FSX causing black screen

[hews500d]

Hi all, recently I've started having some problems with FSX. If I'm flying one of the more detailed framerate heavy aircraft FSX will freeze momentarily and then the monitor will go black. I can still hear FSX running thru the speakers. The only way to solve this is to do a "hard-shutdown with the power switch." I've even had it happen once with fs9 and LOMAC. Sometimes when it happens the sound becomes distorted and garbled and seems to loop over and over again. I've let it run 10 minutes or longer, hoping maybe a CTD would happen and I could see some kind of message, but it never does, monitor just stays black and fsx continues to run. It's like the monitor is still getting "something" from the graphics card because the led next to the monitor switch never turns orange like when the computer is shut down though.

I've tried various different drivers for both my graphics card and sound card with no results, even lowered the acceleration to standard on my sound card, thinking maybe that could be the problem. I've opened the case, made sure all the air holes are clear, cleaned the fan on the graphics card and made sure everything is seated properly. I know my computer is getting tired and its going to be a little longer before I can upgrade to fully appreciate fsx :banghead: I'm just wondering if it may be the power supply or something simple that I'm overlooking that could be causing the problem. I'm not overclocking and have monitored the temperatures on the graphics card with the Ati utility and everything appears to be normal.

Are there any logs generated or anything, that would report any system crashes that I could look for after doing a reset?

My computer specs:
tired Dell Dimension 4550 2.53 Ghz
ATi 9800 pro 128 mb card
Audigy SoundblasterII sound card
768Mb Ram

Darrell

[Roger]

Your Vid card will be a bottle-neck at 128 meg and your available ram will be too. I think you'd have to back off settings for FsX to run smoothly. You could try installing the latest video card drivers or reinstalling them if you had the latest.

[GypsyBaron]

FWIW, I've been having similar problems in FSX. Sometimes I'll
wind up with a 'black screen' but most often with just a 'frozen
cockpit view'. Seems to occur when I'm clicking a gauge or
several clicks in succesion.

FSX sound continues and sometimes I can bring up other programs
but switching back to FSX the video is not updating but the sound
returns. Sometimes it's a full 'lockup' as you described.

I'm running a Q6600, 4GB DDR2, NVidea 800GTS 640MB card.
This has only been happening in recent weeks. Updated to latest
NVidea drivers a day or so ago but still had this occur.

I suspect a corrupted file somewhere along the way in FSX but
there is no way I'm going to attempt a repair or re-install!
( FSX - Acceleration )
I have a registered FSUIPC so I just reboot and resume the
interrupted flight from the point of the last Autosave....

Paul

[hews500d]

I've thought about a reinstall since I don't have a lot of payware aircraft for fsx, but there's still a lot of pain and anguish involved :costumes:

Darrell

[kilo delta]

Hi all, recently I've started having some problems with FSX. If I'm flying one of the more detailed framerate heavy aircraft FSX will freeze momentarily and then the monitor will go black. I can still hear FSX running thru the speakers. The only way to solve this is to do a "hard-shutdown with the power switch." I've even had it happen once with fs9 and LOMAC. Sometimes when it happens the sound becomes distorted and garbled and seems to loop over and over again. I've let it run 10 minutes or longer, hoping maybe a CTD would happen and I could see some kind of message, but it never does, monitor just stays black and fsx continues to run. It's like the monitor is still getting "something" from the graphics card because the led next to the monitor switch never turns orange like when the computer is shut down though.

I've tried various different drivers for both my graphics card and sound card with no results, even lowered the acceleration to standard on my sound card, thinking maybe that could be the problem. I've opened the case, made sure all the air holes are clear, cleaned the fan on the graphics card and made sure everything is seated properly. I know my computer is getting tired and its going to be a little longer before I can upgrade to fully appreciate fsx :banghead: I'm just wondering if it may be the power supply or something simple that I'm overlooking that could be causing the problem. I'm not overclocking and have monitored the temperatures on the graphics card with the Ati utility and everything appears to be normal.

Are there any logs generated or anything, that would report any system crashes that I could look for after doing a reset?

My computer specs:
tired Dell Dimension 4550 2.53 Ghz
ATi 9800 pro 128 mb card
Audigy SoundblasterII sound card
768Mb Ram

Darrell


I've an almost identical 4550...though i've a 3.0ghz chip and 2gb of memory. It's languishing in a spare room until I can rebuild it after it's Hdd blew.I'm suprised that FSX will even run on this system. The chip is an old non hyper threading Pentium 4 and the card just can't cut it with the requirements that FSX needs. Sorry Darrell....but it may be time to upgrade to a newer rig.:redf:

For other's that are having display issues... have you updated your DirectX version? The latest version was released in August afaik. :)

[hews500d]

I've an almost identical 4550...though i've a 3.0ghz chip and 2gb of memory. It's languishing in a spare room until I can rebuild it after it's Hdd blew.I'm suprised that FSX will even run on this system. The chip is an old non hyper threading Pentium 4 and the card just can't cut it with the requirements that FSX needs. Sorry Darrell....but it may be time to upgrade to a newer rig.:redf:

For other's that are having display issues... have you updated your DirectX version? The latest version was released in August afaik. :)


I'm hoping to upgrade sometime this year if things go according to plan. Surprisingly I get around 15 fps with default aircraft and most sliders all the way to the left:costumes::costumes:. I was thinking maybe my graphics card is getting tired since fs9 has crashed once also.. Other than that it runs fs9 like a champ!

Darrell

OMG I just noticed our post counters have been reset :crybaby: