Major Problem!!

[Daniel Hick 964487]

Hi Guys,

I have just bought a new computer and have run into a major problem running FS9

 

CPU Quad Q6700 @ 2.66GHz

4GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GS

Vista Home Premium

 

I load up the flight i have selected and the game crashes either straight away or within 1-2 min. It appears the sky freezes and either restarts the computer or the computer just hangs.

 

I have made sure that the load is shared across the 4 cores and have run 'nhancer' but the problem still exits. ( I dont know if I have set up nhancer properly?)

 

Please help I have severe Flight Sim Deprivation Syndrome

 

Cheers!

[James Miller 1077241]

i had a motherboard that did the same thing when i would try to play need for speed 2 (yes, long long time ago). the problem was, several of the capacitors had blown their top's.

 

Under a normal windows mode it would work fine, but as soon as I'd start to put the system under stress, it would crash and reboot.

 

Check your motherboard especially the area around your main feedline of power from the power supply to the board.

 

the little capacitors whould have smooth top's. if any of them have stuff oozing out of the top ( and you'll know when you see it), then its probably a blown board.

 

other than that, i cant help much, but my symptoms were close to that.

[Garry Morris 920567]

Could also be heat or power supply related.

 

If the chipset is overheating, or you're not getting enough power out of the power supply, you could also be seeing these issues.

 

I'd complain immediately and see if you can get it exchanged if it was a prepackaged box. Something likely isn't right, being as how it's brand new.

[James Miller 1077241]

Could also be heat or power supply related.

 

If the chipset is overheating, or you're not getting enough power out of the power supply, you could also be seeing these issues.

 

I'd complain immediately and see if you can get it exchanged if it was a prepackaged box. Something likely isn't right, being as how it's brand new.

 

i also second this. can't believe i forgot bout that . thanks garry!

[Joseph Jaster 932528]

If you really have FS9 using multiple cores that may be your problem. FS9 was not designed to do that and may be crashing if you're forcing it to. Disable any settings you have to make it use multiple cores and set its CPU affinity* to only one of your cores.

 

*To set a programs CPU affinity open the task manager (CTRL+ALT+Delete)

Go to the processes tab

Right click on FS9.exe and select Affinity

Uncheck all but one of the cores (I recommend you use core 1, 2 or 3, not 0 as most background programs will run on core 0)

 

EDIT:

Could also be heat or power supply related.

 

If the chipset is overheating, or you're not getting enough power out of the power supply, you could also be seeing these issues.

 

I'd complain immediately and see if you can get it exchanged if it was a prepackaged box. Something likely isn't right, being as how it's brand new.

 

My memory fails me again; great points Garry. My old computer had that problem when I upgraded it, not enough power when under load...

/EDIT

 

Other than that, I blame Vista It is the new Windows ME

Edited September 27, 2008 at 02:35 AM by Guest

[Luke Kolin]

If you really have FS9 using multiple cores that may be your problem. FS9 was not designed to do that and may be crashing if you're forcing it to.

 

This is incorrect. FS9 wasn't designed to use multiple cores, but all that means is that it doesn't, not that it crashes. I've run FS9 on a multi-core box since 2004 without issues.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

[James Miller 1077241]

Other than that, I blame Vista It is the new Windows ME

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! You just made me laugh so darn hard!! you couldn't have hit the nail on the head any more directly.

 

But this discussion was not about what vista is or what it isn't (and theres alot of ISN'T in vista)

 

how would the multi cores cause the problem? if the load is spread even across the cores, it shouldn't be a problem. This is interesting, because i'm looking at getting a quad core chip soon and running fsx.

[Joseph Jaster 932528]

If you really have FS9 using multiple cores that may be your problem. FS9 was not designed to do that and may be crashing if you're forcing it to.

 

This is incorrect. FS9 wasn't designed to use multiple cores, but all that means is that it doesn't, not that it crashes. I've run FS9 on a multi-core box since 2004 without issues.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

 

I think you misunderstood me Luke;

I also have a multi-core system and run FS9 on it. My point was that if FS9's process is being forced to run on more than one core at once, rather than running on just one like it wants to it could crash; but that was just a guess really. I've never tested it myself, and I dont think its even possible, but from the wording of Daniels post that seemed to be the case.

 

If left alone, FS9 will run on just one core, even if more are available and that wont cause any problems.

[Luke Kolin]

My point was that if FS9's process is being forced to run on more than one core at once, rather than running on just one like it wants to it could crash; but that was just a guess really.

 

You can't "force" FS9 to run on multiple cores. The NT scheduler divides code between processors on a per-thread basis, and unless your code is divided up into multiple compute-heavy threads, you cannot divide the workload between cores. This is why FS9 (and FSX pre-SP1) don't perform as well on multi-core systems; they don't distribute the computing load between threads and therefore cannot take advantage of multiple processor (or core) systems.

 

There's no way to make a single-thread (or single critical thread) program automatically scale over multiple cores - you have to rewrite it with this in mind. Thankfully so.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

[Erhan Atesoglu 1050499]

Daniel: hate to say it but have you considered just nuking your FS9 directory and starting from scratch? if you haven't done this it's next to impossible to know if its hardware or software related issue... you could even install a new copy in a different location. But from what you describe it could be the GPU itself, as you seem to only have the problem during the game. obviously drivers are the first step but if that doesn't solve it, I'd recommend swapping another card in just to test it.

[Garry Morris 920567]

Erhan, if we were just talking about the program freezing, or crashing to desktop, I'd think it may be program related.

 

The entire machine rebooting is usually indicative of a hardware failure/overheating situation (or a very select few viruses).

[Erhan Atesoglu 1050499]

Garry: uhm I'm not really claiming to know what the problem is. I was outlining steps to diagnose the problem.

[Daniel Hick 964487]

Upgraded to FSX and still get the same problem. FSX freezes 1-3 minutes after graphics start. I cant even go back to the desktop, have to do a hard restart!!!

Help Help help!!! Very Depressed:cry:

[Garry Morris 920567]

Could also be heat or power supply related.

 

If the chipset is overheating, or you're not getting enough power out of the power supply, you could also be seeing these issues.

 

I'd complain immediately and see if you can get it exchanged if it was a prepackaged box. Something likely isn't right, being as how it's brand new.

 

It's kind of pointless for me to take time out of my day to help you if you're not going to even bother reading my posts.