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View Full Version : A funny thing happened on the way. . . .



falcon409
September 27th, 2008, 07:04
I was flying the Spain Tour on Bob Holland's server this morning and I stepped away from the keyboard for a few minutes to get a drink and heard the sound stop as I was walking back.

Black screen, no sound, locked up. I used task manager and quit the sim. I tried several times to get back in, but as soon as I would attempt to go to the "new flight" screen it would stop running and want to restart.

I ran Spybot, disc cleanup and defragged. Rebooted, went into FS9.cfg and removed it so that the sim would build a new one. Went back into the sim, reconfigured the basic display parameters, went back to "New Flight" setup and it locked up again.

Nothing externally has changed, no new hardware, software, addons, etc.

Any ideas?

WarHorse47
September 27th, 2008, 07:28
Hmmm....

When you went to create a "new flight", what was the default after you created a new FS9.cfg or did it freeze at that point?

I'm going to assume that you have not removed the default Cessna or any scenery.

--WH

pfflyers
September 27th, 2008, 08:44
If I'm understanding what you're saying about going into the sim to reset display parameters, I'm assuming the basic sim would load and run? Could you load a saved flight?

falcon409
September 27th, 2008, 09:34
Going back to square one. I have no idea what could have caused such a mess, but true to my luck, the more I tried to correct it the worse it got so I'm wiping everything out and starting over.:banghead:

EMatheson
September 27th, 2008, 11:39
check your GPS!!!
my FS9 was doing that about three months ago - the GPS was causing freezing to such a terrible degree that the only way out was through a hard-boot. In the end, I had to totally reinstall FS9 from scratch to remove the problem... I hope that you don't have that happen to you!

bearcat241
September 27th, 2008, 12:30
So, if the sim won't start, how do you check GPS?...and if it does start, what exactly do you check?...fs9gps.cab, gps.gau, gps._export.dll or gps.dll?

I hate that long, 4 CD re-installation routine, so i keep an entire backed-up copy of the 9.1 patched, stock sim on an external drive. If the sim goes irreversibly south, i just delete the replaceables and refresh them from the backups.

EMatheson
September 27th, 2008, 12:41
So, if the sim won't start, how do you check GPS?...and if it does start, what exactly do you check?...fs9gps.cab, gps.gau, gps._export.dll or gps.dll?

I hate that long, 4 CD re-installation routine, so i keep an entire backed-up copy of the 9.1 patched, stock sim on an external drive. If the sim goes irreversibly south, i just delete the replaceables and refresh them from the backups.

I am not quite sure what I mean... I replaced all the .dlls, Fs9gps.cab, regenerated the scenery index, etc... all GPS gauges default or based on the default GPS gauges led to a total freeze of my computer. Third party gauges that had been built from the ground up such as those included with the AOPA aircraft did not have that problem - but any and all gauges based on the default GPS technology including any autopilots that might use the GPS froze my computer until I reinstalled FS9 (I had to be very sure to keep the GPS/NAV switch pinned at NAV)... which is to say, perhaps replaceing the replaceables might not fix the problem if you encounter it.

aircraft that were not equipped with the GPS worked flawlessly, whether used in conjunction with an autopilot or not.

falcon409
September 27th, 2008, 14:34
Every bit of FS9 is gone. Once I get a chance (probably tomorrow afternoon) I'll start reloading till I have everything back up and running.

WarHorse47
September 27th, 2008, 18:11
Every bit of FS9 is gone. Once I get a chance (probably tomorrow afternoon) I'll start reloading till I have everything back up and running.My condolences. Make sure you check your registry for any leftovers.

--WH

falcon409
September 28th, 2008, 07:01
My condolences. Make sure you check your registry for any leftovers.
--WH
Thanks WH. . .actually, aside from FSGenesis files and a lot of aircraft (all of which are backed up in original form) I hadn't really done any heavy tweaking or addon work in FS9 so I wasn't really dumping much.

I was flying the Dreamfleet Cessna 310 when this happened and the default flight I had setup was done using that airplane, so every time I went to try to change the default aircraft it would crash. Not sure why that particular airplane should have been a problem really, but it seemed to be the catalyst for shutting everything down.

Oh well, just a lil' bump in the road I guess. . .now back to rebuilding FS9 one file at a time, lol.

falcon409
September 28th, 2008, 09:40
Just an update here: I suspect that it might have been the drive. . .just a hunch. It was acting squirrely this morning and it wanted to do a chkdsk to check and fix missing sectors. This was an external 240gig HD and I'm not sure there wasn't something amiss there so I'm moving FS9 to an internal HD just to be sure.

Cazzie
October 16th, 2008, 18:03
Just an update here: I suspect that it might have been the drive. . .just a hunch. It was acting squirrely this morning and it wanted to do a chkdsk to check and fix missing sectors. This was an external 240gig HD and I'm not sure there wasn't something amiss there so I'm moving FS9 to an internal HD just to be sure.


Falcon, I've blown two HDs in the past year, both Western Digital. Mine would +start the boot and then start recycleing the entire process over and over again, Tried to nail it down to something else, but the FD is just FUBAR. I gitted the computer for good video cards, sound cards, processor, motherboard, memory chip, etc and used them all to help comoputer friends happier, But I deep sixed the HD. One of these day there will be no moving parts on HD, everything with be routed, That will be a happy day

Caz

falcon409
October 16th, 2008, 19:15
Amen Cazzie. . .then we'll have to find something else to blame it on, lol.