Help again

[sandar]

No sooner had I got FS9 running as sweetly as it has ever done than I get one problem after another.

First a trojan that didn't exist, then a sound card with laryngitis, now FS9 won't start.

The problem I need help sorting out is this: FS9 starts OK, I get the splash screen, then the create flight page loads OK, but with no picture of the aircraft, the box is blacked out.
I can choose aircraft, airport, weather and time of day, but I can't see which aircraft I have selected. When I try to start a flight, I get the progress bar but it doesn't progress beyond 0% -2% before it stops responding, I have to reboot my PC.
Anyone any ideas?.

[falcon409]

If you haven't tweak the FS9.cfg file too much, pull it out of the directory and paste it to your desktop so you still have it, then restart FS9 and let it build a new cfg file. That should fix it. If it does, then slowly go back and cut and paste the main changes you made (probably joystick assignments and things like that). Add things back one set at a time so if you hit a wall, you'll know what it was that caused the problem in the first place.

If that doesn't work then look at what you might have done with your graphics card lately. . .new driver maybe, or something else related to the graphics side.

[sandar]

If you haven't tweak the FS9.cfg file too much, pull it out of the directory and paste it to your desktop so you still have it, then restart FS9 and let it build a new cfg file. That should fix it. If it does, then slowly go back and cut and paste the main changes you made (probably joystick assignments and things like that). Add things back one set at a time so if you hit a wall, you'll know what it was that caused the problem in the first place.

If that doesn't work then look at what you might have done with your graphics card lately. . .new driver maybe, or something else related to the graphics side.

I have already tried removing the FS9 CFG with no luck. I have also removed the modified FS9 CFG and replaced it with the original on, made no difference at all. I have been wracking my brain to think what I might have done to cause this problem, but cannot think of anything. I have made some changes after the problem started (sound card driver

FS9 was working fine one moment then suddenly stopped loading. The only alterations I made to the FS9 CFG were to do with the terrain and pan rate.


No new drivers for a while, some time ago I installed the latest Nvidia driver which I had to roll back, but that was before Christmas

[falcon409]

I have already tried removing the FS9 CFG with no luck. I have also removed the modified FS9 CFG and replaced it with the original on, made no difference at all. I have been wracking my brain to think what I might have done to cause this problem, but cannot think of anything. I have made some changes after the problem started (sound card driver

FS9 was working fine one moment then suddenly stopped loading. The only alterations I made to the FS9 CFG were to do with the terrain and pan rate.


No new drivers for a while, some time ago I installed the latest Nvidia driver which I had to roll back, but that was before Christmas

Have you recently added any new aircraft that required placement of extra dll files to the main FS9 directory or the modules folder?
Sometimes files like Gaugesound.dll or a similar sound dll will throw the sim for a loop.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Presuming that this happens to any aircraft and also when starting a saved flight too, I'd dare guessing that there's something wrong with your video card (driver).
What about other graphic-based games (CFS, FSX, MSTS or IL2)?
Do they crash too?

[Alain_F355]

I heard that the aircraft preview can also turn black with certain anti-aliasing settings. Maybe it helps to change those settings.

[sandar]

Falcon, No new aircraft for a while. The last thing Iadded were two new repaints for the BAC Swallow and I haven't touched the modules folder for over a year. I will check trough some of the more recent gauges though.

Wild Bill, The only game I have is FS9. I am begining to suspect either my graphics card or driver though. I was watching a music video on you tube and it froze then too and I just ried to watch a news item on the web and that froze too.

It's time for us to get our snouts in the trough now (18:15 in the UK), so I won't be around until a little later on. Thanks for the help so far.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Did you already try a dxdiag (DirectX) diagnosis run?

[sandar]

I have another problem that has just reared it's head. That blasted trojan that I thought I had got rid of is back again, I have my security software help people looking into it for me, so I have two problems, which may or may not be related.

Wild Bill, no I didn't even think about running a dxdiag diagnosis run, I am off to try it now.

Alain, I have tried with and without anti aliasing, made no difference at all.

[sandar]

According to dxdiag, I had a problem with the sound last time (11 months ago) I ran it which was news to me, nevertherless, no problems were found.

[Fnerg]

To get rid of your trojan, turn off system restore, reboot in safe mode, run Spybot, Malwarebytes Anti Malware, Spywareblaster, and then C Cleaner. Then defrag C drive, and restart comp in normal mode. Restart System restore. Hope that works. Them nasty little buggers.

