XP-PRO - P4 - Both FS2004 and FS2002 Quit

Your either running into scenery, heat, corrupt drivers, or bad DirectX problems.

Read this post and see if it helps you at all.
Quite possibly the only solution will be a clean install of to your OS, how long has it been since you did it.

https://forum.flyawaysimulation.com/forum/topic/1506/computer-crashes-to-blue-screen-on-long-flights/

Thanks, Radarman. I read the exchanges with interest.

I re-installed FS2004 to no avail and, anyway, the thing happens on both FS2002 and 2004, independently. It happens, moreover, whether I'm "flying" in the Western or the Eastern hemisphere so, presumably, that negates "scenery" glitches?

DirectX is the latest. The graphics card was upgraded from Radeon 7200 to Radeon 9600 Pro for this very reason (no help ).

You say the OS to be re-installed? Wouldn't I be getting troubles in other applications / software suites? I don't. It's only in the FS suites.

Every time it happens (unless it becomes a BSOD), I get a "Be a nice fellow and send the error report to Mr William Gates". I do and never hear any more - of course.

Very irritating!

What drivers could be corrupt - any thoughts?

The operating temperatures all appear to be not more than 54C.

The other m/c running W2K with a lesser processor will fly all night and never "crash"

Try running Ad-Aware and configure (customize) it so it also checks your registry. It's free.
http://www.lavasoft.com/

This (RegVac) will clean your registry, it's free for 30 days. Unless you are expert in the registry (I'm not) run it in the NOVICE mode.

http://www.regvac.com/

If the OS is more than a year old you build up assorted "junk" both on the registry and programs running in the background.
The programs running in the background can soak up much of your memory and as the sim runs on and on the machine needs more. Your Sim being the biggest memory hog at that time is the first to go down.
Theory, that's all.

Let us know how you do.

Hi Radarman

Thank you for your suggestion of Registry Mechanic. I d/loaded it and although I have Norton Windoctor, OnTrack "Fix-it" Registry Cleaner and PC Bug Doctor, I decided to register.

I was amazed when, despite running the other utilities regularly, it found no less than 438 spurious registry entries! I thought, with running the other three house keeping utilities, that it would find next to nothing. That's some tool!

Anyway, repaired all the suggested invalid entries and with eager heart, did a test flight on the troublesome machine with FS2004 rather hoping that after such a powerful vacuuming job, the bug might well have disappeared.

Alas, "flying" a B747 on a FSNav4.5 flight plan from Cardiff to Iceland, all seemed well until the a/c was passing FL330 for cruise flight level FL350 and around 100 miles into the flight, some 20 minutes or so after t/off in a smooth climb - suddenly - no warning or anything - a blank BSOD without any error message. Reboot the machine and XP's chkdsk found NO errors or lost clusters on Drive C (operating system) or Drive I (FSims location).

Yesterday, I "flew" FS2004, B747 from Sidney Oz to L.A. - around 15 hours in real time on the m/c which doesn't give any trouble with FS - again on an FSNav4.5 flight plan. It flew all night and went through to "land" this morning. This on W2K with a slower processor and less memory. Also a lower spec graphics card.

My main m/c is a P4 at 3.2GHz, 524Mbs memory, Radeon 9600 Pro, XP Pro with two 160 SCSI drives, 1 serial ATA and 1 standard EIDE. Device manager is clear, the m/c starts up and closes seamlessly which suggests no faulty driver hanging on. The m/c is heavily loaded with various apps, all of which, Flt Sims 2002 and 2004 apart, perform faultlessly. Even Videostudio 8 video capture, edit and DVD-creation is a faultless process. This, as you probably know, throws a heavy strain on every aspect of the architecture.

This bug is maddening. Do you, by any chance, have any other ideas or can you tell me where I might seek some know-how (whether in MS or elsewhere) ? We all know that elusive bug fixing on a computer is akin to the proverbial needle in the haystack.

To close this long spiel - thank you for being there and so helpful.

Bob

I'm very pleased that those tools did such an amazing cleaning job, did you try Add-Aware also, it helps if you dump your cookies before running it, you get false positives.
Do you scandisk and defrag every week, very important.
Do you have any add on mesh, or add-on area scenery that could cause BSOD.
Go to "RUN" and feed in "DXDIAG" and see what drivers you are running and also check your sound card drivers, sound can bring down a program also.
The latest "9.0b" I believe DirectX and all Windows updates.
What can I think of. First I'm not thrilled with Norton's tools except their AV which I shut down (permanently) they're auto-update, and Windows auto update.
Programs (ICQ) that start to run while your flying can do it, shut down as many as you feel comfortable doing.
If you hear your H/D grinding before it shuts the program down then it's either background programs starting or symptoms of a H/D going bad, I just replaced mine.

http://www.blackviper.com/2008/05/19/black-vipers-windows-xp-x86-32-bit-service-pack-3-service-configurations/

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;331796

Let us know how you do.

