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Beerthirty

Drop to Desktop

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Hello, All

 

I am a new member to OFF and hope to be flying with you all soon.

 

My problem is that OFF drops me to the desk top while playing, for no apparent reason and no specific cause that I can detect. CFS3 did the same thing. At times I can remain in the sim for lengthy time periods. I have the latest updates installed. Sometimes the DTD occurs while using the keys.

I am running Vista Home Premium Edition with a Nvidia 8800 GT card and a 3.00 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core proccessor

Does any one have any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

 

Salute!

Beerthirty

Edited by Beerthirty

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Hello, All

 

I am a new member to OFF and hope to be flying with you all soon.

 

My problem is that OFF drops me to the desk top while playing, for no apparent reason and no specific cause that I can detect. CFS3 did the same thing. At times I can remain in the sim for lengthy time periods. I have the latest updates installed. Sometimes the DTD occurs while using the keys.

I am running Vista Home Premium Edition with a Nvidia 8800 GT card and a 3.00 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core proccessor

Does any one have any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

 

Salute!

Beerthirty

 

You sir, are probably having the same problem I am having. I have an 8800 GTS and also have an Athlon X2 Dual Core 3.0 Ghz. For me it drops me randomly, but not to desktop, to the OFF manager screen. Might be something along the same lines. Might it be time for a new graphics card? Its hard to say yes, because the card is actually pretty darn new, but maybe we are on to something here?

 

P.S. Ah! just noticed you said when you use the keys as well. I have had it happen on no fewer than 3 occasions while I hit the "M" key for map. At least I am not the only one with this problem :P

Edited by Schlissefahrt

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Hey guys, I just got BH&H in the mail today, and had the same problem,

 

AMD Athlon X2 6000+, 9600GT, 4GB RAM, and Vista Ultimate

 

Ever since I have set the affinity to use CPU0 only, I haven't had any more problems. I hope this helps you guys out too.

Edited by Bigstank

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Hey guys, I just got BH&H in the mail today, and had the same problem,

 

AMD Athlon X2 6000+, 9600GT, 4GB RAM, and Vista Ultimate

 

Ever since I have set the affinity to use CPU0 only, I haven't had any more problems. I hope this helps you guys out too.

 

Alright, so as much as I like to think I am pretty computer savvy, what do you mean by affinity and CPU0 only? :) Thanks for the help Bigstank. Also, how many missions have you done without having the problem after your "fix"?

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I've done around 15 missions in campaign, Open Task Manager, click on processes, right click on "CFS3.EXE", set affinity, uncheck CPU 1

 

The real annoyance is you have to keep repeating this process every single time before you fly, because it resets the affinity.

 

I'm guessing there is a performance loss since you are only using one core but it's better than not being able to fly at all.

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I've done around 15 missions in campaign, Open Task Manager, click on processes, right click on "CFS3.EXE", set affinity, uncheck CPU 1

 

The real annoyance is you have to keep repeating this process every single time before you fly, because it resets the affinity.

 

I'm guessing there is a performance loss since you are only using one core but it's better than not being able to fly at all.

 

OK! Bigstank. Now please tell me where I find the Task Manager?

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Ctrl+Alt+Delete

 

Ha! Well, at least I know I'm not the only newb out there :) I've had success so far with just lowering my graphics settings, but if I get the problem again I'll try your idea out stank. I seem to remember the devs said the game ran better with single core cpus, or something like that anyway, so your idea makes some sense :)

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You're welcome, and thanks for posting that util, it can automatically change the affinity each time you start flying, no more Alt tabbing, :biggrin:

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You're welcome, and thanks for posting that util, it can automatically change the affinity each time you start flying, no more Alt tabbing, :biggrin:

 

 

Can you tell us if that helped the situation? If so, I'd like to add that link for the tool to a sticky and possibly the Knowledge base.

 

Thanks,

 

OvS

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Good idea James re knowledge base

 

BTW I did add something to the FAQ too the other day regarding this. Let us know re the koma tool if it works well I'll add that link too.

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It works great as long as you add CFS3.EXE to a profile (Right click CFS3.EXE ->Add to selected CPU profil -> 1 CPU -> 1) I checked task manager to make sure it worked every single time, and it has. And so far I have been flying with no problems.

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S! All,

OK. please forgive me for asking stupid questions. I now know where my Task Manager is, thanks to Big stank.

I tried to follow your procedure. First of all the cfs3.exec file wasn't listed in processes.

Secondly, I went to both the OFF folder and the CFS3 Folder to look for it. I did not see cfs3.exec

I did see a file named cfs3, however, but when I right clicked it had no "add to CPU profile".