[dogknot]

I seem to recall reading about the black aircraft selection screen before with Nvidia cards. IIRC, either the card needed new drivers (or the old drivers weren't completely removed) or the AA (and maybe even the AF) needed to be controlled in-game and then "enhanced" thru the card.

[sandar]

To get rid of your trojan, turn off system restore, reboot in safe mode, run Spybot, Malwarebytes Anti Malware, Spywareblaster, and then C Cleaner. Then defrag C drive, and restart comp in normal mode. Restart System restore. Hope that works. Them nasty little buggers.

I have done exactly that and it did get of the little ba***rd, but it has come back again. I am fairly certain I have not downloaded it again, although I cannot be certain where the infection came form, I suspect Facebook. My security is normally very good at stopping naughties before they get a chance to burrow onto my hard drive. This is the first bad infection I have had on this PC.
I was free of it for two whole days, woohoo

[sandar]

I seem to recall reading about the black aircraft selection screen before with Nvidia cards. IIRC, either the card needed new drivers (or the old drivers weren't completely removed) or the AA (and maybe even the AF) needed to be controlled in-game and then "enhanced" thru the card.

Would the problem start immediately after installing new drivers or would it wait a couple of months before playing up? FS9 had been running perfectly (well, for me anyway) I shut it down one evening and when I fired it up again the next day I had this problem.

The last new Nvidia driver I installed had to be rolled back as it didn't work at all, it is possible that some of that new driver still remains. I suppose I will have to delete all Nvidia drivers and start again from scratch.

[aeromed202]

Ok, Fnerg just suggested what I was going to, plus Adaware (most if not all of these are free). I would also recommend opening up your tower and checking for dust, etc. The black box on create flight happened to me when I loaded another background, namely a version using some new cloud textures. Replacing the background with the default fixed the problem.
Can you see what section is loading when things stall? Loading scenery objects is first so if there is any new conflicting scenery that would shut things down too. If you can get as far as the create flight box, you could try going to settings, scenery library, and switch off all but default scenery. You can also find and selectively re-load all the default stuff from the discs. I had to do that for a gauge problem once which fixed the problem. At times when my game would just wink out during loading, a gauge was always the culprit.
Whenever you get this going, if you have the space or funds try to save copies of critical folders that you know work. I do this for things I have worked on so I won't lose what I spent so much time adjusting.
Good luck.

[Wing_Z]

After you've removed the bug:
Restore your machine to just before the last Windows update, (or when you remember it last working properly).
My last Win update did things to Internet Explorer (which is not my default browser) and ruined everything.
I just rolled it back and all is good.

[sandar]

Ok, Fnerg just suggested what I was going to, plus Adaware (most if not all of these are free). I would also recommend opening up your tower and checking for dust, etc. The black box on create flight happened to me when I loaded another background, namely a version using some new cloud textures. Replacing the background with the default fixed the problem.
Can you see what section is loading when things stall? Loading scenery objects is first so if there is any new conflicting scenery that would shut things down too. If you can get as far as the create flight box, you could try going to settings, scenery library, and switch off all but default scenery. You can also find and selectively re-load all the default stuff from the discs. I had to do that for a gauge problem once which fixed the problem. At times when my game would just wink out during loading, a gauge was always the culprit.
Whenever you get this going, if you have the space or funds try to save copies of critical folders that you know work. I do this for things I have worked on so I won't lose what I spent so much time adjusting.
Good luck.

Some good advice here, thanks. The tower is clean. I cleaned it a couple of weeks ago, and again today. I checked the cards were sitting inplace properly and blew the little dust out.

When the flight starts to load, it never gets past loading scenery objects, which is the first things to load. The last thing I did regarding new scenery was to place three bridges using EZ-scenery, but several flights loaded OK after I did that.

I will try disabling the addon scenery and give it a try.

Before this all happened, I was going to buy an external hard drive to use for back up purposes, but more recently I have seriously been thinking about a new internal hard drive and loading it with Windows 7 (I use XP home at the moment) and then moving FS9 onto the new drive.

[sandar]

After you've removed the bug:
Restore your machine to just before the last Windows update, (or when you remember it last working properly).
My last Win update did things to Internet Explorer (which is not my default browser) and ruined everything.
I just rolled it back and all is good.

