Help, X-Plane 11.05 Crashes to Desktop

[Cat_Dad 17]

My X-plane 11 randomly crashes to desktop with the following message.

 

"Application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware."

 

I did not see any X-plane posts in the crash to desktop section so I am posting it here. I have a i7 4790 with 16 Gb ram and a Nvidia GTX 980 which both appear to be working just fine according to Windows 10. Running the current Nvidia 385.69 drivers at the default settings for X-plane.

 

Was on a flight from ABQ to LAS and just about to flare on rwy 26R (think that was the number) when the screen went blank and the above messages were listed in the notification box.

 

This crashing of X-plane has been going on now for several months, randomly and before the past several video driver updates. The computer anti virus program  (Kaspersky) is current and updated/scanned daily for bad guys.

 

No other program crashes or acts this way, only X-plane 11.05.

 

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

 

Terry

 

 

[soaring_penguin 428]

Are you overclocking ? Probably x-plane 11 is the most taxiing piece of software on your system, overall.

I suggest to run it without overclocking. 

 

[Jude Bradley 659]

I've had this error message even with Firefox, so I doubt it's an X-Plane issue at all.

Check your log.txt file and event viewer for any clues. NB: If you start X-Plane again after a crash, the log.txt gets overwritten and is of no analytical value.

Be sure to save the log.txt to a safe place before starting x-plane again

 

 

[Cat_Dad 17]

To jh71,

No overclocking of the system. The cpu has some sort of turbo boost which is suppose to run automatically as needed.  Thanks for asking.

 

jude,

Where do I find those files? I do not see them in my x-plane desktop folder.

 

As for the message, yesterday at the end of the message in the action center it showed the time of 3:15. Now those same two messages keep appearing this morning without even starting x-plane and after several system re-boots with "Thursday". Do not know if that tells us anything.I have been flying X-plane since version 10 and all of the beta and current version of 11 with the same window 10 computer and have never had this problem before now. By the way, yesterday was the only time I saw a time instead of the word Thursday at the end of the messages, even if it was not that day.

 

I have all of the current window 10 updates and could this be a windows generated problem with x-plane? Does windows need to see x-plane as a "installed" application instead of just sitting on the desktop?

 

Terry

 

 

 

 

[Jude Bradley 659]

they are in the root folder of X-Plane 11

[Cat_Dad 17]

Jude,

 

There are lots/pages of different listings in that file. What in particular would I be looking for?

 

Terry

[Jude Bradley 659]

Look for the word "error".

 

[Cat_Dad 17]

Thanks for the info.

 

My last flight did not crash to desktop but there was an error in that the wx had a 404 code but the sim seem to still work OK.

 

I still think windows 10 and x-plane are not doing something just right. I turned off the gaming function in windows update to see if that helps any.

 

Do you know if moving the x-plane folder from the desktop to a more conventional location on the C drive (SSD) would help?

 

Terry

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

The 404 code probably means that the weather update was not available when accessed by your system.

Your Anti-Virus program is capable of being set to not scanning (excluding) X-Plane and that is preferable.

Your Windows update settings should not be automatic.  It should be set (I forget where to do it) not to update during activity.

Both the anti-virus and the updates can place loads on your computer which, when coupled with the load imposed by X-Plane, can cause problems.

You can move the X-Plane file to anywhere you like but don't put it into "Program files" or such.  It is a stand alone program.  If moved, you might want to make a shortcut from the X-Plane.exe file within the folder to your desktop.  Do not rename the X-Plane.exe folder within the program or it will not update when offered.

If you have another drive, it might be a good idea to copy the entire X-Plane program file to that drive as well so that when the betas start rolling, you can use that one as the "guinea pig". 

All this is valid (at least from my experience) unless you are using "Steam".  If so, all bets are off. 

John

[Cat_Dad 17]

John,

 

 Thanks for the ideas. I went in and set the anti-virus to a lower setting during x-pane ops. Also turned the windows updates to a time that should not conflict with x-plane either. No Steam here. got rid of it when I removed the American Truck sim.

 

I do have a shortcut already as that is how I start x-plane. I have my programs backed up on a 2 Tb hard drive and that might be too slow to run x-plane from so it stays on the 500 Gb ssd/C drive.

