Hi, 

after many happy and successful years in FSX without issues, crashes or things like that, I received a new PC and in relation to that I finally listened to my mates and got on board P3Dv4.
However, since installing P3Dv4 in early January I still haven't managed to perform a flight from A to B, because the system is constantly crashing or doing "weird" stuff. 

I constantly get black screens after loading or changing views. The programme would suddenly just crash to desktop or freeze. And this is before even having installed any add-ons. 
Following the installation of add-ons I have restarted my PC, but all add-ons (scenery, GSX, FSUIPC, SODE etc) except for aircraft have all disappeared. All my settings are back to zero. I had to reconfigure everything again, from setting up my HOTAS joystick, to graphics etc. 

I am running a pretty beefy high performance laptop, which easily can handle P3Dv4 (32GB ram, 4GB Graphics card, 500GB SSD harddisk, 8-core Intel I9 processor). I am running windows 10 64bit and I am running all the software as an admin.

Does anyone know why P3Dv4 is causing all these issues? I haven't had these issues with FSX. In fact, FSX ran super stable and well on my old computer with no issues in terms of crashing, freezing, having black screens, removing add-ons, resetting all settings and configurations.
I am utterly frustrated with P3Dv4 and would just like to hear if anyone else is facing this array of issues and/or if someone knows what might cause it?

Did you install it in the default location under C:\Program Files(x86), perhaps?  That can lead to a bunch of problems with Windows' security big brother interfering with files getting written etc.  If you did, I'd start by uninstalling all of it, then reinstalling to a directory like just \P3Dv4.

With a laptop you also need to make sure the 3D GPU and not the integrated Intel one is being used.  4GB is not a lot of VRAM for 64-bit P3D.

There's a free utility called P3D Addon Manager from Lorby-SI that will take a snapshot of your config files and restore them if something boogers them up.  That would save you from losing your setup again in the future.

 

Are you overclocking?  Maybe it is not a stable OC.

Simbol 

graphics card  could be beefier.

A 4GB graphics card should not cause P3Dv4 to crash. I was running P3Dv4 with a 2GB graphics card before I switched to my new PC last week.

After uninstalling FSX, did you completly delete manually all the "leftovers"? FSX is not doing this automatically.
I belive you know what i'm talking about...... Right ?
Maybe the add-ons you are using need to be updated for 64bit... well some of them might work just fine...others
might NOT, you know ?
Also, make sure you have the latest "Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables" installed in your windows because,
many add-ons are using them i think, for example: Aerosoft aircrafts, or pmdg ... and so on..

13 hours ago, w6kd said:

Did you install it in the default location under C:\Program Files(x86), perhaps?  That can lead to a bunch of problems with Windows' security big brother interfering with files getting written etc.  If you did, I'd start by uninstalling all of it, then reinstalling to a directory like just \P3Dv4.

With a laptop you also need to make sure the 3D GPU and not the integrated Intel one is being used.  4GB is not a lot of VRAM for 64-bit P3D.

There's a free utility called P3D Addon Manager from Lorby-SI that will take a snapshot of your config files and restore them if something boogers them up.  That would save you from losing your setup again in the future.

 

Hi w6kd,
The default location into which it installed was C:\Program Files - to my surprise. I will try to reinstall into C:\P3Dv4 and see if that solves my issues. Thanks. 

I've set the system up to use the actual 3D GPU and not the integrated Intel one. Interesting that 4GB aren't a lot. I used to run FSX without issues on a 1GB 3D GPU and an early generation i7 and 8GB of total pc ram, and I was able to have pretty sweet graphic settings. 

I'll get my hands on that tool, thanks! 

 

11 hours ago, simbol said:

Are you overclocking?  Maybe it is not a stable OC.

Simbol 

Hi Simbol, no I am not overclocking the processor.

 

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

A 4GB graphics card should not cause P3Dv4 to crash. I was running P3Dv4 with a 2GB graphics card before I switched to my new PC last week.

Hi Christopher, 
I am no even running P3Dv4 on ultra high settings, granted I gave it a try to see if it could handle it for fun (which it could), but I don't have it as my standard setting. 

 

1 hour ago, mitsos said:

After uninstalling FSX, did you completly delete manually all the "leftovers"? FSX is not doing this automatically.
I belive you know what i'm talking about...... Right ?
Maybe the add-ons you are using need to be updated for 64bit... well some of them might work just fine...others
might NOT, you know ?
Also, make sure you have the latest "Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables" installed in your windows because,
many add-ons are using them i think, for example: Aerosoft aircrafts, or pmdg ... and so on..

Hi mitsos, 

It's a completely new computer, so FSX was never installed on it, so there can't be any FSX leftovers on it. 
I have also made sure that the add-ons installed are specifically P3Dv4 (64-bit) compatible, which they are (Vidan scenery, FlyTampa CPH scenery, GSX Level 2, FSUIPC for 64-bit P3Dv4).
I am also running the latest version of "Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables".

16 hours ago, w6kd said:

Did you install it in the default location under C:\Program Files(x86), perhaps?  That can lead to a bunch of problems with Windows' security big brother interfering with files getting written etc.  If you did, I'd start by uninstalling all of it, then reinstalling to a directory like just \P3Dv4.

 

Yes, this is absolutely correct. I have P3D installed in the Program Files directory and that was definitely a bad idea. Gave me all sorts of problems and issues. I've worked around most of these, but definitely do not install it under the default location.