The first thing I tried to do was a system restore, but it failed, none of them worked. As I mentioned earlier, I am thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 on a new hard drive.

[aeromed202]

It may be that the last good load ups were in places that had good scenery because think it only loads locally.
I've avoided a better internal HD as I have so much stuff on it as is. When I am up against a re-formatting to obliterate something evil I might upgrade then. For now the external HD is a game saver.
As for W7 I am waiting to see how it works with EVERYTHING first. MS thinks we forgot about Vista??

[phantomx1]

Just curious Sandar, what percentage of your hard drive if used and what percentage is free space left on your hard drive? I know my hardrive is near 85% used with about 15% free space left and this gives me trouble.

I keep trying to delete older larger file models that take up a lot of space which gives me more free space. In flight sim 9 I am having trouble after selecting [Go Fly], building textures load, then ground textures, then aircraft textures. It takes like 15 or 20 seconds for all to set. And sometimes have have trouble with FS9 not wanting to shut down, having to use Ctrl/Alt/Delete (Windows Task Manager) to shut it down.

Could your hard drive maybe be above capacity for good running? I know if my hardrive goes over 85% full and try to defrag, the system gives me a message saying that it can't defrag because the hardrive is above 85%

Just wondering if this may have something to do with the problems you are seeing. If you select Start\My Computer\ then hover your mouse pointer over Local Disc (C), a que will pop up telling you how the total Gigabytes capacity is for the HD, and how many Gigabytes of free space is remaining. You will have to use math to figure the percentage of free space Vs HD space used.

So what I am wondering is, is the problem you are having coming from an near full hard drive? You know we load a lot of planes on both our HD folders and also plenty into just FS9 itself.

[dogknot]

...snipped...If you select Start\My Computer\ then hover your mouse pointer over Local Disc (C), a que will pop up telling you how the total Gigabytes capacity is for the HD, and how many Gigabytes of free space is remaining. You will have to use math to figure the percentage of free space Vs HD space used. ...snipped...

Right-click on Local Disc (C), select properties, get a visual "pie" that shows Used Space, Free Space, and Capacity.

[phantomx1]

Scared to look at that pie shot of mine Dogknot You sure have a lot of room on yours. Nice!

My totals:
Used space: 44.5 GB
Free space: 8.16 GB
---------------------
Total HD space: 57.7 GB

[dogknot]

Scared to look at that pie shot of mine Dogknot You sure have a lot of room on yours. Nice!

My totals:
Used space: 44.5 GB
Free space: 8.16 GB
---------------------
Total HD space: 57.7 GB

Looks good, doesn't it!? I pulled all kinds of unnecessary junk off the C drive and put it on an external.

[sandar]

Just curious Sandar, what percentage of your hard drive if used and what percentage is free space left on your hard drive? I know my hardrive is near 85% used with about 15% free space left and this gives me trouble.

I keep trying to delete older larger file models that take up a lot of space which gives me more free space. In flight sim 9 I am having trouble after selecting [Go Fly], building textures load, then ground textures, then aircraft textures. It takes like 15 or 20 seconds for all to set. And sometimes have have trouble with FS9 not wanting to shut down, having to use Ctrl/Alt/Delete (Windows Task Manager) to shut it down.

Could your hard drive maybe be above capacity for good running? I know if my hardrive goes over 85% full and try to defrag, the system gives me a message saying that it can't defrag because the hardrive is above 85%

Just wondering if this may have something to do with the problems you are seeing. If you select Start\My Computer\ then hover your mouse pointer over Local Disc (C), a que will pop up telling you how the total Gigabytes capacity is for the HD, and how many Gigabytes of free space is remaining. You will have to use math to figure the percentage of free space Vs HD space used.

So what I am wondering is, is the problem you are having coming from an near full hard drive? You know we load a lot of planes on both our HD folders and also plenty into just FS9 itself.

My hardrive is 51% full or 49% empty depending which way you want to looka at it: 56.6 Gb used space and 55.1Gb free on a 111 Gb drive

[phantomx1]

Then that would seem that it would not be the reason for the troubles you have been seeing Sandar.

I know out of every computer I have gone through in the past 12 years, it seemed that as the hard drives reached somewhere near 75-85% capacity, those computers would gradually begin to become more and more unstable until the O.S. would finally become unstable and give up the ghost. Just the way it seemed to me anyway.