FSX Hangs Up And Ctd Options

[chavins]

fsx recently started to suddenly hang and then crash to desktop. can occur at any time during flight. appears to occur mostly over new zealand. not limited to a particular area. i run a fairly new computer with win 7 and fsx acceleration.
scenery looks great and sim is performing well, until the problem suddenly appears. it does happen occasionally in other countries, but recently has been happening 1-2x per flight session in new zealand.

i am not sure whether the problem is actually due to vlc or to fsx itself. sometimes event viewer shows an error message (always fsx.exe and occasionally terrain.dll are given as the active files, but other times, no error message. mother board temperatures well controlled.

is it possible to inactivate or disable vlc in order to trouble shoot? is there a special procedure for uninstalling and then reinstalling? any other suggestions will be welcomed.

many thanks.

steve chavin

[Ian Warren]

A thought , a reinstall VLC , over the top wont hurt any other apps: but maybe missing a file , had same thing whiles back , since no problems .

[Nzeddy]

Do you have the UIAutomationCore.dll file in your main FSX folder? If not, see this: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/273341-heres-...hing-win-7-x64/

[toprob]

A lot of memory problems are caused by autogen, have you tried pulling the autogen setting back a notch?
To disable VLC temporarily, run the Config tool and turn off the autogen, then deactivate the VectorLandClass and VectorLandClass_DTM entries in your Scenery Library.

[chavins]

A thought , a reinstall VLC , over the top wont hurt any other apps: but maybe missing a file , had same thing whiles back , since no problems .

ian and all other respondents:



thanks for the suggestions. i have been experimenting for thepast few days. i have flown many flights, hundreds of miles and in a bunch of counries, including new zealand. i have consistently seen the hanging and subsequent CTD on nz flights (especially around napier, which i have used as my usual test area). but no haning or CTD anywhere else.

i tried ian's suggestion to reinsall vectorlandclass over the existing installation. this had no effect on the hanging up. i then tried disabling the vlc files using the disable button in scenery library. i did not do anything with the various other vlc or vlc related folders, such as library, vlc airports or specific airports. i did 2 test flights in and around napier, and with vlc folders disabled, ther were no hangups or CTD. finally, i uninstalled the main vector landclass program, using the uninstall function in start menu. then, i reinstalled vector landclass using a copy of the original full installer v1.0, followed by installation of the version 1.01 update. all of this went well, the vlc scenery looked great, but the ctd occurred within 2 minutes as i approached napier from hastings.

although i hate to say it, this seems pretty suggestive that there is a problem with my vector landclass scenery itself, and that this problem developed only many months after my initial installation. i am not sure how to proceed from here. i prefer not to try to mess around with the 'uiautomation.dll'. i also did not try to reduce the amount of autogen i use because i am flying everywhere else with the slider at high to very high.

i would be grateful for any suggestions on how to troubleshoot the cause of the problem. would it be useful to download a new installer from robin? i will be very unhappy if i cannot use the wonderful vector landclass scenery, as i have done for the last year or so.

steve chavin

[toprob]

i would be grateful for any suggestions on how to troubleshoot the cause of the problem. would it be useful to download a new installer from robin? i will be very unhappy if i cannot use the wonderful vector landclass scenery, as i have done for the last year or so.

Sorry, if there is a problem with your installer, it wouldn't install at all.

[creator2003]

check your scenery /world folder to see if you have a double up on a afcad for Napier, this would normally /usually crash like you have explained ,i will start testing in your area and see if i find the same error though i was working over there sometime ago with VLC installed before update 1.01 and got nothing but good performance over the two weeks i was working on a project ,do you use NZ AI traffic addons ,these had afcads which play with the system too like explained above and are in the readme to be put in the scenery world folder ,if you are not aware of things going there you may not have checked there yet ..
all the best im sure we will work it out for you and the fix will be around the corner ,there are some limits to how much we can be of help with each pc being personal setup ,i know this is a hassle and i feel for you so lets see if the above helps ..

[creator2003]

After reading this all over again there may be a stronger case this may be a install of NZAI project which has a afcads in 2004 format for alot of NZ airports which may be the problem ,if you had it installed and unactived it the afacd files still sit in world scenery folder active competing for the chance to show in FSX which cause the crash maybe ?

[Timmo]

Hi Steve
Are there any 'artifacts' before the crashes that you have noticed (i.e. screen flickering etc)?
Is your case/laptop well cooled and free from dust build up? If you run a CPU/GPU temperature logging software, do these show any rise in temps?
Have you recently updated your graphics card drivers? Alternatively, when was the last time you did update?

And as mentioned by mike- What other scenery are you running around Napier?

[chavins]

Hi Steve
Are there any 'artifacts' before the crashes that you have noticed (i.e. screen flickering etc)?
Is your case/laptop well cooled and free from dust build up? If you run a CPU/GPU temperature logging software, do these show any rise in temps?
Have you recently updated your graphics card drivers? Alternatively, when was the last time you did update?

And as mentioned by mike- What other scenery are you running around Napier?

hi everyone.

thanks for the support and all of the questions. i can answer a few of the questions, but most of the answers will require several days of investigation.

firstly, i am not sure whether the problem is specific to the napier area. this happened to be the location where the hangup finally drove me to desperate measures, although the crashes were occurring elswhere on both north and south islands. at that time i had mike's napier scenery installed and checked for duplicate napier afcads (negative), but subsequently uninstalled his napier scenery without resolution of the crashes. so the napier addon was not the cause, although some other problem around napier has not been ruled out. i will try a bunch of short flights in several different areas of both islands and let you know the results. last night, i realised that i had ruled out the vlc scenery as the primary cause of the problem, but i had not looked closely at other new zealand sceneries i have used. most of the ones i have installed are designed specifically for vlc, but i will systematically disable all possible suspects to see if the crash pattern changes.

my computer has win 7 running an i7 920 processor and a gtx 275 graphics card. i am overclocked to 4.0 ghz and the sim runs beautifully with high detail aircraft, scenery and all sliders way over to the right. the computer is cooled with a noctua unit, and the temp at rest is around 48-50 degrees C; when fsx is running, it rises to 52-60 degrees C but never higher.

the crashes can occur at any time in a flight, sometimes within the first couple of minutes, but other times not for aan hour or so. the first sign of a problem is the scenery starts to do momentary halts (usually with fps dropping from its usual 30fps max down to 5-10fps). this jumpiness might continue for 1-2 minutes but usually less. the scenery itself remains as sharply focussed as before, and i cannot appreciate any flickering. eventually the sound and the cursor freeze. fsx usually crashes to desktop within a minute or so, sometimes preceded by one of microsoft's ever-helpful messages that a "serious problem has occurred and the application will shut down, and microsoft will notify me if it can figure out what the problem is". microsoft's sleuthing has not yet born any fruit. sometimes, i wait for fsx to crash (ever hopeful that it will not do so) but usually i hit control/alt/delete to end my misery and curtail my disappointment. event viewer/window logs/applications sometimes shows an error message implicating fsx.exe in addition to terrain.dll (or occasionally a different .dll file). about half the time, there is no error message related to the crash.

that's about all i can tell you at this time. sorry for the detail, but you never know what is relevant. i will proceed with my testing and get back to the forum with a more concise note. thanks again for the help, interest and encouragement. i will surely miss vector land class while flying over your beautiful islands.

steve chavin

[creator2003]

The naiper scenery was 2004 which i gave to snowman to place with his scenerys same with NZNP ,theses scenerys had afcads /object librarys / world alt files for flattens etc which maybe in that world scenery folder i mentioned ,anything which there are two files playing for the same space would cause issues or crashes ..

so check list C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Scenery\World\Scenery
in main FSX directory ,check that there is no other extra NZ__ .bgl files or ALT files that look NZ which are not VLC files this BGL is ok to be there NZMF_ADEX_VLC_ALT.BGL

next is the same place check for afcads with NZ__.bgl could be a whole heap or this file Traffic GNZLAP_REDUX.bgl which if not converted properly to FSX file could have some issues but manly the AI afcads which came with this pack id want you to check that they are not in there ..

[Ian Warren]

One other possible answer is the graphics card even as new as it is could be the problem even with the latest drivers , i had a PC in the shop after the council caused a power spike frying my very very expensive card , on putting a new card and testing in the shop , the sim did similar jump/run/pause/run , found the brand card was a dud , that could be the answer .