Just checking to see if anyone has found any cure for it. I know most people don't experience this. But if it's happening to you it's a real P.O. The Black Screen Freeze. It can happen at any time. A moment or two into the sim or an hour or so later. . . you never know. Often it may not happen at all. It's highly annoying. The only way out of it is a hard shut down. Some have said it may be a hardware issue. I wish I knew. I just hope this same malady isn't contained in FSX for the unfortunate few.McFly

This is a hardware issue and it can probably be solved by updating some drivers. I did not go back and read all of your posts but I did see that you also had a problem watching a video and that tells me that you probably have a problem with your video card. Have you tried updating the drivers? Here are the possible culprits, in a likely order.1. Video card....change the drivers, and make sure you follow the manufacturers instructions. 2. Motherboard.....Update your drivers3. Overclocking.....If you have overclocked anything bring the speed back down to default and see if you still have the problem.4. Sound card.....update the drivers and possibly reduce the sound acceleration in Direct X5. Memory......you might have a bad stick of memory, if you have more than one stick take one out and try FS to see if it freezes, then switch out and try the other.6. Over heating......Make sure that every component is being properly cooled. Check all of the fans for proper function. Make sure all parts are clear of dust. See what temps your computer says it is running at.7. Video card......Yes I say video card again, try another driver because even the latest release can have problems and often an older driver can work far better.8. Disconnect all of your peripherals, the ones not used for FS, and disable the software related to them in task manager. On rare occasions the idle communication between the computer and an idle peripheral can cause a problem. Again this is rare.9. Check your Bios settings, often an incorrect setting will not show itself unless you stress the computer and FS does that fairly well. Problems like yours are not easy to find but they are related to your computer so once found you can correct it. You either have to take the time to find what the problem is with your computer or you have to live with it. There is no cure all answer since each persons computer is different but it is not a problem with FS9 it is a driver, a setting or a bad part on your computer. I fix computers for a living and there has not been a single computer that I have not been able to fix by doing what I have said. I know some people will argue with me but I base this off of my experiences with many, many, many computers. I do hope you can find the problem and I wish you all the luck you need. Take care,Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

Thanks for the in-depth tips. I did update my video drivers a day ago and was hoping against hope. Then about 10 minutes into FS the dreaded "black screen" again. That's what prompted me to post. It seems to be happening more often now. I'll go through the list of suggestions. No over clocking here. It does seem that a clean install of FS9 with no add-ons has no problems. Add a few dozen planes and scenery add-ons and at some point it gets over taxed.I do remember a time, long ago, when I didn't have this problem. When FSX comes out I plan on a new computer and OS.Thanks, McFly

Very often a clean install will work fine but once you start using add-ons you start taxing your system even more. In some cases an add-on can be the trigger because it might have problems in the code that a faulty system can not handle. One customer called me and he was a FS fan too, he said that FS ran fine and the only time he had a problem was with a specific aircraft so he of course said it was that aircraft that was the problem. I told him that this is not completely true, just because a certain thing causes the computer to crash does not mean that it is the problem. I checked out his system and found some bad memory, once I replaced it that aircraft and everything else worked fine. It seems that aircraft for whatever reason hit the bad part of the memory and caused a crash when nothing else did. It could be that the code for a gauge in that aircraft was poorly written or a texture hit the memory just right, or everything could have been fine with the aircraft and it was just bad luck but no matter what it caused it, it was not the aircraft. I am glad that you are open minded and will check the various things out, too many people think that they are experts and can tell what the real problem is without actually diagnosing it. Computers are very complex machines and no one can tell you what is actually causing a problem just based on the fact that the thing crashed when I was using a certain program with a certain add-on without going through and diagnosing it. If you need any help or advise please yell and I'll do all I can. Hey, I just had a thought, please check and make sure that you do not have any duplicate AFCADS, this can sometimes cause problems and it is fairly common that people have duplicates.Take care, Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

McFly,I had that for months. Nobody could offer a solution. It turned out to be an intermittent powersupply fault, which only happened with FS,because of the big cpu work load. New power supply - andcheap at that - never a problem again.Peter Sydney Australia

Even if the video card is not overclocked, it can still be overheating. Some things to check are if the video card fan is functioning properly, is the case full of dust bunnies which are blocking vent holes, etc. If neither of these is the case, you could remove the card, then reinsert it.

Some good tips. I'm going to try some of them out this weekend. Thanks for your help.McFly

One more thing you can try. I had some black screen lockups with Flight Sim and discovered that running DXDIAG and clicking on the Sound tab, then sliding the hardware acceleration from Full down to Basic fixed it. Worth a shot.Jim

Maintaining your system is important. Many do not realize that each time you delete something, like addon's etc... It can leave an invalid entry in the system Registry. In addition, deleting programs you try can leave junk on the drive. Each time the FS goes to do something, it works with the registry. The more invalid entries in the registry, the more it slows down access for the FS, and it can keep searching, and searching, and searching for something which no longer exists. There is a cure for this, a free program called CCLEANER... which cleans out loads of trash from the entire system. and leaves you more space on your HD. Ive been using it now for over six months, and never a problem. My black screens with the curser flashing endlessly are now a thing of the past... Ive used both the clean, analize, fix all feature and the ISSUES, Scan for Issues, fix selected issues, with no negative effect on the system. Have done the backup they asked about when clicking on Issues, but have never needed to restore it. It has also resulted in better frames in general.

I had a similar problem with my old system and it turned out to be overheating. Cleaned up the crud from inside the case, rearragned the cables and voila! no more problem.

I just started getting this problem too. I think i've cured it. I installed an aircraft that replaced a dll. TrafficInfo.dll. Other forums have said this causes a black screen problem too. Look in your gauges folder for this dll and the same one in your modules folder. If you find they are different then this is the problem. What I did is to download the microsoft sdk gauges package and replace all the TrafficInfo.dll with the original microsoft version. I have had no black screens yet.Graham

>I just started getting this problem too. I think i've cured>it. I installed an aircraft that replaced a dll.>TrafficInfo.dll. Other forums have said this causes a black>screen problem too. Look in your gauges folder for this dll>and the same one in your modules folder. If you find they are>different then this is the problem. What I did is to download>the microsoft sdk gauges package and replace all the>TrafficInfo.dll with the original microsoft version. I have>had no black screens yet.>>>GrahamI thought I'd cured the same problem and hadn't had one single crash since until today on final approach to EHAM from KJFK :-mad Am I supposed to have one copy in the gauges folder as well or is it enough with one in the modules folder?

Out of curioasity, are any of the guys having trouble running a wide screen monitor or full screen versus windowed? It seemed like I started having problems after I got my widescreen. There are specific definite problems with the LDS 767 and widescreen. FS also seems to like running windowed too. I got a regualr screen monitor and hooked it up as the primary and set the widescreen as the attached second monitor and FS seems to be running better though it is too early to say. I just got it last night. I am doing a marathon of flights right now to see if any of the old problems return. The 767 is also happier.

Also you might want to check the Windows error log. I had a lot of what seemed like random crashes where the computer would just go to a black screen and reboot. Didn't matter what program I was running. Sometimes it would do it when I was merely opening a folder or when I was away from the computer not doing anything. I checked the error log and found every single time this happened was due to an element of my printer driver returning an invalid state.

My computer never rebooted or locked up. Just FS crashed and Radar Contact locked up. If it is still a problem it had lessened because I got 6 767 flights and a few A320 flights after my first "fix" then one lock up and now I have 4 767 flights with no lockup. Maybe that last one was just random. There are so many different FS related programs running it is hard to narrow it down.