We will have to see if making those two changes to windows and the anti-virus helps take some of the stress off the system while x-plane is running.

Terry

 

PS: I like the picture you selected for your member info. The Air Force did not fly the F-4E with the Thunderbirds for too many seasons but they sure looked good when they did. I use to work on the F-4E flight simulators in Phoenix and if they could only have today's engines and touch screen avionics, she would still be flying as is the old B-52.

 

 

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

1 hour ago, Cat_Dad said:

I like the picture you selected

That picture was taken at a local WWII vintage aircraft show and was an actual fuselage mounted on a trailer for photo ops.  Couldn't resist climbing up there!

I bought a SSD a few months ago for X-Plane and didn't notice any difference from when I was running it on a 2TB SSHD.  The HD in my old laptop went out so I re-purposed it to that.   I'll bet you wouldn't notice any difference other than the initial load items and only slightly there.  Of course, it is a SSHD as opposed to a HHD (I use two of them in my computer).

John

[wb5okj 26]

1 hour ago, Cat_Dad said:

John,

 

 Thanks for the ideas. I went in and set the anti-virus to a lower setting during x-pane ops. Also turned the windows updates to a time that should not conflict with x-plane either. No Steam here. got rid of it when I removed the American Truck sim.

 

I do have a shortcut already as that is how I start x-plane. I have my programs backed up on a 2 Tb hard drive and that might be too slow to run x-plane from so it stays on the 500 Gb ssd/C drive.

We will have to see if making those two changes to windows and the anti-virus helps take some of the stress off the system while x-plane is running.

Terry

 

PS: I like the picture you selected for your member info. The Air Force did not fly the F-4E with the Thunderbirds for too many seasons but they sure looked good when they did. I use to work on the F-4E flight simulators in Phoenix and if they could only have today's engines and touch screen avionics, she would still be flying as is the old B-52.

 

 

Why did you remove American Truck Sim? I have been thinking about buying it as I am a retired professional driver. did you not have a good experience with it?

[John_Cillis 2,406]

If you aren't already, try running XPlane in admin mode.  Also update your drivers and if needed, add user rights to your drivers folder, select properties and security.  That may help, could be a rights issue, depending on how your drivers were installed.

Adding user rights has solved a lot of problems for me in Xplane.

John

[Cat_Dad 17]

Donald,

 

I removed the truck sim because I did not have a steering wheel. Too hard to just use the joystick for steering and throttle. Also looked like they wanted you to buy add-on scenery so I removed the program to save space and speed up  antivirus ssd scans. My conventional hhd (2Tb) takes the longest to scan as it is the slowest and only used as a backup file location.

 

John,

Which drivers are you talking about? The video drivers are all up to date and I do the 2nd Tuesday of the month for windows updates or anytime something new comes out. Only thing I do not mess with is the system bios. As far as I know I am running windows as the administrator, as I can do anything need to to the windows programs. Only thing I cannot  do is get rid of all those default Microsoft bloatware programs that come attached to windows 10. Do not have the engineering skills to remove them without  messing up the rest of the computer.

 

Terry

[wb5okj 26]

On ‎10‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 9:10 PM, Cat_Dad said:

Donald,

 

I removed the truck sim because I did not have a steering wheel. Too hard to just use the joystick for steering and throttle. Also looked like they wanted you to buy add-on scenery so I removed the program to save space and speed up  antivirus ssd scans. My conventional hhd (2Tb) takes the longest to scan as it is the slowest and only used as a backup file location.

 

John,

Which drivers are you talking about? The video drivers are all up to date and I do the 2nd Tuesday of the month for windows updates or anytime something new comes out. Only thing I do not mess with is the system bios. As far as I know I am running windows as the administrator, as I can do anything need to to the windows programs. Only thing I cannot  do is get rid of all those default Microsoft bloatware programs that come attached to windows 10. Do not have the engineering skills to remove them without  messing up the rest of the computer.

 

Terry

Thanks for the answer Terry, that's exactly what I was wondering about,  don't have a wheel either and don't intend to buy one now as I am saving for helicopter controls. So will forgo the truck sim for now.

Thanks again,