FS9 won't run now..any ideas?

[Fnerg]

Hi guys I'm in a mess of do do here, I can't seem to find a fix. I bought a legitimate Win 7 Ultimate 64bit, installed fs9 on a fresh new drive, crashes either immediately or gets to the spot view on the runway and the program locks up. Updated everything, installed outside of the program folders ( general rule) and no luck. Did the flight one registry fix as well, still CTD.
Perhaps not compatible? Am I facing the possibility of retiring FS9 for FSX now? Any help will be appreciated. I don't know if it's codecs or what I ran every diagnostics I could find, all came back 100% good. At a loss...I can't fly my Firefly! (..or anything else for that matter). Let me know if I can provide information or crash reports to help.

Doug

[OBIO]

Doug

FS9 is fully compatible with Win 7 64-Bit....I am running Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I did have some issues at first, but got it resolved. UP in the FS9 subforums, there is a Tips and Tweaks forum. In there, Dangerous Dave outlines how to give FS9 full access rights. Once I did that, all crashes stopped...well still have an occasional crash when I swap from one plane to another to another to another to another...simply boggles the sim....

Tim

[Sunny9850]

I too have been running FS9 on W7 for a long time now. No issues.

The first thing I did, from memory, was to right click the start icon and then selected run as administrator.
On my particular system I also had to disable the W7 fact windows feature, don't remember what it is called, because if nothing else it had two related pop ups that came back with every start and stop.

Finally on some systems I have heard you are better off running in windowed mode rather than full screen, because it causes occasional CTDs.

Cheers
Stefan

[Tom@Cr1-Software]

Move the flight sim to your local disk, that is c'drive and run it from there. That is where you see "program files" and "X86 program files" don't put in any of those folders just in the same area or directory as those. That way it will be out side the registry domain and should run with out admin permission as well.
I have all of my programs there. Saves me a lot of windows pain.

Tom

[Sunny9850]

Ok here is a bit more detail on how I have it setup on my W7 PC

Install location is on the C drive but a second drive should work just as well. Just NOT in the default location MS wants to put it in, but I think you mentioned that you had already done that.

Once you have the desktop Icon right click it and then select Properties. Then select the Compatibility tab and you have a number of choices.
The first one is backward compatibility mode...I do not have that selected. But if all else fails on your particular setup you may want to try that.

In the same window there are 5 boxes for settings. I have check marks in Disable Visual Themes and Disable Desktop Composition.
I have tried mine with and without these and it seems to prevent the occasional CTD.

The final option is the Privilege Level. I have that set to Run As Administrator. But after turning off the W7 UAC probably that is not required.

Cheers
Stefan

[Fnerg]

Thanks guys for all of your advice. I did everything and no luck. Now I have pink horizontal lines and the aircraft in the selection window flashes. What does that indicate? Bad RAM or videocards? Here are my specs.

[Sunny9850]

Is it the same for windowed or full screen modes ??

Stefan

[Fnerg]

yes...still the same. I just replaced the power supply.

[Sunny9850]

Do you have any other GPU intensive games that you can throw at the box to see what they do ??
The funny display would point to me more towards a video card issue, but it's hard to say for sure.

Cheers
Stefan

[Ickie]

check the cooling on your video card, a bad fan will do it.
check for loose heat synks on video card I have had them go too.

get current video drivers for your windows setup

[Fnerg]

Thanks Ickie, I downloaded a little temp monitoring program RealTemp 3.70 and temps were normal. Now here's the kicker, I installed FS9 on my 32bit drive and it installed fine, outside of the programs folders, it started up and ran perfectly with some 60fps under cloudy skies. After reading up on BIOS settings, which are set to default because I don't want to go messing in there, I should probably conclude I have a failing drive. It's the one that came with this computer, which was not brand new, but much newer than the one I had. At this point it wouldn't hurt to get a new drive anyway. I had a little issue with a "click" sound and then everything froze like things stopped processing for a minute then, ugh...release and I was able to navigate again. It shouldn't be happening with a Quad core I suspect as well, so i might have found the culprit. I should go shopping now. Thanks everybody for your suggestions.

Doug

[Fnerg]

Wow, I got a 1T hard drive for $99. Bad news is, I still can't run FS9. But oh the storage space...anyway, still searching for answers.

Doug

[Sunny9850]

So the new drive is installed as the only internal drive, including the OS and the FS in a direct access folder such as C:\FS2004 ??
That should work without much fuss. What exactly is it doing now when you start up ??

Stefan

[Sunny9850]

Had one more idea this morning, actually one and a half.

1. Have you tried turning the UAC or user account control setting all the way down. FS still needs to access the fs9.cfg file which is located in one of the protected areas.
2. The final idea would be to copy the fs9.cfg from your test on the 32 bit drive and manually insert it in the 64 bit version.

The reason for suggestion two is that I did have an issue getting a backdated version of FS to create a working cfg file for that installation. I ended up copying the modern cfg and then rename it.

Cheers
Stefan

[Fnerg]

Thanks Stefan I appreciate your help. I have 2 drives installed in this rig. One is the new 1T main 64bit drive. The other drive came with this computer , has 32bit Win7 and runs my audio recording software. This is the drive which a fresh install of FS9 went on, no problems at all. The 64bit though, no luck. Even after all of the security work-arounds.
When I start FS9, I get the opening screen, then the plane select screen with the spinning aircraft. All the options are clickable and adjustments can be made, aircraft selected etc. When I'm ready to fly, I click "fly now", the airport loads, and freezes suddenly or crashes immediately with the " has stopped working" error. Sometimes the airport opens up, and the aircraft suddenly disappears below the surface and starts to slew, while in pause... then the program crashes.

Now, when I was setting full control of the program for admin rights, I noticed my user name was Doug32, or admin32, or user32. Not Doug like I had created. I don't know why, but this may be a clue. (?) I also read from Holger Sandman that win7 creates copies of files, and perhaps this is what is happening therefore FS9 can't locate the files like scenery, and other textures because it's being directed to copies in other folders instead of originals in proper folders? This might explain the crashing. I would love to know.

I'll try copying over the cfg like you suggest. Right now I've removed FS9 from the new drive so I can start fresh after reading up on all this to a point I understand what's going on, then I'll put it back on hopefully without a problem. Could somebody create an ini file to instruct win7 not to tamper/make copies/relocate fs9's files and folders? Just curious. It would help a lot of people out. There are many with unanswered questions about the same thing on micro$oft forums, in fact, completely ignored.

Doug

[Sunny9850]

It might very well be that W7 64 is somehow confused what is what and where. I never had a W7 PC with a setup like yours which has two separate OS versions on two drives. But it might indeed send it off on a wild goose chase.....no clue on that I am afraid.

Did you by any chance try the Flight1 registry repair tool after it was all set up ??? Normally that does straighten things out for me, but again may not be able to in your configuration.

Best of luck mate..

Stefan