Hi all,Just registered after reading this long thread. I think it's time to bring it back into the open.I just build a system quite comparable to many of the systems mentioned here. I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 running on an EVGA nForce 680i motherboard, with 4 gigs of PC-6400 RAM, 2 GeForce 8800GTX graphic cards (in sli,) and 2 RAID setups (1 2x 500 Gig Western Digital Caviar and 1 2x 250 Gig Western Digital.) Note that none of my components are overclocked yet. Also, I'm using Vista x64 Ultimate with the latest stable Forceware drivers 100.65.I'm experiencing the same Out Of Available Memory crash as everyone else. Every component is working in my system, passing all tests with flying colors. My processor runs at a cool 27 degrees idle (thanks to a Tuniq Tower,) and Vista recognizes and utilizes all four gigs of RAM.I am convinced that the error is a driver issue, effecting the GeForce 8800, Core 2 Duo, Vista x64 combination. There should be absolutely no need to reduce services, defrag, or play with the page-file.>Believe it or not, you need more ram! With Vista it takes 4>gb's of ram to be a power user. 2 gb's is only good for>household use, not for running a heavy game. This is absolutely untrue, and here is why.Let's keep in mind that most power-users, gamers, and enthusiasts won't touch Vista x64 with a ten foot pole... at least not yet. The only reason I'm using it is for my system development work, not for games (although my system was built primarily for games.) Instead, most are sticking with 32-bit XP or Vista, and here is the problem:32-bit Windows (XP and Vista) can't utilize four gigs of RAM. At most, it will see 3.2 Gigs, and it can only use what it sees. In theory, a 32-bit OS can address up to 4 gigabytes of RAM. This is because a 32-bit operating system uses a 32-bit integer to address memory, and the range of a 32-bit integer maps to 4 gigabytes of address space. Now, as far as 32-bit Windows is concerned, there is only one 32-bit map for all of the memory in a system. This includes video memory, PCI bus memory, and even sound card memory (if you have an X-Fi for example.) Only after these component memories are mapped will Windows map your main system memory. Therefore, the total amount of main system memory 32-bit windows can work with is 4 gigabytes MINUS your video card memory, PCI bus memory, etc. Additionally, even if you had very little component memory, 32-bit Windows will reserve about 700 Megs of RAM for components, so at most, no matter your setup, 32-bit Windows will use 3.3 Gigs of RAM. Remember back in the day when computers had the 640K upper memory limit? This is the same thing. We're just now realizing it again as we reach the 32-Bit memory limit.Therefore, some enterprising users with four or more gigs of RAM use Vista x64, because it doesn't have this limitation. This brings me back to what I mentioned above:Vista x64 is not considered an option for most hard-core gamers or power-users. The drivers are not there, the compatability is not there, and if you read AnandTech or HardOCP forums, you'll see that most system builders and enthusiasts are quite happy with 2 gigs and 32 bit XP or Vista. To recommend 4 gigs as a solution to people having problems running games in Vista, in my opinion, is poor advice. Most people will be running 32 bit systems which render the RAM half use-less. Now I realize there were many articles printed suggesting that 4 Gigs of RAM is a sweet-spot for Vista. Perhaps in a few years, when x64 matures, this will be true. Today, however, no one with 2 Gigs should have a problem or a noticeable slowdown when running games or other high-performance tasks in Vista. So (sorry for the rant,) back to the original post topic. My system is experiencing the same problems and I can verify it's not a resource issue or falty hardware. If I removed two sticks of RAM, nothing would change. I would get the error at the same time and under the same conditions (which, btw, are in line with everyone else's experience.) If anyone knows of a quick-fix for this, say by altering a config setting in FSX, please tell. Otherwise, we can only hope that this problem will be addressed in FSX SP1.Thanks,Mark. P.S. I welcome any questions, discussion, or debate on the RAM rant. I'm a bit pressed for time as I write this, but will be happy to further clarify my position if needed.

