All set up for a few legs in the 748, with FsScreen on and the intention of doing some screenies. Flew Leuchars to Reykjavik last night, and just completed a mammoth (for the 748) Reykjavic - Gander. Amazingly I had 13% in the tanks on approach to R04, where I was flying a manual approach, using the lights, and at the threshold the HDD started whirring away and FS locked up, eventually taking a good two minutes to shut via task manager. :@ :@ :@ :@
Baaah!!!!
My C drive has very little on it (about 75% free) - but I ran a defrag the other day as it was all to pot - and FS seems to be doing this since that time... :roll: :fart:
Oh dear! My guess and it is just that - a guess, is that some of your scenery files are missing, or more likely corrupt. If you had a backup of your C drive then restore from that. If like 90% of us, you did not you will need to try to isolate the problem. Have you run a disk check on your C drive? That is the first thing I would try.
Does it appear always when your landing? Does it happen in every part of the world? Is it custom scenery? Does it occur with all aircraft? If you begin to see a pattern, then you may be able to find what files are causing the problem. Not familiar with FSScreen but have you tried without that running. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack but with a lot of patience you just might solve the problem. You may need to format the drive and reinstall everything, but only do that as a LAST resort, because it's a pain in the a**e and a lot of time to do that.
Anyway keep us posted and maybe someone with a lot more knowledge than I have can add something to the dialogue.
Doubt it's scenery, Gander is just default. Best I can describe is that textures seem to take an age to load. In the 748, if I switch to outside view, it'll remain grey for a bit while the machine catches up.
I;ve maybe had three lockups since I recently did a HDD format - but- for some reason it seems slower. Conversely, and this is starnge, I never seem to have any problems around Glacier Bay - which is very intensive on the system (it actually runs rather nicely) - it seems to happen in default-land.....
Well, it may not be a scenary problem at all, but on the other hand it could be a problem with default scenery. I have Glacier Bay also and it replaces a lot of files for landclass, scenery and texture used in the default scenery so that might explain why that runs ok. Have a look in the FSAddon\Glacier Bay\Alaska Glacier Bay scenery folder and you will see what I mean.
A lot of guessing here as I said in the original post, but maybe something will come to light.
:think:
Cheers Nige. Something I forgot to add - this has happened after using 16x compression - so may be a factor. Before I did the Iceland trip from EGQL, I'd been checking what kind of range I could get at about 80% throttle at FL200, and a couple of flights were made due North before heading down to practice approaches in Iceland - that was OK - and the first leg was fine (even with compression). Last night was 1300 odd miles, in the dark, but may have been to do with having been at high compression.....
The only other lock up (as opposed to FS taking an age to shut down) was when I was circuiting Coningsby, and the machine locked as I turned downwind for the umpteenth time.
I'm flying slower Aircraft at the moment, I think I'll have a trip or twon in a '10 to see in anything changes - perhaps the lower and slower is a little more taxing on my PC
I have never flown faster than 4x and I rarely do that. On long flights over oceans, I just put it on autopilot on go about doing other things. I imagine 16x puts quite a strain on the system but if you have been doing that all along, it doesn't really explain the problem that has just recently surfaced.
I don't know your system specs but one little utility I have found very useful is FSAutoStart, which you can configure to defrag memory and shut down unneeded applications and services such as Windows Live Messenger - that alone frees up around 171K of memory and you neeed all the memory possible to run FS smoothly.
I've not actually had an error code, as when it has hung, I need to use Task manager to shut it down. Since I did my recent format and reinstall, it's been running absolutely perfectly, except for some reason or other (at times) goes very slowly - more than it used to.
I've no messenger programs running, windows live stuff is all disabled. There is a possiblity time compression is to blame, as I have been using it more recently.
An example of slow loading - at UkMil's bases (especially Leuchars) theres' a very slight delay in loading some textures (not surprising) - but for some reason, at Reykjavic (default) the machine starts munching away and it can take up to 15 seconds for the textures to appear on the 748 if I switch to outside view.
I may try another defrag tonight - but it seems to tie in with last weeks' defrag that I'm noticing more oddities.
The answer is don't fly x16 time! I don't use any time compression at all because I like to Simulate Flight and not play games. I would bet that if you repeat the flight at normal time you would have no problems. If you really MUST compress time then only x4 and come back to x1 well before your destination.
I think I'll need to set shorter flights. I've just completed Vancouver - PAMA leg of the flightplan Ive made - at 4x compression, although I dropped to normal at
miles out, and eventually got a straight in clearance to 31.
On shutting FS9, the HDD went bananas again. I think I'll need to base myself more 'locally' so I don't need to use time compression....