I'd go with RadarMan's first guess of heat. Do you run any other intensive applications for prolonged periods of time? My other guess would be bad hardware. Having a bad stick of RAM can produce a lot of seemingly random errors, there are some programs you can use to test your RAM, I don't recall the names off the top of my head. One suggestion would be to download the latest version of 3dMark from FutureMark (http://www.futuremark.com/ formally MadOnion). This is a graphics & PC benchmarking program, however for your needs it will serve as a stress tester; the 3d videos are also fun to watch. 🙂

My guess (8 years of PC tech experience) is that it's hardware. You can try reinstalling the OS, and if it were <XP that's the first thing I'd recommend. I've been very impressed with XP's survivability and ability to keep itself clean from infectious bitrot other MS OS's were prone to. It also takes a lot to make XP BSOD from personal experience, and I've tried very hard at times to make it throw in the towel.

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Radarman - verymany thanks!!

Also, latterly to "LeadZero" for your kind interest

I thought to add a second memory stick, increasing RAM from 512 to 1024.

I have just "flown" a B747 seamlessly from Cardiff Wales to Gander on a FSNav flight plan. First time that FS2004 has completed anything other than a very short flight.

So it would appear to have been nothing more than an old-fashioned lack of memory muscle but one would have thought that MS would have flagged this up as a possible culprit in a machine running a few progs in the background.

Will now try something similar in FS2002 and if that, too, completes its flight, then I think we have a happy conclusion.

Perhaps my experience and these dialogues we've had will prove useful to others in the future.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks!

Bob

👏 Fantastic!
The memory shortage problem is most likely due to a memory leakage, a failing chip or too many programs running in the background.
But whatever if just adding another 512mb will do it, that's great.
Thanks for letting us know.

Hello Again Radarman

This is just to confirm that for verification purposes, I set a B747 flying from Sidney, Oz to L.A. last night and, having flown all night, this morning it landed happily after 13.5 hours unbroken flight. That was in FS2004. I have just flown a 2 hour flight in FS2002 and, once again, an uninterrupted performance.

The problem is accordingly solved.

Thank you for all your help and advice.

Best wishes

Bob Gregory

👍 A success story, you don't know how much we enjoy hearing those.
13½ hours straight, I hope that was on autopilot and you went to bed.

rafferty5268 wrote:

Thanks, Radarman. I read the exchanges with interest.

I re-installed FS2004 to no avail and, anyway, the thing happens on both FS2002 and 2004, independently. It happens, moreover, whether I'm "flying" in the Western or the Eastern hemisphere so, presumably, that negates "scenery" glitches?

DirectX is the latest. The graphics card was upgraded from Radeon 7200 to Radeon 9600 Pro for this very reason (no help ).

You say the OS to be re-installed? Wouldn't I be getting troubles in other applications / software suites? I don't. It's only in the FS suites.

Every time it happens (unless it becomes a BSOD), I get a "Be a nice fellow and send the error report to Mr William Gates". I do and never hear any more - of course.

Very irritating!

What drivers could be corrupt - any thoughts?

The operating temperatures all appear to be not more than 54C.

The other m/c running W2K with a lesser processor will fly all night and never "crash"

😞

I reinstalled the original FS9.CFG in the Application Data.
It solved my problem

No, it did not fix the problem.
Tryed everything. New install, no AFCAD, no imported bgl, traffic to zero, no Addon Scenery, no weather, no nothing, I was not even breathing when a new CDT occured. 🙄
Freddy De Pues

Freddy De Pues,
Sorry but I feel as if I came in at the end of a movie. I've never seen you post before, I don't know what the problem is, the sequence of events leading up to the CTD, and what your computer specs are.
All I can find is that "it" doesn't work even after building a new FS9.CFG .

Although I am aware I wasn't specific enough, I was trying to share my concerns about FS9 unexpectedly quitting.
In addition, you can tell English is not my native thongue.
Sorry for invading a forum obviously attended by a bunch of experts.
Freddy De Pues
Baton Rouge, La, USA
fdepues at cox.net

Sorry if I sounded harsh but I wanted to help in any way that I (we) can. I didn't mean it to sound the way it looks, if that makes any sense.
If you can give us more information about your problem possibly we can work with you to solve it.
By the way, If we were experts we wouldn't need this or any other forum to post our many problems, there isn't one of us that doesn't have some sort of a problem with the Sim, yep-me included. So post what you will, it's always nice to see a new face.

