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FS9 Becomes Unresponsive When Changing Aircraft

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Joecoastie
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FS9 Becomes Unresponsive When Changing Aircraft

Post by Joecoastie »

This has been going on for a few months and I am finally getting irritated enough to do something about it.

When selecting change aircraft from the drop down menu the display clears and is left with the blue topmost bar showing "Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century of Flight" and the next bar down shows the choices "Flights Aircraft World Options etc . . . . . . .". After 15 0r 20 seconds the bars change to gray and flight simulator becomes unresponsive. No amount of mouse clicking or keyboard pounding has any effect. You have to open Task Manager and "End Task" to gain control of the PC. Oh and very occasionally FS will open up the select aircraft window.

I've "hangared" my AC, checked config files, have even changed all my AI back and forth from non-selectable to selectable. Nada.

This only happens after you are in FS and have been flying for a bit. On initial start up you can select any aircraft with no problem. All of the AC in my aircraft folder show up to select.

I have searched the forums for any problems similar and haven't found anything relevant. Does someone have any advice ?

I've posted this on Avsim also . . .

Joe

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Service to my Country 9/61 - 2/03
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MIKE JG
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Re: FS9 Becomes Unresponsive When Changing Aircraft

Post by MIKE JG »

You could try deleting your FS9.cfg file and let the game rebuild it from scratch the next time you boot. You lose all of your customized settings but those are easily fixed.

Save a copy of it obviously before you attempt this.
-Mike G.

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Firebird
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Re: FS9 Becomes Unresponsive When Changing Aircraft

Post by Firebird »

You seem to have covered the obvious stuff here and to me the interesting thing is that you say it works fine on initial loadup but happens after flying for a while.

I am going to take a wild guess here but maybe its something to do with your vmem setting. Your virtual memory will get used up with scenery being swapped out and maybe the hold up is that.

How much real memory do you have and how much virtual memory do you have set up for your swap file?
Steve
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Joecoastie
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Re: FS9 Becomes Unresponsive When Changing Aircraft

Post by Joecoastie »

I have a very old system: XP w/ serv. pack 3. P4 2GHz with 1G memory. GE Force 6200 graphics card w/ 256M . . . as for the virtual mem I don't know. I believe it's set up so the computer/system manages it. :oops:
Service to my Country 9/61 - 2/03
US Navy - HS-3, VX-1, HS-7 (USS Intrepid, USS Wasp, USS Yorktown)
Va National Guard - 229th Cbt Avn Co
US Coast Guard - E City CGAS, CGC Morro Bay, RTC Yorktown
NOAA - Co-op Observer 1983 - present
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Firebird
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Re: FS9 Becomes Unresponsive When Changing Aircraft

Post by Firebird »

I believe that with 1 GB of memory that the system will default to 1.5GB of vmem. The ideal is 1.5 times your actual memory.
It maybe worth trying to alter your vmem although from your answer it sounds like you're not sure on how to do that. One way to automatically do that would be to upgrade to 2GB. It should be quite cheap to do that and you would notice quite a kick in speed generally.
I believe it to be the case that only 1GB does use a lot of vmem paging in and out and that does slow things down a lot, which would account for what you describe.
Steve
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Joecoastie
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Re: FS9 Becomes Unresponsive When Changing Aircraft

Post by Joecoastie »

I would surely get additional memory, however, as I said my computer is very old. It is maxed out on the amount of memory it can hold at 1 G.
Looks like I am slowly being forced to pony up for a new rig.
First I have to get through my daughter's wedding :smt100
Service to my Country 9/61 - 2/03
US Navy - HS-3, VX-1, HS-7 (USS Intrepid, USS Wasp, USS Yorktown)
Va National Guard - 229th Cbt Avn Co
US Coast Guard - E City CGAS, CGC Morro Bay, RTC Yorktown
NOAA - Co-op Observer 1983 - present
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