FSX-MS Looking for some trouble-shooting assistance

[Kleterpos]

Greetings,

 I have been having a major issue with my FSX Deluxe edition. Everything had been running normally and satisfyingly until yesterday (Thursday). Please note that I observed this issue on Thursday after replugging my saitek pedals (I had removed them to perform a small repair). On Wednesday everything was fine, the only addon I installed  was T2G VHHH which I purchased a while ago. I can sadly not recall whether I installed it while the sim was running or not. I performed only one sim start that day. 

My sim behaves very very strange and I can't use it at all.

• As soon as it loads, the box in the free flight page where the selected aircraft should be rotating is blank (no trike displayed),
• When I load the flight, the graphics go mad, nothing is displayed as it should be.
• Sometimes, it crashes on its own shortly thereafter with a ntdll.dll or ai_player.dll CTD

Here is what I have already attempted (in chronological order give or take), after reading through the avsim ctd guide.

• Rebooting multiple times
• Running fsx as admin
• Uninstalling VHHH and fsdt YVR
• Deleting fsx.cfg
• Restoring dll and exe.xml's from two weeks ago
• Unplugging my pedals and sim hardware
• Running an older fsx installation from an external drive, problem still persisted
• Restoring ai_player.dll from the other installation.

My system is old (win 7 32-bit  i5-2410 and a gt540m graphics card), but with a lot of tweaking I run very heavy addons with no problems.

Well, since it is now holidays for me, I would more than appreciated any help

 

[Jim Young]

You should be able to edit now.  The AVSIM CTD Guide provides some suggestions for fixing your issues.  See the various suggestions for fixing the ai_player.dll and ntdll.dll errors near the end of the guide.  These solutions were found by conducting a search of all of the flight simulation websites.  Page 10 provides a guide for investigating your crashes and your performance issues.  You have done some of them such as deleting the fsx.cfg and letting a new one rebuild (the number one solution to any problems).  Replacing your dll.xml with an old dll.xml is not advised.  You should simple rename the latest one, restart the sim and see if this fixes the problem.  If it does, there is a problem with one of the modules being loaded into FSX by the dll.xml.  The guide tells you how to disable modules in the dll.xml to find the one that is causing the problem.  The scenery.cfg could be causing the issue too and you need to rename it and let the default rebuild.  If the problem continues, then you know it is not a scenery issue.

[DaveCT2003]

To be honest, I would uninstall the Deluxe Edition and get the Steam Edition (often it's only $5).  The FSX Steam Edition (FSX:SE) has several key enhancements over the Disk versions of FSX with the most important one the change so that FSX does not use two threads for processing the same Autogen data, which leads to increased performance.

There are a VERY few FSX products which are not Steam Compatible, but a quick search will help you to ensure the products you use are compatible with FSX:SE.

My very best wishes to you!

 

[Kleterpos]

 

1 hour ago, DaveCT2003 said:

To be honest, I would uninstall the Deluxe Edition and get the Steam Edition (often it's only $5).  The FSX Steam Edition (FSX:SE) has several key enhancements over the Disk versions of FSX with the most important one the change so that FSX does not use two threads for processing the same Autogen data, which leads to increased performance.

There are a VERY few FSX products which are not Steam Compatible, but a quick search will help you to ensure the products you use are compatible with FSX:SE.

My very best wishes to you!

 

Thank you for taking time to answer. I don't think I am in a position to switch sims at this stage, as this will require effort (reinstalling addons, testing, tweaking).

2 hours ago, Jim Young said:

You should be able to edit now.  The AVSIM CTD Guide provides some suggestions for fixing your issues.  See the various suggestions for fixing the ai_player.dll and ntdll.dll errors near the end of the guide.  These solutions were found by conducting a search of all of the flight simulation websites.  Page 10 provides a guide for investigating your crashes and your performance issues.  You have done some of them such as deleting the fsx.cfg and letting a new one rebuild (the number one solution to any problems).  Replacing your dll.xml with an old dll.xml is not advised.  You should simple rename the latest one, restart the sim and see if this fixes the problem.  If it does, there is a problem with one of the modules being loaded into FSX by the dll.xml.  The guide tells you how to disable modules in the dll.xml to find the one that is causing the problem.  The scenery.cfg could be causing the issue too and you need to rename it and let the default rebuild.  If the problem continues, then you know it is not a scenery issue.

