It's come to our attention since the release of the latest Windows 10 update (dubbed the "Fall Creators Update" by Microsoft) last Tuesday that a subset of users are experiencing a strange "error creating child window" message when running any of the PMDG aircraft in FSX/FSX:SE/P3D.

We've confirmed that this is wholly a Microsoft/Windows issue - they've been in contact with the P3D team at Lockheed Martin and have told them that they anticipate a fix for the issue to be released some time in November.

For this reason we highly suggest that you do not upgrade to the Fall Creators Update until this issue is confirmed fixed. You can stop the update from automatically installing by going into the Update advanced options (located in Settings/Updates and Security) and selecting the option to pause or defer updates. This will allow you to block the install for at least a month, by which point the issue should be fixed.

 

UPDATE 30NOV17. According to LM Microsoft will release a fix for the child window error in an update on December 12th. This problem was introduced in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709).
 

UPDATE 13NOV17. KB4054517 Released on 12th of November fixes the issues.

Here's something I ran into in trying to determine the cause of this issue with the Fall Creators Update. It seems the "Game DVR" feature (which allows you to record gameplay video clips) needs to be *enabled* to avoid the "error creating child window" problem. To check if it's enabled, click on Start, settings icon (the gear), click Gaming, click on Game Bar on the left and make sure "Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcasts using Game Bar" is turned *on* as well as the "Show Game Bar when I play full screen games MS has verified" setting.

Please report if this helps at all!

Balls already updated, hope It does not affect me. Thanks for the heads up.

The "pause or defer updates" option Tabs mentions doesn't appear to be available in my Home edition of Win 10 under "Update advanced options" or am I looking in the wrong place?

no issues on this end with that update...

1 hour ago, AndyUK said:

The "pause or defer updates" option Tabs mentions doesn't appear to be available in my Home edition of Win 10 under "Update advanced options" or am I looking in the wrong place?

It doesn't exist on the Home version.  MS should have provided it though.

The heads up is too late for me Ryan, I tried the work round molleh and it made no difference.

The odd thing is my areosoft aircraft works fine and the rest of my PC is good.

No-one can explain what the technical truth is about the issue. 

Regards

Alan Metcalf

 

57 minutes ago, alanmetcalf said:

No-one can explain what the technical truth is about the issue. 

MS and LM explained it to each other in order for them to fix it next month, it's probably an internal thing that they see no reason to tell it to the public. LM is a defense contractor after all, everything's on a need to know basis with them and we don't need to know at the moment.

2 hours ago, AndyUK said:

The "pause or defer updates" option Tabs mentions doesn't appear to be available in my Home edition of Win 10 under "Update advanced options" or am I looking in the wrong place?

It's only available in the Win 10 Pro edition.  I use this (free) utility to keep that stuff at bay...seems to be working so far:  https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Regards

 

Thanks Bob, I'll take a look.

This is what I see in my installed windows update section:

https://ibb.co/eEJXwR

Is any of these the culprit?

2 hours ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

This is what I see in my installed windows update section:

https://ibb.co/eEJXwR

Is any of these the culprit?

It's not an individual update like those, it's the next major build of Windows 10 called "Fall Creators Update."

I was doing a lot more testing last night and the DVR setting that seemed to be relevant didn't really help (as some of you found.) What was making it difficult to test is that I could load the sim up 12 times in a row with no issues, then the 13th time would give the "error creating child window" error, or would load the aircraft but then accessing any of the FSX dialog screens (i.e. date/time window, controls settings, etc) would create an unhandled exception. It's definitely going to require some sort of patch or update from MS, Nvidia and/or AMD, Dovetail and LM or all.

4 minutes ago, molleh said:

It's not an individual update like those, it's the next major build of Windows 10 called "Fall Creators Update."

I was doing a lot more testing last night and the DVR setting that seemed to be relevant didn't really help (as some of you found.) What was making it difficult to test is that I could load the sim up 12 times in a row with no issues, then the 13th time would give the "error creating child window" error, or would load the aircraft but then accessing any of the FSX dialog screens (i.e. date/time window, controls settings, etc) would create an unhandled exception. It's definitely going to require some sort of patch or update from MS, Nvidia and/or AMD, or all three.

Did some more searching and found out it was indeed kb4041676 that was causing my crashes. I uninstalled it and p3d v3 is working like a charm again.

I'm running FSX-SE and P3D4. Since updating to the Fall Creators Update I've only encountered this in FSX-SE and then for some reason only with A2A aircraft, not with PMDG. However if I load into a flight with a default aircraft and then load the A2A aircraft the problem seems to go away.

Now as I don't have the problem with PMDG I have no idea if the same would apply. Off the top of my head I can't remember if this is an accepted way to load a PMDG aircraft (I usually load the aircraft from the welcome screen, not from a scenario), but if so it may serve for some people as a workaround?

Neil,  your workaround you suggested is a go for my PMDG 737NGX, 777 and A2A 172.  Everything works as advertised.  Just like you said,make sure you load a default aircraft first.  In my case,I loaded the Orbit A-321 (not sure if it matters), but all is well until a fix is found.  I can't speak for P3D4.