I'm a newbie to this forum, but I think theYipster (Mike) has it 100% correct. I saw occasional crashes with 2GB on my 32-bit Vista system with an E6600 and ATI X1900XT 512MB. So I upped my RAM to 4GB. On a 32-bit system, as Mike pointed out, this is tricky- it doesn't mean you really get 4GB as advertised. I found that with my motherboard (an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe) and a current BIOS, I do get a BIOS setting that lets me do a "memory remap". My results were like this:no memory remap = 3200MB seen by motherboard... both Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit see 3200MB as wellmemory remap = 4GB seen by motherboard. Vista 32-bit only sees 3000MB, but Vista 64-bit sees the full amountI did notice however, that with the memory remap enabled, running Vista 32-bit OS, all applications (not just FSX) seemed to be less stable on average- particularly those that might consume a lot of memory (read: games); this might be an issue with the BIOS, or it could be faulty device drivers (i.e. I know certain device drivers have problems when they get loaded above a certain, albeit legal, threshold on a 32-bit OS), although it manifested itself as application crashes... not common, but enough to be annoying and troublesome.So right now I generally run Vista 32-bit with my BIOS memory remapping off. (Besides, I only have FSX installed on my Vista 32-bit installation; my 64-bit boot configuration was experimental.)No other applications, including some games like Supreme Commander and Oblivion, show any instabilities on my system... which is odd because I actually expect bugs there too. ;-)I do try to push my settings a bit, but FSX runs pretty good on my system overall. I just flew a quick jaunt from Osaka Kansai to Hiroshima VFR and my FSX.exe Working Set (Private) size is 1,133,400K. But sometimes I'll be flying along and I'll get the "out of memory" dialog... a lot of time ATC continues along merrily for a bit as my plane seems frozen in space.Right now, I just try to hit the semi-colon key from time to time and save my flight. Overall I'm happy with FSX but I really hope this is fixed in SP1.Side note: I've also seen problem with FSX disappearing with no notice after bringing up World > Map from the main menu (when closing the map) or switching back and forth between Full Screen & Windowed mode. I think that's a video device driver issue (currently on Catalyst 7.2).

Why don't you let Vista manage your page file...I've always found that windows does a better job of it than me.

There is a TON of bad information being disseminated in this thread and in others I've seen about how Vista operates with regard to memory and what the difference between the swapfile, SuperFetch, and ReadyBoost are.I'd encourage everyone here to download a copy of Koroush Ghazi's Vista Tweaking Companion at this link http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html and read the section on memory usage. (read the entire guide in fact if you want a good understanding of how your OS works and what kind of things you can do to tweak it)

I am getting an error message trying to open the pdf file ( archive error ).

Thanks for the support :) Although my name is Mark, not Mike...Anyway,>I did notice however, that with the memory remap enabled,>running Vista 32-bit OS, all applications (not just FSX)>seemed to be less stable on average- particularly those that>might consume a lot of memory (read: games);Indeed. Unfortunately the OS is not the only component in the system that will determine how successful a computer will be with four or more gigabytes of RAM. The BIOS and motherboard also play a role. Like 32-Bit Windows, older BIOSes and motherboards (and even some current ones) have their own memory map limitation, where they map component memory into the same 32-bit address space before mapping system memory. Unfortunately I don't know which BIOSes work flawlessly with four or more gigs and which don't, but I'd say a rule of thumb when building a new performance / gaming PC is to stick to nForce 680i or Intel 965/975 motherboards. (Today if you buy a new PC with an AMD processor you're at a major disadvantage, but that's another story...)Now, as was mentioned, certain BIOSes have a switch allowing them to see four (or more) gigs of RAM. I am unsure how each BIOS handles this switch, and if different BIOSes handle them differently. However, I have no doubt that in some cases, the routine to enable four or more gigs of RAM on some bioses is little more than an ugly hack. Fortunately, if you're stuck with a switch but then use Windows x64, all should be well due to its methods of memory management.32-Bit Windows actually has a similar switch, P.A.E. (Physical Address Extension) although it's not that well known. Not sure how you turn it on (I'd suspect somewhere in the Device Manager, if not msconfig or the registery,) but the reason it's not well known is that it's extremely buggy. Enabling P.A.E. will allow 32-bit windows to see and utilize four gigs of RAM, but at the expensive of major application stability. Unfortunately, for most people, switching to Windows x64, even today, would be a better choice.Thanks,Mark.

