Evenin ladies and gents!I have got some problems in fs9. Ive been hearing alot about crashing to desktops etc but i think mine might not qualify under that category.Here's whats happening.. ill be flying around an airport everything seems to be working good. And then suddenly.. Flight Sim Freezes.. the sound keeps going, but it just freezes.. then suddenly, both of my monitors go black and i hear a click in the computer as if it is turning off, upon closer inspection i can see that it is still on, and i can hear it running (and still hear the engines of my plane going),,, however my screens are black and blinking and no amount of key pounding will bring them back to life!Here's what I have...AMD 2800+ Sempron, 768 mb of ram, ati 9800Pro 128mb graphics card, 120gb HD partitioned with Flight sim on its own seperate drive. Here's what ive done...- So far when this first started happening i had a P4 1.8, and i was also getting funky lines on my screen so getting the new motherboard and Chip fixed that.. only problems are in fs9 now. - Ive Reinstalled Windows , - ive reinstalled flight sim TWICE and am currently in the rebuilding stage trying to get my AI going as well as putting in some sceneries.. - i have no duplicate afcads kickin around.Ive got windows updated, ive got newest video drivers, im doing spyware sweeps scans and searching and destroying.And my PC JUST keeps doing the same thing... so ill say it again to all of you PC GURUs out there! PLEASE HEEEEeeeelllllpp! Is there a troubleshooting guide for this kinda thing? or should i just keep banging my head on the desk?ThanksKris

Hey Grubby,If I didn't know better I'd swear I had written your post myself. The way you describe it is exactly like it happens to me. I have been tackling this bugger for months. I don't have an answer... yet. Though at first glance you might think this is a hardware issue but I'm not convinced. I think for me it's either an addon AI aircraft model or one of it's textures or a file in my main texture folder or in my Scenery/world/texture folder. (boy this is gonna be fun trying to find out which one)I've already swapped out my mother board, 9800 Pro card, hard disks so that's why I'm leaning towards software. (Try running your AGP at 4x and see if it still happens).So I would think to yourself what addons have I added since I first started noticing it? You mentioned you added some. You've checked AFCADS, have you check inproperly placed landclass files from an addon? I too did a fresh install of FS2004 and never saw even a glitch in it's bear-bone state. But when I added my AI files things started happening. I'm using a combination of PAI, AIA, and some FSP. Just some ideas... as I am in the same boat and it's sinking fast! ;(

Ponyboy,Thanks for the quick reply! On the bright side at least there is more than one of us having the problem so hopefully we can figure it out quicker..I like your ai aircraft idea.... im also using AIA,FSP, and PAI, so thats one comonality. One thing that i just tried a few minutes ago that im monitoring to see if it fixes it, Ive got Norton System works and it detected i had a bunch of registry errors... so i have fixed those, i just did a quick hop and suprisingly it didnt crash , but i have a feeling i havent seen the end of this one, im going to keep monitoring it.Let me know if you find anything new!Kris

>ill be flying around an airport everything seems to be working>good. And then suddenly.. Flight Sim Freezes.. the sound keeps>going, but it just freezes.. then suddenly, both of my>monitors go black and i hear a click in the computer as if it>is turning off, upon closer inspection i can see that it is>still on, and i can hear it running (and still hear the>engines of my plane going),,, however my screens are black and>blinking and no amount of key pounding will bring them back to>life!I had the same problem when I was experimenting overclocking my PC. Maybe it's a hardware related problem in your case too, even if your pc is probably not overclocked. Try to lower your AGP speed to 4X in the BIOS. Are you sure the temperatures of your CPU are not too high?Marco

GentsI have encountered the exact problem that you're describing in my PMDG 737 when flying circuits out of EGSS. Quick question, did it occur when you were in the virtual cockpit on auto-pilot ? The reason i ask is that it would only occur when i was in the virtual cockpit. Solution, well slightly tenuous (perhaps) but it was down to an "invalid" waypoint on the flightplan that i had manually inserted via FSNavigator. Once i took out the waypoint the problem went away. I'm not too sure what was wrong with the waypoint but removing it did the job !!!I'm not sure that this will help but just a thought...Gary

Yes, if you have your machine or video card over clocked at all bring it back to specs and test it, if there is no crash that was your problem, some equipment just does not over clock well. Make sure that your PC is not heating up too much, including the video card itself. It is summer time and FS9 can heat up your computer fast especially if ot os not in an air conditioned room.Having the newest video driver does not mean you have the best video driver, people experience as many crashes with an old driver as they do a new one at times. You might try a different driver to see if that helps. The same goes with your sound drivers and other equipment on your PC.Make sure that you have shut off any unnecessary programs and services while you run FS9, I have seen people run FS9 with more than 50 other processes running at the same time and they wonder why it does not run well.Download ScanAFD and make sure that you do not have duplicate AFCAD files anywhere as this will cause a crash.Test all of your add-ons if you think one could be causing a problem, fly without any AI traffic to see if that is causing a problem, disable your add on scenery, move all of your AFCAD files to a temp folder and see if you still have crashes when they are gone. The only way to really find the cause of such crashes is to go through one item at a time and test, test, test.I wish you luck and I hope that this may help you a bit. Nothing worse than a broken FS!Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