From my experience, it's probably "scenery" related. Apparently some .bgl files must be incompatible.
I recently downloaded a bunch of files aiming at improving the Hawaii mesh. At a certain point, I could not take off from Honolulu (CDT on FS9 right after the "create a flight" startup). I had to fly from Lihue, from instance. But right thereafter Ohau Island was not even showing on my GPS map! I just had a few dots representing airstrips.
Freddy De Pues

FS9, Ultimate Traffic, US Roads, Lago Honolulu

I would have to agree that it's something you added if all was fine before. It can also be not enough memory, low cpu or the scenery slide is too far to the right for your video card or computer to handle.
If you will, list your computer specs so we all know what we're dealing with.
Unload the scenery that you put in one by one until you see if one of them is the "trouble maker".
My guess would be Honolulu.

Intel Pentium 4HT, 3233 MHz, 4X808
512 MB (DDR SDRAM)
RADEON 9800 XT Pro
Microsoft XP home

I made a full and clean (Application Data included, ran SureDelete) reinstallation of FS9. I will progressively reinstall some AddOns and see how it works. With Ultimate Traffic (100% traffic), all display settings to full throttle, and MegaScenery running, I get up to 70 fps in the Los Angeles area.

Thanks for your good advices.
Fred-E

Freddy, you have a fantastic machine I'm when I read it. For utmost performance you should at least double the ram, most of the flight simmers with a machine like that have 2 gigs of ram, 4 times what you have.
Good luck with the reinstall and do it a bit at a time.

I am afraid a private HS French teacher cannot afford the extra 500 bucks for new dual 2GB memory sticks in addition to his newly acquired system.
I just red in some French forums that much of the debate is about the priorities to be set in the scenery library. Some suggest 1) Mesh, 2) Landclass, 3) AddonScenery, 4) Default Scenery,...
I am wondering if the sceneries that I exclude or delete are really gone. I suspect there must be some redundancy in the Application Data files. My problem area, like stated before, is Honolulu. Maybe I should try to reinstall the original scenery.cfg from CD4. The culprit seems to be a scenery called Pearl (dbwsimpearlhbr2004.zip), but other people complain about random crashes with other addons...
Besides, does it make a difference to install addons in the addon scenery rather than in the FS9 Scenery folder?
Maybe I should take some time to register to this forum.
Fred-E

If you could add another 512mb that would make a huge difference, wait 6 months and the prices should come down.
All of the scenery that you use should have very detailed instructions for loading into the Sim For me to tell you how wouldn't work for either one of us.
The only (perfect) way to ever get rid of all traces of it would be to reinstall Windows. You should go into search/files and folders/hidden files, that way you can get to most of it and never forget that folder in "My Documents".
Then reinstall.

512 to 1Gig would mean a huge difference?
In what terms, Captain?
My first concern is FPS and smoothness in FS9. Could I get better results with the upgrade you advice me to buy?
The only thing that bothers me at this time are some plain color rectangles when I switch views. In addition, a water reflexion addon does not extend to the far horizon when I fly above 5K feet.
Could this be monitor related? (Dell P990 on RADEON 9800 XP)
Sincerely,
Fred-E

Fred-E,
The more ram the faster the scenery will render and the farther you can see it without it "snapping" into view.
You remember of course former computers that you've had, the lower the CPU the less the ram. Now you have a fast CPU, you have to give it "food" "ram" to utilize it's speed.
Dell has good monitors and that's an excellent card if you have the latest drivers.
As far as the FPS you should cap it at 30, why do you need more, the higher you set it the more power it takes away from everything else. Try it and see if you are happy. I fly at 1600x1200x32 and 27-30 fps and my machine isn't anywhere as strong as your and I have 512mb of Rambus ram. I would like more but my type is too expensive to replace.
Let us know how you do.

It looks fine under 1600x1200x32, FPS limited to 30. But I still see wide plain color rectangles while switching views. Some forums suggest changing [DISPLAY] TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40 to 400?
Would you do that?

I don't care to fool around with those type of settings myself, but if you like, change it and see if it helps. Just be certain that it can be changed back.
I still think that it's ram related. If you have the distance slider too far to the right it can be causing that.

See y'all in a week, gotta catch a plane to KATL.
Fred-E

👍 Have a good trip.