...)

 

 

The laptop runs WinXP 64-bit.

 

That's likely your problem. I wouldn't trust drivers for 64-bit XP.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke