Not sure but I'll throw out some possibilities:

-Virtual memory being used up and no subsequent warning message displayed. (Usually will tell you that there is not enough vm, but not always.)

-Duplicate AFCADs.

-Corrupted scenery.bgl

-AI traffic somehow corrupting the loading process.

-One of your environment/ambiance addons is corrupted.

For a possible AFCAD issue, use this:
http://www.nwlink.com/~erog/

Virtual memory issues just require virtual memory reallocation and OS process management. (Shutting down insignificant non-FS processes).

Try shutting off all of your AI traffic and flying into the problem airports after a short flight with your usual aircraft. (Just to be sure.)

Not sure how to address a scenery.bgl issue without starting from scratch, just tossed the idea to you since it could be the culprit.

For the most part, just try temporarily deactivating various addons and see if it still occurs. There really isn't a set of rules that say "adjust this to fix that".

I use updating weather as well and I doubt that would be the problem since if it fails to download, all the program does is pop up with a message saying it was unable to obtain it, then goes back to the sim.

It's just happening at so many place now. How do you find the bgl that is corrupted? I don't see how that is possible!

The planes are all payware--Level-D, PMDG and Captain Sim. No freeware gauges at all.

I have disabled all the airports in scenery manager except the two I am using. In this case last night, Amsterdam and O'Hare.

Flew from Amsterdam and was on final to O'Hare. Had the runway in sight at 1500' about 2 mile final. CRASH! Black screen and back to desktop.

I thought it would be smart to keep everything disabled now and only activate the two airports I need before a flight. That didn't work too well.

Steve, have you tried setting all your overclocks back to default?

That sounds like a memory issue to me. FS has been chugging away for hours loading and reusing resources, and then it has to suddenly load up a large amount of ground detail.

I think it's just a combination of so many addons, both software & hardware, that you now have so many uncontrollable variables in your setup, you could go mad trying to find it.

Want an almost fool proof way of finding out what's causing it, start fresh, default FS9. Do your flight. And see if it happens.

Now add your addons ONE AT A TIME, and do a long flight. If you make it through all of your software and have no crashes, then move on to your hardware, one piece at a time, doing a flight after each part is added.

With as much as you experience this problem, it is sure to creep up and identify itself this way, and when it does, you'll finally know exactly what was causing your ordeal.

My only problem with this is that we added them like this and flew for some time when we originally loaded everything. This issue never happened.

He went from Vancouver to Toronto last night. Perfect flight until on short final, runway in site, cleared to land. Crash.

The problem is it doesn't happen every time and it's at different areas. It seems to be after long flights--that's the only constant.

What about my FS Global or Ultimate Terrain causing this? I just can't imagine unistalling everything again. It would probably cause my son to lose interest in this forever.

I guess I am saying CTD when in fact it is blackscreen. I thought that was the same thing.

Just this minute my son flew from SFO to LAX in the PMDG 737. Perfect, SHORT flight. CRASH about 2 miles out on final, runway in sight. This time it didn't come up with the balck screen--I could still see the runway--but there was no response and the cursor came up and was slowly moving around the screen.

I disabled the FS Global mesh. Obviously that wasn't it. Now he's flying from KFLL to KEWR. We'll see how it goes with Ultimate Terrain disabled.

Is there another equivalent to Ultimate Terrain that may be just as nice without the issues I'm reading about?

I keep looking at your system specs, and wondering how it is you have these crashes when my little putter, never does, and stays smooth the whole time. 

  But doing so, has thrown forth a few ideas...

- You're running a 64bit OS, is there a chance that one or more addons or something else in your system needs a special driver?  I use XP pro SP3 32bit, by choice, as some of my sound equipment software isn't supported in 64bit. So that's a start.

- Are you an Overclocking I7 user?  If so, does this crashing occur without the overclock?  I ask, because I can run smooth & stutter free on my dinky AMD dual core @ 2.8Ghz, so your stock unclocked setup should by all rights be smoking mine.


- Have you tried doing these flights on a virgin install of FS9?  If it does the crashing with no addons installed what so ever, then it would have to be a hardware issue, or an issue with an addon.
The fact that it's occurrence for you is so random, leads me to believe that it must  be hardware related, as so many other people use all of the same software as you, and in similar combination, and yours is the only one having this problem that I'm aware of.

If you have the HD space, do a second install of FS9, and put NOTHING into it! Do some flights, short & long, and see if it happens.

To do a sister install, just temporarily rename your current FS9 folder, and then also rename the FS9.cfg to FS9.bak. Then proceed with the Install.

Whether or not it crashes this way, will open up some more doors for us to try... hopefully. 

I get a similar black screen CTD that only seems to happen with a certain combination, one of my favourite singles, the aerosoft beaver (modern cockpit) combined with some local scenery crashes this way everytime......I can fly the beaver anywhere else no problem, and I can fly any other aircraft around that scenery with no problem. and it's only the modern cockpit version of the beaver that gives the crash, the old cockpit beaver is fine......where I'm going with this is maybe you try a few different A/C on similar flights.....try a couple of freeware planes and see if they CTD in similar situations (short final) there are a few fairly good freeware planes that would be good test beds for this issue......
For that matter, maybe you could try a couple of flights with your PMDG 737 in locations that you dont have as many scenery addons, perhaps a few European flights or whatever takes addon sceneries out of the equation.

