FSX-SE sudden freezing

[Ben/Air 0]

Hello,

 

Lately, all of a sudden, FSX-SE started freezing for me. I already explained everything in this topic: http://www.avsim.com/topic/474350-ngx-causing-freezes/ so I won't go over it again. When FSX freezes, it will freeze only with the PMDG 737 and for way too long. Minutes perhaps hours which is unacceptable especially since it just started happening. I have tried everything people have fixed freezing with and nothing worked. Please help.

 

Thanks

[Jim Young 2,356]

The AVSIM CTD Guide (see link in my signature) provides suggestions for fixing freezes (see page 12)(well, okay, I'll copy and paste it here):

 

Freezes During Flight – Freezes are most commonly caused by –

• High application/display driver settings.  Check.
• High settings within commercial weather programs like REX, ASN, and OPUS.  Check. Some raise settings to the highest texture settings (4096 HD) within weather programs and/or texture programs like REX. This coupled with high applications LOD_Radius and Texture_Max_Load settings may take up too many resources and application will freeze.
• Complications with weather server updates.  Application may try to update the weather and the weather server is down or cannot comply with a request.
• Running out of Virtual Address Space (VAS) especially on one hour or longer flights (see VAS/OOM discussions).
• Bad tweaks.  BufferPools and or Affinity Mask are most often attributed to freezes. Rebuild the application configuration to see if this fixes the problem or disable the tweaks.
• ENBSeries Module – DirectX hack for better visuals.
• SweetFX Module – DirectX hack for better visuals.

You have a decent system even though you are using a laptop.  It is twice, maybe 3 times faster than what was available to FSX users when FSX was first released in 2007.  You don't need tweaks and I have a feeling you are using some.  BufferPools and AffinityMask tweaks might work for some but ONLY if properly employed for YOUR system.  PMDG VC's place a lot of stress on many systems (not mine) and it just takes a small change in settings, say in REX or ASN or OPUS, to freeze up your computer.

 

Most fixes to any fsx freeze or crash are fixed by rebuilding the fsx.cfg.  This cleans up the config.  Once rebuilt, I would suggest changing the resolution (Microsoft did not do a very good job at making sure the resolution was correct) in the General page of your FSX settings.  Make sure you have AA/AF ticked.  I would not touch any more settings.  You might want to make sure the Aircraft tab has the best settings as you will be using the PMDG 737.  Go and fly.  See how long it is before FSX freezes up.  It shouldn't.

 

If it does freeze up, you should post an AppCrashView report and/or Event Viewer report.  See the AVSIM CTD Guide for the link AppCrashView program (page 1) and you must follow the instructions for looking in the Event Viewer on page 2.  I do not want you looking in the Application section.  There could be many other problems with your computer system and you need to look at the Administrative Events only as it lists all of the events going on with your computer.  When you find an event that might be related, you look over on the right column for copy and then "copy details as text".  You then paste them here.

 

We have put a lot of other suggestions in the AVSIM CTD Guide that we have collected over the years and as suggested by your fellow members.  You might want to take a look through many of those.  For instance, updating hardware drivers has fixed problems for many.  You must have the proper installation of Microsoft Visual's and Microsoft.net programs installed (FSX and FSX-SE use the oldest as FSX is a very old program and these programs are needed to properly install products and make sure your application runs properly as intended by the developer including memory management).  Cleaning up your system registry also fixes a lot of problems.  Lots of ideas and suggestions.  

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best regards,

[Ben/Air 0]

Yes and all the things you suggest doing, I've already done and more. I've been through many topics already and none of them I have found helped really. Again, I never messed with anything since it started happening except updating the NGX and it is the only plane now not working. 

[Jim Young 2,356]

If there was a problem with the PMDG737 causing freezes, everyone would be getting the freeze and that's not happening.  So there is something wrong with your Windows install and/or your fsx.cfg.

[Ben/Air 0]

Well I've tried resetting the FSX Config, but that never worked either. Maybe it is a Windows issue. Its a unstable operating system. 

[Jim Young 2,356]

I know it's very frustrating to have your computer freeze up when flying the PMDG737.  I use to have one that happened at the exact same spot on a flight in my PMDG737.  It was difficult to figure it out.  I decided to set up Process Monitor as described in the AVSIM CTD Guide where it only logs FSX and FSX addon stuff.  Ran the flight again and shutdown the log at the time of the freeze.  I then went back and looked at what was loading.  It was MyTrafficX.  Nothing else was loading and the PMDG737 had already loaded and all of my scenery in the area.  I went into the scenery.cfg and disabled MyTrafficX.  Did the flight again and no freeze.  Enabled MyTrafficX and it was a freeze.  It turned out that the AI program was trying to find an aircraft to match a flight plan and it could not find it so fsx froze up.  At the time I had MyTrafficX 5.4c which was the latest version.  I downgraded to version 5.4b and the freezes stopped.  I think this has been fixed in MyTraffic6 as I have not seen the freeze since installing that upgraded program. 