I have tried all the solutions proposed for fixing the ntdll.dll (there weren't any about ai_player.dll). I have also tried letting the sim build a new dll.xml. I will try renaming the scenery.cfg and report.

[charliearon]

For the ai_player.dll error you can try turning all AI sliders to 0% to see if it helps.  Some times if the AI slider is too high, it can also create the ntdll.dll error.

[Jim Young]

2 hours ago, Kleterpos said:

(there weren't any about ai_player.dll)

See page 31, AVSIM CTD Guide.

 

2 hours ago, Kleterpos said:

I have also tried letting the sim build a new dll.xml.

FSX will not rebuild a new dll.xml as the dll.xml is only installed when you install an add-on that requires it.  For instance, the fsuipc.dll utility, the fsdt add-on menu, or a PMDG aircraft, or Active Sky will have entries and those programs will create the dll.xml and exe.xml (if needed). 

So, let's say you had a dll.xml and you deleted or renamed it thinking, "if I do this, FSX will rebuild the file for me" and this way I can find out if there is a problem with the dll.xml.  Well, if FSX starts up okay without any anomalies like you discussed in your OP, then there probably was a problem with the a module not loading properly or the dll.xml was corrupted somehow.  But, you started up FSX, and you still had the problem.  So, you have completed one investigation of your issue - see if there is a module that is not loading properly or if the dll.xml is corrupt.  You now know it was not the dll.xml at fault.

You deleted the fsx.cfg and let it rebuild (as stated in your op) and you still had issues (if you do not see an aircraft spinning at the setup window, that is common and does not indicate there is any problem whatsoever other than you have your settings too high or you are starving your computer of system memory).  If you went away 15-20 minutes, you might possibly see the aircraft in the window spinning.  If you don't after 15-20 minutes, then you are right and should consider the fact your computer is very low end and it should be upgraded.

Hope this helps.

[Kleterpos]

Thank you for taking time to help me Jim.

To begin with, there are no references to ai_player.dll solutions in the CTD guide. Moreover, it strikes me as erratic that a problem is caused by my weak system. I can't understand how it is possible that on Wednesday I was flying circuits with the FSLabs A320 around 4 different add-on scenery airports without closing the sim and a day after the sim can't load anything. Now I consider the possibility of malware, as my RAM usage with one chrome tab open is around 70%

[Adrian123]

May try deleting the Scenery.cfg (back it up) and restarting and let FSX rebuild it.. There is always as last resort system restore . Worked for me a few times.

[Kleterpos]

Sooooo...I made a discovery:

sqlsrvr.exe uses 1.600.600 K of virtual memory, in fact, it is the most VAS consuming process in my system right now. I am not sure wether I should kill it or not.

[Kleterpos]

9 minutes ago, Adrian123 said:

May try deleting the Scenery.cfg (back it up) and restarting and let FSX rebuild it.. There is always as last resort system restore . Worked for me a few times.

Tried this, didn't work..

[Adrian123]

System Restore or the cfg or both? 😉

 

[Jim Young]

35 minutes ago, Kleterpos said:

sqlsrvr.exe uses 1.600.600 K of virtual memory, in fact, it is the most VAS consuming process in my system right now. I am not sure wether I should kill it or not.

Are you running an sql server?  https://www.processlibrary.com/en/directory/files/sqlservr/24960/.  It should not be terminated.  It sounds like you have many applications/processes running in the background and you should click on the search bar for msconfig.  Once open, click on startup and disable all startup items.

[Kleterpos]

Restoring my system back to Wednesday, to a time before I installed VHHH. I am sure that this will fix the issue. Anyway, thanks everyone for your support and merry Christmas.

EDIT: Restore failed to fix the problem.