Good morning!Thanks for the replies!Im thinking its going to be the ai causing the problem.. or perhaps the warm room. Unfortunately i dont have AC and it does get quite warm up here at times.I havent overclocked a single thing in this computer so its deffinitly not that. As for the drivers, i have gone back to the older drivers to try them and still get the same problem. So now its down to the addon scenery and the AIThanks again,Kris

Have you tried aiming an electric fan at your PC? If it is enclosed in a "tower" case, then remove the side panel and direct the cooling air right inside. R-

Going to try that as well. It just happened again, this time the PC just restarted though. It always seems to happen when im switching views.. usually in the tower view or spot view that it crashes!Kris

What I have been doing is sticking to one or two airports where it usually creeps up. For me that is Phoenix airport (KPHX). It's default sceenry but I have a lot of AI traffic going through there. I'm breaking them down into chunks... fly with only AIA traffic obe time, fly with only PAI the next to see what happens.Also get it usually when switching views. Not one particular view though like VC... it may be in spot view or even overhead. But is that due to refreshing the screen or mayby what you are looking at (ie. perhaps an AI aircraft in your field of view that you can't even see).I would suggest trying your AGP card at 4x just to see if you still CTD at a known area. I never seemed to have an issue at 4x AGP but before jumping to easy conclusions that may be a completely different issue.Also try some place ith 100% AI to see if you CTD (like KORD, Dallas or some other really busy airport), and then try the same with no AI... Again, just part of the process...

This same issue happened to me soon after building a new rig. It turned out to be poor cooling for my CPU.As reccomended above for a short time I opened the case, and pointed a fan (ON HIGH) right at my PC mainboard. After that I replaced the OEM fan on the CPU and replaced it using Arctic Silver to make sure proper heat dissipation through to the new heatsink and fan.Also it may be power supply related. I have seen it many time before. Just some possibilities to look into. Hopefully its simpler than these scenarios for you.EDIT: One other thing I found in my troubleshooting was to remove the 'Restart on system failure' in your startup and recovery. How to check?Right click on 'MY COMPUTER' -> click on Properties -> Goto the Advanced tab -> Under 'Startup and Recovery' select 'Settings' -> at or near the bottem under 'System Failure' uncheck 'Automatically restart'. That allowed me to see what happened after the problem occured and track it down to improper cooling.

-----------------------------"There is an art . . . to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss!"

Kris- I used to get the same problem on my old AMD board a couple years ago. Anyhow, to test a possible overheating problem I had success in making the FS window VERY SMALL (as to not "tax" the system) and take out all panels, 2-d or virtual so all you see is scenery ahead. Go to a sparse location like somewhere in the west USA, and let it fly. If it flies for a while with no problems, then test the same location where you were having problems. If it still doesn't lock up, try expanding the window again then add in the 2-d cockpit and virtual to see if it locks up. If it does, you can be pretty sure it's overheating or the like.My only solution was to get a new computer all together becuase it drove me NUTS looking for the problem. Got Intel board & chip and never had a problem since. (nothing against AMD I have that at work and it's fine).

Kris,When you say you have re-installed Windows, did you mean:1] a complete re-format and partition refresh (booting from the CD) before installing windows from scratch, or 2] did you just put the windows disk in the CD drive and choose the option "Install Windows XP" ?In my experience as a computer dealer, when you change a motherboard and chip, you need to do a complete "clean" install (option 1] above) otherwise windows tries to salvage all sorts of settings from your registry and the problem often effectively gets carried over to the new machine. GreetingsDave Britzius(Cape Town)

Hey guys, thank you again for the replies, amazing the help you can get here!So here's whats happening with my battle..I pulled the case off like someone suggested and started flying around KPHX, with the simflyers scenery installed, using the pmdg 737, pretty hard on the machine but i figured it would be a place to make it crash. IT didnt take 10 minutes and she crashed. So i took it to the next step and i have a pretty big fan in my room, i stuck it down beside the PC and turned it on full, this time i made it around the airport about 3 times and it crashed. Then i went and unchecked all addon sceneries in my scenery library.Started flying around kphx (default) with the pmdg 737, NO crashing, then removed the fan and flew around some more,still no crashing.So from this i would assume i can say its a scenery thats doing it. The only thing i noticed is that during my flying my cpu usage is always 100% is that normal? Someone also made a suggestion to lower my AGP speed to 4x.... can someone tell me what this does and how to do it?Thanks againKris

I had this happen a few times, and like you, it always seemed to be when I was switching views. Try this:Click on START, then RUN, and type in dxdiag and hit enter. Click on the Sound1 tab and check the slider for hardware acceleration. Try setting it to Basic Acceleration. Worked for me.Jim