Crazy CTD

[Guest Dwaffler]

I have been getting all kinds of different CTD, sometimes with errors and sometimes with no errors. I have even been getting them after I shut down the program, then about 10 second later, I get an error. I just recently bought a new computer, which is a 3.0GhZ Celeron, with an intergrated Intel video card (128MB Video RAM), 1GB RAM, and over 160MB of drive space. Other than that, nothing fancy. The majority of my errored CTD mentions ntdll.dll as the failing module, but I have seen other modules such as g2d.dll, g3d.dll, atc.dll, aiplayr.dll. At one point last night, I left Task Manager running on my computer, and opened up FS9. I noticed that each time I opened up an aircraft in the Aircraft selection screen, the memory increased on the FS9 process. When I tried to close the program, the program disappeared off the screen, but the process stayed in memory, but the amount of memory being used was cut in half. I do have add-on AFCAD's, but each one has been checked for errors, so that doesn't seem to have any problems. I also checked each aircraft textures, and was able to open them inside the program ok. I have also run AITM on all my AI traffic files, and made any corrections that needed to be made. I'm just at wits end at why this is doing what it is doing. One thing I have noticed, that the problems seem to happen in the U.S. I flew recently down to New Zealand and back to Honolulu with no problems. Flew into Travis with bad weather and many AlphaSim C-5 AI planes on the tarmac. But, when I left there to head east, I got over Utah, and the thing just dropped right out to the desktop, no errors. This is beginning to be real frustrating, and I hope there a resolution to this. Any ideas?

[Guest]

have you run scanafd? also check your ai traffic files for errorsmaybe there is an addon scenery texture that is corrupt? i also had this problem but did so many things Im not sure what fixed it.

[Jure 36]

I had a similar experience a few days ago when I finished reformatting (again!) my primary disk and installing FS2004 with some add-ons. It turned out that I goofed when installing Active Camera and the wrong version of the .dll was in the /Modules folder. When I installed Active Camera correctly, the problems went away. Just an idea.... check the .dll's in your Modules folder. BTW, you did patch FS to 9.1, right? :)Regards,Jure

[Guest Dwaffler]

Ran the ScanAFD with no problems. Also I had been running the 9.1 patch with the NoCD exe, so in thinking that was the problem, I uninstalled the patch and reinstalled it, and I'm now using the CD instead of the NoCD patch. I don't have any extra add-on sceneries on the machine, other than the extra airports that I used. I have even gone as far as re-downloaded the AFCAD files that I had on my old machine (which was acting the same way) to see if those AFCAD's were corrupt. Now, I don't know if this could be causing this, but I have all my civilian airports in a folder called Airports, and my USAF bases are in a folder called USAF and Naval Air Stations are in a folder called USN, all under the Add-on Scenery folder. I wish was a way to get something that tells you what is causing the error, as like a debugging program. I've checked my error logs, DrWatson logs, and even the FSUIPC logs, but nothing really tells me what is causing these errors. I'm positive that it has something to do with the AI, just don't know what could be causing this. All my civilian airlines are Project AI aircraft, and Military AI aircraft are mainly Henry Tomkiewicz planes (C-130's and F-16s), planes, with a couple of Alphasim AI aircraft thrown in. The one thing I do notice is when I get the error, FS9.exe stays running even though that program is shut down. I have noticed that sometimes that process gets as large as 200,000K in memory, and when it gets that large it doesn't unload very well, if at all (by the way, yes I work with computers in my real job !!!).

[fbass 1]

I recently completed construction/configuration of a new computer and ran into the very same problems that you are experiencing. At first, the system crashed with blue-screen and messages referencing drivers and *.dlls. In addition, I began to have crash-to-desktop with no blue screens.What I had to do is separate the problems into two categories - one for software and one for hardware.Since I was getting driver and *.dll error messages I methodically replaced all the drivers for every hardware component and software package that I had on the system. I also went to the Microsoft site to see if there were any updates to standard Windows drivers. Next, I went to the site supporting my motherboard (Intel in my case) and flashed my BIOS so that I had the latest version. This is an easy procedure that anyone can perform. You'd be surprised how many motherboards are out there that have old versions of their BIOS. Newer versions often fix problems that you are encountering - in my case that was very true.Next, I installed a second version of FS9. I used this second installation to work from a known (read good) installation. You will find this very useful in tracking down flight simulator problems. Having this "clean" version can help you get to problems with AI aircraft, flying aircraft (mostly panel/gauge problems), and scenery difficulties.Once you address the software, it is time to start looking at your system's hardware. There are two main problems associated with hardware - power and memory malfunctions. Unless you have electronic measurement equipment it is pretty hard to find power supply problems. I was fortunate in that I had a second PSU so I installed that new one. I would recommend you purchase a second PSU as backup - they're not expensive and its worth having that second unit.Checking memory is not difficult but it requires quite a bit of time depending on how much memory you have. First, get your hands on Prime95. This program runs a torture test against memory. I promise if you have memory problems this program will find it. Next, (depending on your configuration) remove all but one of your memory chips. Reboot and run Prime95. If you get no warnings or errors, move that same chip set to the next memory slot and rerun the program. Do that until you've checked each memory module in each memory slot. What this procedure does is ensure your memory sticks are OK and it checks the memory slots on the motherboard to see if your memory controllers are working properly. NOTE: Motherboard configurations differ so you'll have to address these issues based on your particular configuration.Using these procedures will pretty much narrow the field associated with the various places these problems can pop up.Frank

[Bigmack 29]

Why don't you try reinstalling FS9, then updating to 9.1 using the CD. Don't install anything else until you got a good working FS9. Then install your add ons one by one, checking FS9 operation after each install. Bill M