How quickly things change!

[Guest]

I posted my "solution" to freezing problems, and also mentioned my "solution" to the white out of my ground.Pride is a killer.The next time I fired up FS, the ground was sky colored again. And so far it still is.Can anyone help. No one responded to my last 2 messages. If I have a pox, could someone at least let me know that?Bob Bernstein

[Guest SD Sim]

:-lol :-lol :-lol Hi Bob,I don't think you have the pox! It's just that, at least in my case, I'm to chicken (pox) to answer. You definitely have a weird problem. Here's two ideas. First, what is the temperature of your CPU? Check it in your BIOS. Second, try moving your FS2002.cfg file to a different folder and reboot. Is the problem still there?

[Guest Lizardo]

"perhaps" you got a faulty board or other component?

[Guest]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give it a try.I just finished repeating the steps I took yesterday, and it worked again, re-installed my via 4 in 1 and reintstalled my vid drivers.Now it works. Funny.B

[Vulcan 14]

Bob,If you are still having problems it may be down to the VIA 4in1 drivers and/or the drivers of your other cards (graphics, sound).There is a very recent post here, or in 'General' forum by either Paul or Max Cowgill about instability with some hardware combinations and the VIA chipset.Personally I am on about my 4th AMD/Abit system and have never had a problem (fingers crossed :-))with strange glitches or lockups.Link to the thread mentionedhttp://ftp.avsim.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboa...orum=DCForumID8Hope this helps.

[Guest PaulL01]

Bob,Please add more info, what is your system, OS and drivers?what AGP setting are you using in your BIOS, aperture size, fast wrights enabled etc.? and when and why do YOU think this started happening?Paul

[Guest]

Thanks for ur post Paul, win98 first edition, but with the msoft security patch #2 enabled.Radeon 64 ddr vivo, driver is the latest ATI released 9093mobo is shuttle ak31 ver 3.1...written by Tom Pabst to be very stable albeit basicchipset is via kt266a, via driver set is latest off the via website...4in 1, 438.Bios is set to agp 2x, apeture size is 64mb not sure about fast writes...interesting question...I'll check. Should this be enabled, or disabled? perhaps this is an answer.I tried agp on 4x, seemed to be locking badly, cut it back and the freezing seemed better. Tried 1x, but no hardware acceleration happened at all.Mike Adamo may have answered the sky colored ground...seems enabling table fog in the Radeon creates this effect. I did have table fog on when I saw that...Now its down to a random freeze up...Bob Bernstein

[Guest SoarPics]

Bob, I would be suspect of Fastwrites being enabled. You might try disabling it (in your video tweaker as well as the BIOS). Besides, the performance gains with Fastwrites are minimal at best... often more trouble than it's worth.Regards,

[Vulcan 14]

Bob,I woud agree with Greg, if backing off from 4x helped the lockups it strongly suggests disabling fastwrites could be the answer.You might also try reducing the AGP apparture to 32MB. Many posts I have read by those more knowledgeable than I suggest that this setting is only made by 'try it and see', some systems run OK with 128MB, some with 64MB and some with 32MB.Hope you get it sorted.

[Guest PaulL01]

>Thanks for ur post Paul, >>win98 first edition, but with the msoft security patch #2 >enabled. >Radeon 64 ddr vivo, driver is the latest ATI released 9093 >mobo is shuttle ak31 ver 3.1...written by Tom Pabst to be >very stable albeit basic >chipset is via kt266a, via driver set is latest off the via >website...4in 1, 438. >>Bios is set to agp 2x, apeture size is 64mb not sure about >fast writes...interesting question...I'll check. Should >this be enabled, or disabled? perhaps this is an answer. >>I tried agp on 4x, seemed to be locking badly, cut it back >and the freezing seemed better. Tried 1x, but no hardware >acceleration happened at all. >>Mike Adamo may have answered the sky colored ground...seems >enabling table fog in the Radeon creates this effect. I did >have table fog on when I saw that... >>Now its down to a random freeze up... >>Bob Bernstein Bob, I am sorry but I am not that familiar with that ATI card, I do know that for KT266a the 437s are considered by many to be more stable than the 438s however I doubt that is your problem, I can tell you the on my Kt333 setup an AGP aperture size of 64 and windows wont boot, size of 128 everything OK, size 256 and I get all kinds of weird crap in D3D games, on my old KT266a I could use any size and you would just have different performance to sort out.If fastwrights are off, leave em off. the slight perfromance gain is out weighed by the instability, they wont clear any problems up if enabled.The more I think about it the more I suspect bad ATI drivers. I really think you should try and post your problems in one of the forums at some of the ATI web sites, I just dont think there are enough folks in here that use ATI that can help you, hope I am wrong.Sorry not to be of much help Bob.Please keep us up to date on how it goes.Paul

[Guest]

V, just to let u know fastwrites were disabled. I haven't tried the 32mb agp aperture, because I've been feeling more and more suspicious of my sound card. Its a hunch. My mobo has one of the sound chips on board, so I uninstalled the sound drivers and cleaned the registry of the diamond and aureal keys and have allowed the mobo sound to be heard.So far......no lockups. I'm wise enough now to realize they may still occur.Bob B

[Guest]

P, see my post to vulcan...so far so good...keeping fingers crossed. I've always had an error message claiming that windows cannot load the soundblaster emulator aspect of my diamond mx300 sound card...and yet I've never had a problem before, so I ignored it.It seemed this was a good time to cure ANY imperfection in the system.B

[Guest Lobaeux4]

I've been having the exact same problem. The sim would freeze or just pop back to the desktop. Only happened with some sort of sound going ie. on the create menu, it could sit there all day no prob, takeoff from Meigs in the default cessna, freeze or drop to desktop. I took out my Yamaha DXSG and activated my onboard sound. I'm almost positive the latest VIA drivers are the problem. I dl'd the ones from ECS then the ones from VIATECH, and I can't fly for long before it freezes up, and I have to reboot. I'm going to uninstall completely, and maybe not even install the VIA drivers (wonder what that will do) and see if I can complete a flight. The last time it happened, I put it on pause while tucking my son in for the night, the time before, on final, just wanted to check in spot view, total freeze. If you figure out an answer let me know, sounds like it's the exact same problem, funny how it just started happening to me too. Lobauex

[Vulcan 14]

>...windows cannot load the soundblaster emulator aspect of my diamond mx300 sound card..

[Guest cornclose]

On the subject of Diamond sound cards, I'm sure the FS2002 readme states some potential issues with these cards...Chris Ehttp://website.lineone.net/~flightsimukAvoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)