Hi P,
thanks for the reply. The reason i dont think it's heat is that when the crash occurs, without fail it, for some reason, fires up my DVD drive. If it were heat then this correlation wouldnt be occurring- at least not every time.
I am getting 80-85 fps in most scenarios, and am working well within the range of my graphics card and the PC, as i like a smooth game, so i have texture shading off, scenery detail to minimum, no clouds and so on..to maximise the image quality of the aircraft and smoothness of gameplay when there's a gaggle of aircraft in the air.
it plays flawlessly in fact..not counting this annoying issue.
i havent installed anything recently either..just the superpatch. it didnt have any issues prior to this patch in fact.
what i may do is disconnect the DVD ROM as its an external type and see how that goes.
ill check out the FAQ also.
PS the VCard settings are all pretty low also..like 4xAA and 16xAF and pretty much everything else is minimal. I do have vsynch off also.
ill reset cfsconfig etc and run some tests...i am writing this as a result of another crash to mission screen. thats another reason why i dont think its heat, as usually that would CTD or halt my PC altogether..which it doesnt.
anywhoo, maybe i will eat humble pie and find out that it is heat....but that'd be a tough lesson for me...still, you never know.
thanks again,
tim