I haven't seen an application or program that requires 4GB. 2GB is currently the sweet spot for FSX and more than enough.Vista Ultimate and FSX on with all sliders maxed use ~1.5GB of physical memory on my machine.Pat

2GB is more than enough nowadays, even as a power user on a high-end machine.I have yet to see any application/game using more than 2GB of physical memory.Pat

Have you checked your GDI Object count for the FSX application?Reaching the application 10,000 GDI Object limit will prevent new ones being created, which is sometimes reported as an 'Out of Memory' error.CaffeineBomb

Not sure what all this 64 bit talk is about as far as fsx crashing in vista because it crashes for me in vista 32bit with the same errors. All my textures get blurry then i get like 8fps then i hear the *DING* and that's all she wrote. It happens within minutes when i load up the justflight schweizer 300 chopper. It did crash once before when flying with the flight1 piper cherokee 180 after about 30 minutes when coming in for a landing. I just wanted to clarify that this problem is not just for those of you that run x64.

Mark,Thanks for the analysis, I could be wrong. One thing ocurred to me, I wonder if the video drivers in these cases are not refined well enough. Video drivers have been behind in development with Vista. One Vista beta user had a good video driver, then when he got the full retail Vista that good video driver disappeared and I think at that time there wasn't a driver for him so for the time being he went back to XP. On previous OS's and FS's I've had situations where a Windows update will render a video driver unusable either for ordinary tasks, or for flight sim tasks such as playing Fly!2K. In other words some video drivers that go out of date with a Win update renders everything at low resolution and it won't allow an increase in resolution until the driver is updated. Other times the lack of driver function is much more subtle, where everything works, except when trying to run the graphically challenging (for that computer) Fly!2K, then Fly!2k won't even start up, but updating the video driver fixes the problem immediately.Also, I've found that video card arrangements can make a gigantic difference in performance, on one FS8 computer I had a passible video card and 500 mhz processor, it had some difficulty running it with 640 mb's of ram. On my 2nd FS8 computer w/ 600 mhz, 512 mb's of ram, and a really bad video card, FS8 would not even start up, the computer would have to be restarted. Then, all I did was plug in a nice video card, and all I had was 320 mb's of ram installed at that time, wow, the framerates were high, images were stunning, and fS8 had reset to all medium level settings! Unbelievable! I totally upgraded that computer with better components like more ram and better HDD's.Any way, what I'm trying to say is, perhaps it is a video card and driver issue. Development of video card drivers for Vista are still being developed and refined.What do you think of that idea?Also, perhaps there is a memory leak in FSX and Vista? FS9 had some real problems due to a memory leak that was found then patched by MS.What do you think of these ideas?It's really weird how Vista 32 will only see 3.2 gb's of ram. XP 64 I think addresses 128 gb's, I'm sure Vista 64 also does, but I thought Vista 32 could also address 128 gb's of ram I might be really wrong in that area.Thanks again for your input Mark. Nice rig! I like that Penryn chip coming out perhaps late 2007.FSX SP1 is going to really improve parallel processing capabilities I understand.

Hello. I agree that the video card drivers may be the culprit. I have two GeForce 8800 GTX cards running in SLI, and even still, gaming on Vista has often been a disappointing affair. SLI is hardly working (the second card, for example, is not even used to an advantage in FSX) and very few games will run w/o eventually crashing. nVidia leaked new drivers last week (101.70) and while they improve stability and performance in many games, FSX does not seem to be one of them. While FSX is quite playable on my machine from a FPS perspective (all settings at Ultra-High,) the game still crashes for the same reason after 10-15 minutes. If the drivers or the game itself is to blame, there is little to do but wait until better drivers of FSX SP1 comes out and hopefully fixes the problem.Btw, it shouldn't be a surprise that Vista 32 can't see more than 3.2 Gigabytes of RAM. Any 32-Bit O/S, by it's 32-bit nature, can only utilize up to 2^32 bytes of RAM. (2^32=4 Gig.) While there can be a complex and ugly hack around this very central technical limitation, such a hack would ruin stability and performance. (As the /PAE flag to get Vista and XP 32 to see 4 Gigs does.) A 64 bit O/S, in theory, can address 2^64 bytes of RAM. This is a very, very, very large number well beyond the 128 Gigabyte limit of Vista x64 Ultimate (note that other Vista x64 editions have lower RAM limits.) However, due to other limitations (some of them arbitrary,) Vista x64 Ultimate is limited to 128 Gigs. This of course, is still far more RAM than anyone can even dream of putting into a desktop computer right now.Given Vista x64 Ultimate's ability to use tons of RAM, it still remains a poor gaming OS at this time. A major reason is that no game needs more than 2 gigs of RAM. In fact, 95% of all games, including FSX, can't possibly use more than 2 gigs of RAM. This is because they are compiled as 32-Bit binaries, which limits their RAM use to 2 Gigabytes, even on a 64-Bit system. (This is a Windows limitation and has to do with the Virtual Memory manager.) Therefore, the only advantage seen while playing games on an x64 4-Gigabyte system is that one can run other programs while playing, such as AIM or Outlook, and not have to worry about suffering a performance decrease.This actually leads me to another idea of why FSX may be crashing. There is a C++ compiler flag for 32-bit binaries such as FSX.EXE (/largeAddressAware or something) which allows for better behavior when running on a system with more than 2 Gigs of RAM. This flag does not allow a 32-Bit program to use more than 2 Gigs of RAM, but does improve the program's behavior with the Virtual Memory manager when being assigned RAM to use. Many people have been reporting a problem with Stalker crashing on Vista systems when trying to save, and someone found that editing the EXE through Visual C++'s Editbin program to enable this flag fixed the problem. Since then, people have put together scripts and programs to enable this flag on any executable w/o needing Visual C++ or Editbin. I've found that enabling the flag on Stalker and Supreme Commander fixed the crashes I've been having with them, and it seems like the FSX crash is similar in nature to the others. I haven't tried enabling /largeAddressAware on FSX, but I will when I get the chance and I'll report back on results. Btw, if anyone wants to try it, just google search Stalker save crash, and you should be able to find a link to a program that can edit the executables in a forum pretty easily.Good luck,Mark.

