Have been experiencing problems for the past six hours with FS9 crashing as soon as I go into the menu > Flight planner. I don't even get as far as to set up the flight before it occurs. Have checked the CD in another drive on same PC and still the same problem. No problems starting the game but it only lasts a couple of minutes, if that.I use Farstone Restore it! professional. Restored the entire HD (3 partitions) back 48 hours as I know everything was fine then. If the registry had since become corrupted then surely this would have solved the problem. It made no difference.My HD is getting old and I regularly receive several warning! event ID 51 messages advising me to back up and replace the drive. I have everything backed up ready but recently the HDD has been otherwise fine in all respects.Upon checking the Windows Event Viewer there are several application errors relating to the exact timing of the crash but there is no event No. which I find very confusing. The event viewer reads as follows:TYPE ErrorUSER N/ACOMPUTER AthlonSourceCategory NoneEvent ID 0The description for event ID (0) in source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You ma be able to use the /AUXSOURCE=flag to retrieve the description; see help and support for details. The following information is poart of the event: 7.From the above info. how likely is it that the error is down to the HDD? or is this down to windows or FS9 perhaps? Am dreading reinstalling everythng to a fresh HD from scratch as it will take me over a whole day I believe. At least I can import most FS9 directories (ie Addon scenery, aircraft, panels etc) into the freshly installed game I suppose.Is there an easy way to find out and/or to interpret the event ID error message?Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

A further problem I am experiencing is that of FS9 freezing and microsoft "FS9.0 has experienced a problem and needs to close" the Microsoft crash analysis states that there is a newer version of FS9 available, but after downloading I am told that I already have the update installed. I did install FS9.1 update around 12 months ago. Therefore do mot understand why the crash analysis calculates my installation to be older.Is this related to the problem in any way? Is there a way I can repair or reinstall parts of FS9 without a full reinstallation? The problem seems to be when I access the flight planner in the main menu and enter a start point.

I dont pretend to know what is causing you problems, except that rarely have I experienced crash events not related to the more common AFCAD or landclass errors or more recently ATC.DLL errors. If my hard drive was throwing up cautions about impending doom, I would be replacing it yesterday. You cannot possible debug FS9 in the face of an impending hardware failure as severe as a hard crash drive. My advise?.....take care of that harddrive, nothing else matters at the moment.Randy Jura, KPDX

Hi Scratch1964, I don't think that error is your HD. I have had that error for a long time. It is system related, however I have not been able to find out what is causing it. I have not had the ATC dll related stuff. I will post any new findings on my behalf if it helps you. I have had this error for months. Even if the sim does not CTD, after I close FS9 and check the event viewer, it is there like clock work. By the way, when I was typing away at the top of this reply, I mentioned it may not be your HD, well, who knows, maybe it is and we have the same problem? Time will tell. I like your screen name, 1964 is my birth year. Talk to you soon.

Hi, what motherboard and hard drive are you using? Also, what IDE drivers?

I get this EXACT same problem for months. My HDD's are fairly new. IF it was the HDD's you think it would crash my other games as well. I have installed the minimal content for fs9. A couple panel addons (PMDG 747, LDS, Feelthere 737, erj145) and I also have activesky and birds eye view. This is a newly built computer and this problem existed on my previous computer as well. I have been trying to find out what is doing this and for the life of me i have no idea. Maybe FS9 doesn't like raid or something.

The first thing to try when FS is crashing a lot is to rebuild the Fs9.cfg. Just navigate to the file and move it out of the folder it's in and restart the sim. FS will rebuild a new .cfg file. You will then need to redo all your settings but it's better than a reinstall of the sim. If it doesn't then you have other problems. The hard drive errors sound ominous. I'd have a new drive and a day scheduled to reinstall everything as soon as possible. It could also easily be the problem with your sim. If a file the sim needs to run is located on a bad sector then you will get a crash in the sim.

man i just had another one. we should figure out the commonality between us that are having this problem and cure the darn thing. BTW do any of you that are having this problem use FSAutostart?

I have the same problem, but also with Madden NFL 2006. In FlightSim, I get the blank event viewer but the program only crashes about 30% of the time. Madden always drops to the dekstop. Here are my system specs to see if there are any common components that could be the cause:DFI nF4 SLI-DR Motherboard (Nvidia nforce4 SLI chipset)AMD Athlon X2 46001 GB Corsair XMS 3500 RAM2 Maxtor Diamond Max10 250GB SATA drives in RAID 0ATI x1900XT video cardI thought the problem was video, and upgraded my video card recently from a Nvidia 6800GT but the problem persists. Also had a DIMM fail recently and replaced with new memory which also did not fix.I am kind of thinking it may be with the Nvidia chipset drivers or RAID drivers.I do use FSAutostart, and still have the problem.

Well the only thing I have in common with you there is a RAID config. Here my old computer I used just a month ago and got CTD's all the time. ASUS P4C800eP4 3.2e1 Gig OCZ 3200ATI x800 proSeagate 120 GB in RAID0Here is my new computerAsus A8n32-sliAMD FX602 Gig OCZ 4000Dual EVGA 7800 GTX in SLISeagate 120 GB in RAID0Now as you can see the 2 systems are pretty different EXCEPT the two HDD's in RAID and thats what csshark has. Scratch, if you are still reading this do you have the RAID config?

this thread just died? lets figure the common problem here guys

Come on guys

I haven't had a chance to sim lately. My next step was going to be to image my drives and break the RAID into two separate drives. That seems to be the only similarity, especially with Monsoon's old system that had the issue. Probably will try this weekend. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

well my new system has the issue too but it had RAID too so hopefully the raid points us in the right direction. let me know how your test works out

Guys, I asked earlier in this thread what motherboards you are using. My suspicion is you have nForce 4 based motherboards, and are using nVidia IDE drivers. I have seen other reports about problems with these drivers.