Just up until recently my FS9 was running fine. However lately I cannot get it to load a flight, either from the saved flights or when I press the "Fly Now!" button. The only way I can load a flight is if I load up FS9 through the "Safe Mode: option in the Start>Programs>MS Games>FS2004 menu. I believe this is using software controlled display settings and not hardware controlled, but I could be wrong. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the latest NVIDIA drivers and even tried older drivers. I have uninstalled the game and reinstalled (including the 9.1 patch). I have verified that DX9.0c is installed correctly and has no conflicts. I have not made any software or hardware changes to my PC for quite some time now, so nothing along those lines comes to mind as a culprit. The crashed happened with addons installed and with all addons uninstalled as well. My hardware specs are3GHz PentiumD2GB PC4200256MB Asus GeForce 6800 PCI-XSound Blaster X-FiXP Pro with all updatesdisplay at 1400x1050x32 @ 60hertzI have my video card set to handle all the AA, filtering. I am at my wits end here, anybody seen this before and if so, how did you fix it?Craig

Craig, Have you had a look at your event log, just out of curiousity ?

Had similar problems after i installed a plane (freeware) that comes with an installer. The installer told me that i have to restart my computer. I did so and was never able to to hit the fly now button, the whole sim crashed.After uninstalling all the crappy gauges the installer put into my gauges folder all went fine.Maybe it´s just a faulty gauge in your gauge folder.I always got the message of an unknown module producing the error.Hope this helps,Ron

have you removed your fs9.cfg file, thus forcing FS to build one new (even with an un/re-install windows may leave the old file there).in addition, are you running any FS addons or at this point just using the default flight (cessna at KSEA)?

Have you had a look at your event log, just out of curiousity ?Yes I have, I didn't see anything in there FS related. I even cleared it out and tried again and did not see anything populate it.Craig

>Had similar problems after i installed a plane (freeware)>that comes with an installer. The installer told me that i>have to restart my computer. I did so and was never able to to>hit the fly now button, the whole sim crashed.>After uninstalling all the crappy gauges the installer put>into my gauges folder all went fine.>Maybe it

>have you removed your fs9.cfg file, thus forcing FS to build>one new (even with an un/re-install windows may leave the old>file there).>>in addition, are you running any FS addons or at this point>just using the default flight (cessna at KSEA)?Yes, before going through the uninstall craziness. Yeah, every flight has been with the default Cessna at KSEA. I have never thought to try another aircraft and airport, if that is what you are going for. :) I'll give that a shot tonight when I get home from work. Speaking of work, I better get back to it before they notice.

Is there any possibility that the video card is either overheating or not getting enough power?

I have a 400w power supply and I do not think that it is suffering from lack of power or overheating. At idle, my GPU is around 60C and after exiting Battlefield2, which runs without a problem, the GPU is up in the 90C area. I uninstalled and installed again a few nights ago and did a test flight and it was OK. Then I installed the FS9.1 update and it crashed after that. I uninstalled and am installing again. I downloaded the patch again, maybe the copy that I downloaded several years ago is corrupt? Might not make any difference, but it is worth a shot.

Have you got this file either in your main FS9 directory or in Modules, oleacc.dll? Try deleting it. It's something to do with Win98 accessability apparently but can screw things up.John

Thanks for that but it didn't help any. At this point I am ready to give up, I have had enough of the uninstall/reinstall, various graphics settings in FS9 and on my video card. I can run the game in FS Safe Mode, but why run it like that? Guess I'll have to upgrade to FSX, which I really did not want to do.

Do you (did you) have FSUIC installed? An older version might have been swapped in by an application and left during your uninstall-reinstall process. The last few versions accommodate the 9.1 patch but earlier ones could crash FS.In addition, go into FS9.cfg and in the display settings try reversing the value of render to texture.Just a couple of thoughts.

Ok, I could not give up, it is the techie in me that will not let me give up. I think it has something to do with my display settings in FS2004 and with the settings on my video card.I have an Asus Extreme N6800 PCI-X card with 256MB RAM and I have the following settings:Anisotropic filtering: 4xAnisotropic mip filter optimization: OnAnisotropic sample optimization: OnAntialiasing settings: 4xConformant texture clamp: Use hardwareExtension limit: OffForce mipmaps: TrilinearHardware acceleration: Multiple display performance mode (since I only have 1 monitor, should this be at single display?)Negative LOD bias: ClampTexture filtering: QualityTransparency antialiasing: SupersamplingTrilinear optimization: OnTriple buffering: OnVerticle sync: Use the 3D application settingAnd in FS2004 I have the following display/hardware settings:Device Name: GeForce 6800.0Target Frame Rate: 20Resolution: 1400x1050x32Render to texture: checkedTransform and lighting: checkedAnti-Aliasing: not checkedFiltering: NoneMip mapping quality: 4hardware rendered lights: 6Global max texture size: MassiveAnybody have a similar card and/or know what the proper settings should be on my card and in FS?

I've got a 7600GT card and have similar settings to yours in FS2004, although I do have filtering checked (trilinear).If you are debugging, why not go with the default card settings first and see if you can make it work?1024x768 resolution and minimal special settings in the Nvidia properties. Just 4XAA and 4XAF should be enough.

FWIW:I have had problems with specific AA settings in the NVidia 6800GT I have cause crashes. I have AA and AF at 4x. I am still using the old 71.84 drivers. VS is application controlled.As suggested below try a standard card and FS matching resolution and a refresh rate that can accommodate your monitor.Here is my FS9.cfg display related settings:Mode=1024x768x32RenderToTexture=0//PanelAsTexture=0TriLinear=1MipBias=5Tablefog=0UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=20TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400TextureMaxLoad=10