So, now, I would like if you pointed me to the cfs3.exec file.

 

Also, Schlissefart, how low did you go with your graphics settings?

 

You all have to forgive me. I am a Red Baron player of some 10 years. Never had an addon game to contend with such as CFS and OFF. And never had this many problems with a sim.

 

Thanks again, all.

Beerthirty

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Ah, I should have added this, CFS3.EXE shows up only while it is being played, in this case it pops up when you hear the "Contact, clear *Engine starting*" message. Alt-Tab to the CPU control tool (the one messaround posted) once you hear this and follow the above CPU Profile steps and it should work just fine.

 

Hope you'll excuse my skills at this I have never been a good explainer.

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S! All,

OK. please forgive me for asking stupid questions. I now know where my Task Manager is, thanks to Big stank.

I tried to follow your procedure. First of all the cfs3.exec file wasn't listed in processes.

Secondly, I went to both the OFF folder and the CFS3 Folder to look for it. I did not see cfs3.exec

I did see a file named cfs3, however, but when I right clicked it had no "add to CPU profile".

So, now, I would like if you pointed me to the cfs3.exec file.

 

Also, Schlissefart, how low did you go with your graphics settings?

 

You all have to forgive me. I am a Red Baron player of some 10 years. Never had an addon game to contend with such as CFS and OFF. And never had this many problems with a sim.

 

Thanks again, all.

Beerthirty

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "how long did I go," but if you mean in a single mission or on an extended run of the game, I could probably do 2-3 missions before it happened for me. Figured I'd take breaks between flights now.

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I'm not quite sure what you mean by "how long did I go,"

 

What I wrote was: "How low did you go"

 

 

And Bigstank. I did the Alt/Tab in game (Clear/Contact) and got nothing. Still need to find cfs3.exec file.

Geez! This is like walking in quick sand. :)

 

Beerthirty

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Beerthirty, you don't need to bother with Alt/tab and cfs3.exe, I believe. All you have to do is set CPU Contol in Automatic mode right before you start OFF. The program will do the rest. To do that just right-click on CPU-Contol icon(buttom right corner of your screen)then go to MODE, then Automatic.

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What I wrote was: "How low did you go"

 

 

And Bigstank. I did the Alt/Tab in game (Clear/Contact) and got nothing. Still need to find cfs3.exec file.

Geez! This is like walking in quick sand. :)

 

Beerthirty

 

/facepalm

 

Sorry Beerthirty, I read your post way too fast, I went down to 3 on both scenery and terrain, but everything else is 4. Hope that helps!

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Using the previously posted utility and setting it to "automatic", as well as going into the task manager and setting affinity to CPU1 only, the game still crashes to desktop (actually, back to the OFF frontend) when I hit the "M" key to bring up the map.

 

Sometimes the map works, sometimes it doesn't. If I go back in to re-fly the same mission (the mission the front end gives me after a crash is always the same one), I crash every time I try to use the map.

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Using the previously posted utility and setting it to "automatic", as well as going into the task manager and setting affinity to CPU1 only, the game still crashes to desktop (actually, back to the OFF frontend) when I hit the "M" key to bring up the map.

 

Sometimes the map works, sometimes it doesn't. If I go back in to re-fly the same mission (the mission the front end gives me after a crash is always the same one), I crash every time I try to use the map.

 

Interesting. You know, maybe I just didn't realize that after all of the tweaks I have not flown a scramble mission. Every time I hit the M key on those missions it dropped me too, but not since I used the utility. I guess once I get a scramble mission Ill see what happens.

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Sorry, this actually happened to me in a "search and destroy" mission as well. It seems to happen randomly.

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Sorry, this actually happened to me in a "search and destroy" mission as well. It seems to happen randomly.

 

Yeah. It happened to me randomly as well, but it seemed to work like clockwork with the scramble missions. 3 out of 3 scrambles resulted in a drop when M was hit. Out of curiosity, what are your system specs?

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Hmmm I just had a scramble mission, chased an EIII a little ways out bagged him, pressed M to see where I was and bam drop to manager, so you guys aren't alone with the Scramble Map Drop. Just wanted to throw out that it did it to me with the fixes too, I tried the mission 4 times, pressed M 3 of those times to make sure it wasn't a 1 time ordeal. And it dropped back all 3 times and went fine the 4th. And flynn what kind of CPU do you have?

 

EDIT: Got beat to the specs question.

Edited by Bigstank

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P4 3.4ghz multithread

GeForce 8800GT

WinXP SP2

2 gigs ram

TrackIR Pro

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