 

My point is - you have to investigate the scene of the crime.  You bring your fsx back to the default configuration as shown in the AVSIM CTD Guide.  It's easy to do.  You move the fsx.cfg, dll.xml, exe.xml (if installed) and scenery.cfg to a temporary folder, restart fsx and the fsx.cfg and scenery.cfg will be rebuilt to the defaults.  Since you are using the PMDG737, you will need to make sure that is loaded in the dll.xml so you can bring the dll.xml back to the folder it belongs (with the FSX.cfg) and then use notepad to edit it as shown in the AVSIM CTD Guide.  You want to disable everything except the top entry and the pmdg entry.  Now you are about 98% back to default.  Try the flight again and see if this fixes the problem.  If it does, then the problem is with one of the entries in the dll.xml or fsx.cfg.  I can almost guarantee you that the PMDG 737 will not freeze with the scenery settings set to the default and you have no tweaks in your config.  The PMDG 737 and fsx will look ugly, really ugly but all you are doing is determining whether it is FSX or Windows.  If it still freezes.  It is Windows or your computer laptop. 

 

I was looking at the specs of your computer and everything is marginal.  It's not all that powerful and any high settings could cause a lot of problems.  Here's the benchmarks in comparison to other systems - http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3632QM+%40+2.20GHz

 

FSX and FSX-SE depend a lot on the CPU to run FSX.  In previous versions of FS, it was the GPU that FS depended on.  The better the GPU, the better previous versions of FS would run.  It's opposite with FSX and FSX-SE.

 

In the AVSIM CTD Guide, there's another suggestion to take ownership of your installation of FSX, FSX-SE, or P3D.  There's a program called takeownership that you download from the Internet, install, and then you go to the FSX-SE folder, right click it and select Take Ownership.  This has worked for many problems but I have never heard of fixing freezes.  Yet, if you do not have ownership of a file and the system has ownership of it, then won't the application freeze up?  Anyway another suggestion.

 

Best regards,

[Ben/Air 0]

Below I copy and pasted what I have responded with on this thread: http://www.avsim.com/topic/474350-ngx-causing-freezes/

Anyone with similar issues as I do, check out the link and follow the topic for a chance of a solution. Thanks. 

 

"Hello all, after frustration and lots of testing, I have come to the conclusion that I am  99% sure it is FSUIPC causing the issue.

Yes, my FSX.cfg is tweaked but I tried building a new one already and nothing worked.

I have tried updating my drivers for my ATI, Intel HD 4000 and Realtek Sound Package. At first, that seemed to work but temporarily. 

Then I checked to see if it truly is the NGX ONLY causing the issue. It turned out to be the case. 

I've read many things about the config file and its tweaks but that wasn't my problem. 

I went into Event Viewer to see if anything was logged and nothing was. 

I tried reinstalling the NGX and after it still didn't work, I tried to repair it. That seemed to work at first but again temporarily. 

Then I went into Steam to check my FSX build and it did fix around 540 files that were "corupted". I suggest doing this but for me it wasn't the winner. 

I read many,many posts of other problems until I came across one thing. It was to take the DLL.xml file and EXE.xml file and place them out of the folder. I found that FSX wouldn't freeze anymore which means something wasn't working nicely with the NGX. I started by placing only the EXE.xml file back and nothing froze still. Then I placed the DLL.xml file back and FSX froze again. After, I started, one by one, to get rid of some entry's and I've found that FSUIPC, once gone, let the NGX run freeze free. The issue is, How do I fix it? Well, sorry to disappoint,but at this time I do not know and I am still researching some things about FSUIPC but I did try one thing and that was to reinstall it. It didn't work for me but I still recommend people to try it. As I test, I encourage people with similar issues to try all the things I did to see what your problem is.Thanks and hope to find the cure soon.

 

Ben"

[Jim Young 2,356]

You do not need FSUIPC.dll utility for FSX or FSX-SE or P3D to run. PMDG does not need it either. If you want to keep it installed, make sure you have installed the latest version - http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html. The latest version was released on 3 Sep. If you have the latest version, change the settings to the default. You might have set a wrong parameter.  I see you have posted a topic on Pete's forum and he has responded essentially as I have.

I'm glad you did the investigation I suggested and have narrowed the culprit to your problem(s) down to an issue with the fsuipc.  Only way to do it unless there's a known solution and that's rare.

Best regards,

[Ben/Air 0]

Well, I tried everything I have described and come to the conclusion that it isn't fixed completely. It doesn't happen when in "Full Screen" mode. So my FSX-SE doesn't freeze unless in windowed-mode and it does let me fly. I dislike "Full Screen" mode so I will see if anything else can be done but as a side project. Thanks anyways. 

[Jim Young 2,356]

I see you are using the on board graphics and your AMD Radeon graphics card.  I don't think you can use both of them.  I would go into the system manager and disable one of them (think the on board graphics can only be disabled via the BIOS).

 

Best regards,

[Ben/Air 0]

I tried that once but then my computer runs off of the graphics from the CPU. Worse performance but I'll do some more research.