Thanks Mark,Good luck with your system. I think I'll be avoiding Vista 32 bit, and only get Vista 64 bit. Keep us informed on that possible fix, if it works perhaps it should be reported to Microsoft and they can include that in a patch.Ouch, I think that sli drivers are not developed at all for Vista. I have weaker computers at the time being, so if there is a video card or driver problem I'm immediately aware of it because basically the processors are simply not powerful enough to run heavy graphics on their own, even with a lot of ram. I'm thinking that these newest cutting edge computers have such powerful processors that a serious lacking in either the video card or driver won't be as obvious because the processor has so much muscle it can power through to a much greater extent. In contrast, my computers simply won't function at all without an optimal video card and driver setup.I'm certain that with time things will definitely iron themselves out, it's just unfortunate and unpleasant that there are these teething problems early after the release of Vista (and FSX). Linux users stridently exclaim that Windows is THE operating system for gaming, if you want to game, you have to have Windows. So it is a guaranteed thing that things will dramatically improve with updates, patches, and better drivers, because Microsoft in general is the mecca for gaming.

>32-Bit Windows actually has a similar switch, P.A.E. (Physical>Address Extension) although it's not that well known. Not>sure how you turn it on (I'd suspect somewhere in the Device>Manager, if not msconfig or the registery,) but the reason>it's not well known is that it's extremely buggy. Enabling>P.A.E. will allow 32-bit windows to see and utilize four gigs>of RAM, but at the expensive of major application stability. >Unfortunately, for most people, switching to Windows x64, even>today, would be a better choice.I feel I should post here to let everyone know that I get Out of Memory errors with FSX in Vista 64 AND XP 32. Mark, considering your comments on PAE causing instability, do you think the fact that I have PAE visible in System Properties in XP 32 could have something to do with the fact I get Out of Memory problems in XP? Afterall, most people here seem to think it's just a Vista issue.I'm currently in the process of analysing FSX memory usage with different graphics and scenery settings in FSX. I'm using a utility called MemStatus (see here: http://nuclearplayground.com/NuclearPlayground), which monitors system and video memory usage. So far, I haven't managed to get peak usage much below 2048MB on system memory and video memory always peaks above the 512MB that my video card has. Saying that, MemStatus says my total video memory is 768MB. Anyway, as MemStatus suggests I am pushing the physical limits of my memory, surely that highlights why Out of Memory errors occur.I'm running on Core 2 Duo E6600, ATI X1900XT 512MB graphics, 2GB DDR800 and ASUS P5B Deluxe motherboard.

Hi Jack... When I click on the links for the batch files you offered, they appeared to be dead.Can you help mr get those files?I have been wanting something like Ken Salter's FSAutostart for FSX. This sounds like it may be the ticket.Many thanks,Steve