Windows XP crash on fs2004 startup

[Guest Anthony_D]

Hello,This isn't the same problem I've mentioned on a previous post regarding crash to desktops. Potentially this one could be more serious.About two weekends ago, when loading up fs2004, my screen blinked out and displayed a flashing dos cursor in the top left hand corner.Amid the loud music I was playing I thought I heard a grinding noise in my machine and thought that a cable had caught the CPU fan and the motherboard went into automatic protection mode.I hit the reset button and the machine booted up normally after a disk check.There were no more problems with this until last thursday and again today. Last time the black screen with flashing cursor came up before my menu screen for fs2004, last thursday it happened when loading a flight during startup - adjusting scenery objects 77%. Today it happened when I double clicked on fs2004, there was a pause and then I clicked on the taskbar to try and bring up ground2k4.The interesting thing here is that my speakers still worked. My warning sound for the fssound.dll message still happened - after the blank screen. When I hit return, there was a flurry of disk activity like you get when fs2004 startup.Again, the only solution was to hit the reset button (after the disk activity settled down). I'm wondering what it is now. On every occasion it's occured with ground2k4 running (without doing anything in particular) and fs2004 starting up. Hence why I post here and not in the hardware forum.So, has anyone else had this problem? It's not 100% repeatable and I don't think it's a CPU problem (or a video card problem). If it's a software problem of sorts, I would certainly take comfort in knowing that I'm not the only one having a problem with this.I shall do more tests, whilst getting on as usual with my scenery project.

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Anthony.I've never had that problem, but it sounds like hardware to me.WindowsXP is very stable, and unless there is a problem with the hardware, it usually exits in an orderly fashion.I'm suspecting a heat buildup that affects your memory... either the system memory or the videocard memory. Or possibly a bad memory chip... you are accessing more than normal memory amounts by having several programs open at the same time.Dick

[Guest Anthony_D]

>I'm suspecting a heat buildup that affects your memory... either the >system memory or the videocard memory. Or possibly a bad memory >chip... you are accessing more than normal memory amounts by having >several programs open at the same time.It could well be. During today, I've started up fs2004 about 15times, mostly without other applications running but several times with ground2k4 in the background. It only crashed the once during today. I'm not so sure about heat buildup, using ASUS Probe, my CPU and motherboard temperatures have been running at 43-46C and 28C respectively - quite normal for my system.I've had memory problems in the past when doing a memory upgrade, but here the problem was instant reboots rather than a flashing cursor. It turned out that it was because I was using modules of differing speeds.Today, with grounk2k4 + fs2004 running, I've had about 350mb RAM free and about 550mb RAM free without ground2k4 running. So on that evidence I'm thinking it's not a problem with the system RAM.On the matter of video card memory, it's certainly possible, but the crashes always happened without any 3d graphics - just the fs2004 startup image and the progress bar. All my flying sessions have been fine.It's very bizarre! The more reliable an OS gets, the more traumatic one gets when the OS does actually crash!!

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Anthony.Does your system have one or two memory chips? I assume it's two.With Ground2K4 running with your project, and FS9 opened, you are definitely accessing the second memory chip, and that may be the defect. Running one app or the other would not access the the 2nd chip.That's one reason I suspect the memory. I don't know to what your memory cache is set, but that could be another factor.Just my suspicion.I've heard of systems where moving the memory chips to the furthest separated slots solves a heat buildup problem... or adding heatsinks to the memory.Dick