FS9 seems to make the whole visual system fail

[Cpt. Miska 0]

Hello!

After a recent reset on my PC, I did a normal express installation of the FS9. Shortly however, I came across quite a serious problem that is repetitious for every time I click the "CHANGE..." button on the aircraft selection box. Immediately after clicking, the screen of my Windows 8 goes black and the cursor loading animation is displayed. 
    Once in a while, only for less than a second, the aircraft selection settings flash in the screen. Even though if I am able to exit the FS window, the same black screen remains and flashes the desktop (or any given window currently open). I haven't been able to do anything but reboot the computer, after which everything is back to normal.
    So clearly the simulator is negatively interfering with the graphics system (AMD Radeon 8570). I have used FS9 on this particular computer for a number of years and never tumbled across such an error with any program. After I noticed the error, I installed the driver for AMD Radeon 8570M by Radeon, but no difference occured.  As I'm all thumbs with computer hardware stuff, I'm not sure if the driver is a wrong one as my device manager shows that the driver is Radeon 8570, not 8570M. The installation of the driver did not have any disturbances, so I assume the driver is a correct one.
   I also tried to install FS9.1 but the installation failed due to "an error type 18." I've reset my computer a number of times and gone through this same process of installing the FS9, then 9.1, but never faced this error. Possibly worth mentioning, I don't have any add ons installed. The FS9 is completely default, like my other software pretty much is as well because of a recent complete reset of it.

 

Thank you for your time and help! 

Miska

[pschlute 37]

Turn off "desktop composition" and disable "visual themes" from the desktop...right click/properties.

Run FS9 in windowed mode, not full screen.

FS9.1 update must be run from the FS9 root folder.

[ronzie 21]

When you install the 9.1 update, it creates a folder called backup in the FS9 root folder. If you try to run the 9.1 install again it will fail if it sees that backup folder.

Since your video problem is only with FS9, try finding the fs9.cfg file. Make sure the correct card is listed and only one in the device section. Copy the original fs9.cfg to a safe folder outside of fs9.

When viewing or editing fs9.cfg then be sure to use notepad or other text editor, or save the file in text mode if other.

Delete the current fs9.cfg file then start FS9. It will rebuild a new fs9.cfg and it should put in the correct device. If it now runs then exit FS9. The line looks like:

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970.0]
Mode=1024x768x32

There should only be one display device unless you are using a multi-monitor setup with a special driver.

I found my FS9.cfg in my roaming profile on Win 7 under users, ronzie, etc., expanding down to apps, Microsoft, etc. Be sure you set your viewer options in the explorer window to show hidden files and folders.

Now that you have a good device line copy this fs9.cfg file to a safe folder. Copy and paste the device line into your saved FS9 file keeping all of the other settings so you will not have to replace them. Then put this edited file back in to the location where you found it.

There are two locations for the fs9.cfg file and I do not recall which one is the active.

If building the new fs9.cfg file did not give you success, then try this diagnostic.

Open  a command window or select run and enter dxdiag.exe. Run through the video diagnostics on the appropriate tab. Also note the the video card is correctly listed and you directx version is 9 or later.

See what you get.