Simulator fade and return

[cramtune 0]

As a total newcomer to Mutleys Hangar I first of all apologise if I am raising a subject that been dealt with ad nausium in the past.

My problem is this. I have been using FSX on Windows 7 for several years, but now the situation has arisen where after about half an hour of running,,the screen fades and

tells me that "FSX can't communicate" [or something like that]. After 5 or 10 minutes the screen returns to normal and I can continue. However, after a further 10 minutes it

repeats this problem.

My performance base is 5.9. This arises from Processor and Ram being 7.9, Graphic and Gaming Graphic being 7.6, but Hard Drive only 5.9.

Local Disc [c] has 773 Gb available from 931 Gb. Ram is 8 Gb

My Graphics card is Geforce GTX 660 and the operating system is 64-bit.

I don't think that I am overloading my system {but being honest I wouldn't know!]. I have things like Traffic set at about 30%. I don't know if anything is running at the same time,

I can't see anything, but do not know how to confirm this [not a computer buff!]

I would be most grateful if somebody could advise me, in simple terms, what the problem is and how I can correct it.

[Andrew Godden 943]

Alf,

 

To be honest, the information you provide is insufficient to try and identify the problem. I can't even be sure I have even heard of such a problem being attributed to FSX. The information about the PC's Performance Base is irrelevant in this instance.

 

The sort of additional information necessary to try and understand what might be causing this anomaly includes, what additional add-ons have you installed, scenery, aircraft, etc; have you installed or done anything to the FSX installation prior to this anomaly appearing; have you made any manual adjustments to your FSX.cfg file; what is the exact wording of the message. You state that this happens after about 30 mins, 30 mins of doing what, I can only assume flying, but I never assume. In which case, is it specific to a geographic area or wherever you fly?

 

Clutching at possible sources of the problem at this stage, it could be a CPU related problem. Is the CPU overheating? When was the last time you gave the internal case and fans a thorough cleaning? Do you run regular maintenance tasks, such as disk cleanup, defrag, etc.?

 

So, at this stage, we have more questions than answers, but these are the sorts of details we need to try and analyse the problem.

 

Cheers

Andrew

[Quickmarch 488]

4 hours ago, cramtune said:

I don't think that I am overloading my system {but being honest I wouldn't know!]. I have things like Traffic set at about 30%. I don't know if anything is running at the same time,

 

You can start by hitting CNTL-ALT-DELETE (all at the same time). This will bring up a screen menu with "Open Task Manager" as one of the choices. Select that, then look across the top of the screen that opens up. There is a tab labelled "Performance". The graphics will show "CPU Usage". The number of windows under the heading "CPU History" will tell you (or us) a bit about the processor you have. Note: you must have the radio button under the heading "View-CPU History-One Graph per CPU" clicked on. 

 

Under that is a series of graphs showing memory and memory usage history. There should also be a box that summarizes physical memory.

 

The click-box below that "Resource Manager" has a host of esoteric information available.

 

There is an awful lot more under the other tabs - way too much for us to deal with here - but an excellent starting place to try to understand what is going on. Just don't mess with anything util you have a thorough understanding of what you're doing.

 

All of this stuff is dealt with ad-nauseum on the internet. Keep you busy for hours

[allardjd 1,853]

Welcome to MH.  Hopefully someone here can help.  It might be useful if you can post the message that appears ( a screenshot would be fine) so we can see the exact wording; that may or may not be helpful.

 

It might be worthwhile to download a freeware system monitor called "Speccy" and run it in the background while using FSX.  I have the idea that something may be getting too hot - CPU, for instance, as Andrew suggests - and downshifting to protect itself.  Speccy will show you the temperature of various items.  Andrews suggestion of a good internal cleaning of your computer is also good advice.  It never hurts and might help.

 

Speccy is available from here...

 

http://download.cnet.com/Speccy/3000-2094_4-75181811.html

 

I should probably take this opportunity to thank Mutley, who is the one who put me onto Speccy some time ago.

 

John

[brett 2,315]

Could it be as simple as you are using the in-sim real world weather, it is spotty at best and when it disconnects you will get a warning. I just don't remember if it fades the screen, it's been a long time since I have used it.

 

Welcome to the forums here Alf, I hope together we can figure out your problem. 

[cramtune 0]

Thank you to the folks who have responded to my enquiry.

I was flying an A320 from Birmingham to Frankfurt and the problem occurred over Belgium. The weather was set at the default setting.

I have cleaned out the case, though it was already in good condition.

Another flight has been carried out with the following result :-

A320 from Chicago Midway to Minneapolis, with the sides of the case not fitted.

After 40 minutes of flying, the picture on the main monitor faded [ but not completely] and everything froze. Incidentally, the second monitor showing

ATC and Sat Nav froze but at no time did it fade. The notice on the main monitor said "Microsoft flight simulator X [not responding]"

After 8 minutes the flight became operational again for 12 minutes before freezing again. 10 minutes later it continued and I landed at KMSP

after a further 20 minutes.

Regarding the comments of Quickmarch, I finished up looking at four boxed graphs in line. The first one had 25% to the left of it, and the trace seemed to

confirm this. The second and fourth graphs were fairly active and went from top to bottom of the scale, and the third ranged up to 75% of height.

Beneath all this the Physical Memory flat-lined at 2.02 Gb.

The Physical Memory table read as follows :- Total[Mb]--- 8150,  Cached--- 3908,  Available--- 6031,  Free--- 2266.

I hope that this is of use.

Thanks again

Alf

 

 

 

 

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Your perseverance and patience with a non responsive FSX continues to amaze and impress me...waiting that long for FSX to start working again would cause my hair to gray prematurely I don't got the patience.

 

I use Task Manager Performance Tab to monitor my memory/VAS available...and if I ever get below 8,000 free between flights I reboot my machine and start it all up again...although I have landed with less than 4,000 albeit a bit frame-rate and texture sucky at that point. When my machine hits the 2,000ish range I am getting Out of Memory alert noises coming from my machine and I have to duck my view below my dash to avoid the external view task load on the machine crashing me before I can land (thank you GPS units with Terrain!!!)...sometimes I am too far out and just have to gnash teeth, reboot, and try again with less weather or reduced settings...not sure what program is responsible for those OOM bongs, but I am ever grateful that my machine does that, since I am often Autopiloting while binge Netflixing on my Pad.

When I start up my machine, I have aprox 13,000+ Free Physical Memory per Task Manager...I always try to start a flight with a fresh booted machine. I fly with ASN/RexTextures/AirHauler/TrackIR all running at the same time, and can get up to 4 or 5 150 mile flights out of one Boot Session...just as a comparison for your machine memory/addon load.

I will reboot my machine even if I just browse the internet for awhile before Flight Simming...I am already down to 11,500 Free after a short session on Mutleys, probably thanks to viewing one of Dodgy Alan's screen shot posts...hahahah

Edited October 28, 2016 by Captain Coffee