OFF/CFS3 Locking Up

[prattrat 0]

I am having a major problem with OFF and CFS3 locking up. This is, for all practical purposes, keeping me permanently grounded, so I am hoping you might have some ideas. After flying in either simulation anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, the simulation will abruptly freeze solid. There is a rapid staccato noise, basically a loud buzz, coming from the speaker. Nothing will unlock the machine. I can't access the desktop, Ctrl+Alt+Del will not bring up the Windows manager or shut down the machine, and the only recourse is to hard boot the machine by shutting off the power. The problem occurs in both OFF and CFS3 but, as far as I can tell, does not occur in any of my other flight simulations. I was able to fly FS9 for about 45 minutes the other night with no problems, and I have even been able, amazingly, to fly FSX without issue. I have checked two sources (Dell and Creative) and both tell me that the sound card drivers are up to date. I'm running the latest NVidia driver (problem has persisted through the last several driver iterations). I thought it might have something to do with my buying a 24" wide Samsung monitor about 3 months ago and thereby overtaxing the video card, but the card specs say it supports this monitor resolution, and my daughter just pointed out to me that one of her 3D horseriding games does exactly the same thing, sound and all, and has been doing so since well before I purchased the monitor. It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly when I began having the problem. I USED to be able to run both sims on this rig with no problems about a year ago. I did rebuild the hard drive at the beginning of the year, but everything else seems to be running OK. All OFF/CFS3 patches are up to date and, as far as I know, installed correctly.

 

My system specs are as follows:

 

Dell Dimension 4600

Intel Pentium IV 2.66 GHz single core processor, 2662 MHz clock frequency

4GB RAM 400 MHz DDR (2 sticks Dell, 2 new sticks Kingston)

NVidia GEForce 6600 (256 MB RAM) AGP; driver 185.85 dated 4/30/09

250 GB 7200 RPM Western Digital IDE-ATA hard drive

Creative SoundBlaster Live! audio card; driver 5.12.1.203 dated 9/22/03

350w Dynex power supply

Samsung SynchMaster 2443BWX 24" flat panel monitor running @ 1920 x 1200

Windows XP Home SP3

Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 (disabled before flying)

[sitting_duck 3]

I agree with uncleal

 

(omg,,,did i just say that??)

 

and as long as you have the covers off,,make sure all your fans a spinning constanly,,,no slowing down for a sec,,then catching back up again.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

My system specs are as follows:

...

4GB RAM 400 MHz DDR (2 sticks Dell, 2 new sticks Kingston)

...

350w Dynex power supply

I suspect your memory sticks are not playing nice with each other. Remove the pair of new or old sticks, rinse and repeat, and see if that solves the problem. If not, then my next suspect is your power supply not being strong enough.

 

There is a multi-page thread started by Fortiesboy on this issue. I believe that he solved his problem by purchasing a new video card, but there are lots of other suggestions contained in that thread you might try.

[Capt. Winters 0]

Hi Guys,

 

I had that exact same problem last year and it turned out to be the fan on the northbridge chipset was only spinning at about half the required pace (dirty). unfortunately by the time I had worked that out the chip was damaged beyond repair and a new MB was required.

 

regards Rob.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Sorry, the thread I mentioned was started by phantomjoker.