SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:57 pm Post subject: Freezing screen

FS2002 I have been running the program on this PC for 2 years with no problems. All of a sudden after a few minutes the screen freezes. Control+Alt+Del does not work and I have to reboot. I have 4 FSim programs FS2002 + Strike Fighters Project 1 both freeze, FS Combat and IL2 which both need a disc run fine. I am using XP Pro, have a minimum 556 Meg of free RAM and Virtual has been set to 300Meg. AMD Athlon XP2800+ 2.09Gh, 1 Gb of RAM, Radeon 9200 Series graphics card. I have not added any programs to the PC

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 2:40 pm Post subject:

Any new drivers, hardware? Update anything?

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 2:48 pm Post subject:

No, nothing, thats what puzzles me, at first I thought is it the graphics card but other progs work fine. I have even done a restore to earlier date to see if that helped but nada, nothing, and thanks for coming back to me so quickly

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:11 pm Post subject:

Very strange. Any error messages? Why would you be suspicious about the GPU?

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:20 pm Post subject:

No no error messages just a lockup. The GPU was just a passing thought. Everything else works fine so thats out.

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:23 pm Post subject:

The air temperature is 38ºC and the disc is running at 42ºC but I don't think thats of any connection.

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 7:59 pm Post subject:

Download 3DMark 03 and do a benchmark. If the same problem occurs, this means your computer cannot handle strain, therefore causing the screen freeze. If not, it may be just the program. Back up all addons and do a reinstall.

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 8:01 pm Post subject:

Thanks

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 9:51 pm Post subject: sounds like...

Sounds like you are running out of disk space on your system drive. How do you have your hard drive laid out? Is it partitioned? Have you defragged and cleaned your drive lately? Also, dont forget that sound devices and sound drivers can cause FS freeze up as well.

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:25 pm Post subject:

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 12:33 am Post subject:

Dang. Forgot about those. Temperature is sometimes a culprit in graphics-intensive situations.

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:35 am Post subject:

HD is 140Gig partioned approx 50/50, only 50% used in each partion. No overheat problems. Defragged monthly, and cleaned monthly, downloaded 3D MARK 3 and that froze. Audio settings seem ok Realtek AC97, PC by the way is 2/3 years old.

My thanks to all you guys for giving you time to an old greybeard

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:51 am Post subject:

maybe it is the overheating? maybe a fan in there stopped working?
those temps seem alright, but double check. who knows.

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:53 am Post subject: it would be interesting...

It would be interesting to have the system manager up when the freeze occurs. While she's still running, hit ctrl-alt-del once, then select the "performance" tab and keep an eye on the memory and processor usage. This could just be a bad stick of memory or a dust short somewhere inside the case. When was the last time you did a good long power down, degauss and dust removal?

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:24 pm Post subject:

Have now run 3D MARK 03 three times and it freezes at the CPU test after 26.83 seconds, does this suggest cpu is failing? I cannot bring up system management as contril+alt+del does not work, I have to reboot. Don´t understand a good long pwerdown, PC is switched off for on average 8 - 10 hours a day, never degaussed, don´t know how to go about it, once a year I give the PC a good dust removal, Spain is hot and dusty ! The only heat monitorign I have is on the HD and that is within limits