I so glad to hear you got some flights in! 

I've often wondered why the i7s would need to overclocked to run FS9.  It's pretty much a single core application, and as long as you've got over 3ghz on that core, you're good to go for maxing out the sim.

  What could have been happening I suspect is that with it being overclocked, when you would arrive at these densely packed scenery regions, it would some how cause a system spike that took it over the edge that it was so close to already. 
With it running stock, you now have much more overhead for when these large information hits take place.

Just a theory, but it sounds good. 

Steve,

Please let us know how that flight went this morning, and continue keeping us posted on such flights!

I thought you had already reset your OC back to DEFAULT a LONG time ago... that was one of the first things we had told you to do.

Flew Newark to O'Hare---->Perfect!
Flew Toronto to CDG---->Perfect!

We may have found a solution!!

Montreal to SFO--success! SFO has been a "crasher" for him too. And it's one of the best airports we have.

Flew last night from O'Hare (a problem airport) to Frankfurt in the PMDG 747. He had a bird strike on takeoff that cracked the outer shield. Over the Atlantic he lost an engine--still don't know why. Had to shoot a missed approach in Frankfurt due to wind shear.

Landed safely after all that! It seems to be working for us.

Now on to getting the multiple monitors to work! It is still crashing when we drag the FMC or overhead panels to the other monitors. I know others can use monitors for undocked gauges. We have before as well! Why not now???

JBaymore wrote on Nov 20^th, 2009 at 2:09pm:


I guess so. I ran every OC test I could find to check the stability. It always was fine. Every test passed. However, when I originally wiped the drive and started over with FS9, the computer was still OC'd when I reinstalled XP. Nick seems to think that this is the issue. Something that isn't detected by normal OC tests has corrupted the OS somehow.

This system didn't really need to be overclocked for FS9 anyway. It looks and flies exactly the same at stock speeds. Actually--better now that we can land!

Hadn't thought about that but I'll try. How do I disable nHancer without messing it up? Once off, do I just select AA inside FS9? Or is there something else to do in the Nvidia control panel?

Steve, Nick has always said that no matter how many tests you run on your OC, the real test is being in-game for hours and hours making sure that works. That was the problem here. Although your tests ran fine, the sim didn't like the OC. The same thing happened to me for a while until I played with the OC settings a bit (following Nick's instructions) and got it stable.

anyways, good to hear you're flying well now

I cannot believe this is for real!... ..!

My ancient AMD 2600+ Thoroughbred (2.1 GHZ) SOCKET A Processor, together with my ancient nVidia 7800GS AGP 256 MB Graphics Card, and 2 GB of installed memory...

...and absolutely NOTHING over-clocked, runs my highly reliable FS 2004 in my Solo and Multiplayer flights with other Pilots, with everything wound up to the maximum, day after day, for up to 18 hours per day for years, with no problems...!

....a firm advocate of NOT over-clocking anything unnecessarily, for total reliability!.... ...!

Paul...G-BPLF...FS 2004...FS Navigator... ...!

(My ancient system even runs FSX SP2 with the most important settings wound up to the max with no problems, although I prefer the FS 2004 Scenery).

See post above---I edited the sequence order of how he flies.

John,

How do I "stop" using AES once it is installed? Just deactivate it inside SceneryManager?

What do you mean by hardware interfaces? The main computer has everything on it except the Ellie Avionics that run on the networked computer. I read that it is recommended to use only FS9 on one drive and put everything else on another but I didn't know how to make FS9 see the items so it all went on one 300gb fast drive.

What should I use to scan the memory modules?

I've had memtest 86 v 4.0 running for almost 3 hours. No errors yet.

How long should it run?

Hardware: CH Yoke, Pedals and Throttles, GoFlight MCP-Pro, GoFlight GF-P8 (x2), GoFlight Landing Gear GF-LGT. Main screen is a 1024x768 BenQ Projector on GTX 285 alone. Overhead panel and FMC on a 15" and 10" monitor run off of a 9400 GT (don't use them since FS9 will crash when dragging items over from the main screen). Networked computer is older Pentium running Ellie ND, PFD and Standby gauges and flightplans.

I'm thinking that all I need to do is open SceneryManager and make AES not active. Correct?

Steve,

Don't change more than one thing at a time.  Basic scientific method.  Control the variables so you can make cause and effect conclusions.

Either AES or pagefile.  Not both.

best,

................john

Steve, what is the app that did the decent call. Seeing it died after that I would not run that add-on and see.

Steve,

Did you install the "patch" that was issued for fs2004?  Or are you using a copy that came with that update already installed? 

When (if) you installed the patch, did you do it EXACLTY the way Microsoft said to do it? There was some documentation around that if you did not follow the instructions exactly,.... that the patch did not work correctly.

There was a bug in the original fs2004 issue that cause problems that sometimes manifested themselves like this.  It had to do with a memory leak in some of the autogen.  It only showed up whjen you could "see" the autogen again as you got near the ground.

To me the symptoms seem to point to a problem with a ground or airport texture of some sort.  Or the texture on a pice of airport ground equipment.  Something like that.

best,

...................john