Very Strange FSX Problems

[Guest Spontz]

Greetings,My father is a former pilot who enjoys flight simulators, so we purchased FSX for him. This may have been a terrible mistake. He's been having a variety of strange problems from the first moment he attempted to play it.As background, his computer is based on a P4 2.8 GHz, 1 GB RAM, and a GeForce 7300GS 256-MB graphics card. He has a RAID-10 hard drive setup with 250 GB of space. It should, according to the published system requirements, be able to run FSX.The problem at first was that he could fly for five to ten minutes, then the game would pause and minimize itself (but strangely, not make the desktop available; it looked minimized, but acted as if it were still full-screen). Based on posts I read here, I updated his sound driver (I'd already updated the video driver), uninstalled FSX, and reinstalled it after doing the msconfig "Diagnostic Startup." This helped, briefly, but the minimize-crash problem soon returned. Then all sound cut out.So we uninstalled and reinstalled again, and now there's no sound, it takes several minutes to load, and the framerate has dropped to about 2 fps, even with minimal graphics settings.Is there any hope of correcting this? Or is FSX simply unplayable at this time?

[tf51d 284]

I have a similar issue, except mine doesn't crash all the time. When it does the system reboots itself. A number of times though, it just minimizes the screen and I could go back into it by ALT-Enter into window mode then back to full screen. Once done if it doesn't crash, FSX runs smoothly for the duration after that. I've flown flights over 10 hours with no performance issues. The problem always happen consistantly about 5-7 minutes into FSX. (I haven't timed it exactly, but I think I will.) By any chance do you have Cloud 9's Orlando? I'm just speculating here, but I was just thinking, it has I think 7 minute demo time if you don't buy the product then it disables it's scenery. I think this is controlled through Cloud-9's addon manager DLL file. I'm wondering if somehow even though the product is bought, it some how is triggering and when it exits seeing the product has been purchased it's causing FSX problems when it does. FSX has a 30 minute demo period itself, so since the time period this happens if much sooner, I don't think that activation process would cause the issue. I'm going to try disabling the Add-on manager to see if that is the problem. My system is an Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB and ATI X1950 XTX crossfire boards, so if our problems are related, I don't think it has to do with the video card drivers, as yours is Nvidia!

[Guest Spontz]

No, there are no add-ons or anything of the sort.Also, things just got stranger. Combat Flight Simulator 3 has the same problems as FSX now. After seeing that, we uninstalled both programs and went back to Flight Simulator 2002... and now THAT has no sound!Everything else works perfectly. DXDIAG says there are no problems. All other programs function normally.We've given up on FSX, and it's going back to Amazon. But how do we fix the damage it has done so that older flight sims will run?

[cklink 0]

If newer (and want to truley enjoy) the Flight Simming experience I would suggest the following to get his feet wet.I would suggest to a complete uninstall of FSX, and running a freeware reg cleaner perform a defrag of the drive.Pick up FS9 Century of Flight (Deluxe). Its only about 24.00 at most locations. Then apply FS9.1 patch.Get a list of the locations and aircraft that your father enjoys to fly. Cruise through the AVSIM file library and most surely you will see many available freeware add-ons that greatly enhance the flying experience. There are many help files within Avsim to help to understand how to install and use these, and the developers are very throurough at providing instructions with thier packages.As his hobby (if/when) grows picking him up a couple of very high quality paywear aircraft will completly increase the "simulation" aspect of the sim. Maybe to start I would recommend for General Aviation the Dreamfleat Baron 58, If he likes Old Iron the Dreamfleet 727, and for the newer airliner either the LevelD767, Wilco/PIC 737, or the 747 from PDMG. These aircraft are truly amazing, making the default aircraft seem like toys.For even more scenery and enviroment enhancements, I would suggest Active Sky and Ultimate Terrain and FSGenesis mesh. This greatly enhances the weather, overall ground/river/coastline features and provides acurate terrain in which to fly.I say the above in no discredit to FSX whatsoever, but respond to you as if this was my father. You will save money by having to purchase better hardware to run FSX, and time in decifering what modifications or (tweaks) we all have done here to get acceptable perfromance. In addition many of the FS9 paywear titles are now at reduced costs with the release of the new FSX. Overall all your father would enjoy more "uptime" flying, and FS9 has been around now long enough to have your father add immediatly just about anything (as far as addons) he could think of. If this grow for him, in the future he may want to then update to FSX down the road. These forums are welcome to all levels of enthusists, and be assured someone in here is always willing to help if he has any "questions" to help him with this hobby.Many opinions vary, but I give you mine in the interest of instant enjoyment and at a reduced budget in time and money.Best Regards'Garett

[Mace 1,948]

Since the problem is occurring with multiple programs, I do not think it is specifically an FSX issue.That means it is either hardware or OS problem on the machine. The symptoms you describe are consistent with that type of problem.Without knowing more details about the system setup and specs it's impossible to be more specific than that, but certainly it cannot logically be a problem with the FSX program itself, since other apps are exhibiting the same strange behavior.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

[cklink 0]

Quote: I updated his sound driver.I would look at uninstalling the sound drivers. Download Driverclenerpro from http://www.drivercleaner.net and run it.After that reboot and reinstall the drivers, (to me its sounds possibly like an incompatable version (check) or something went haywire on crash)Good Luck,Garett