Reverse Alzheimer's effect

[emfrat]

Hi All -
Down here it is Fathers' Day. Entering into the spirit of the thing, and knowing the Toys-for-Granpa Fund was looking healthy, I invested in an extra GB of RAM.
Installed the cards, Big Beast (The Flying Machine) recognised the increased memory, but now when I try to fly, after about five minutes I get a black screen crash and MSFS has to phone home.
The problem seems to be with visualfx.dll, but the only change I have made to my system is adding the memory sticks.

I tried deactivating fs9.cfg to force it to build another, to no avail.

Has anyone else struck this, or can offer any advice?

MikeW (aka poor Granpa , broken his best toy)

[JasonK..AKA "Pal Joey."]

Heya Mike,
you can always try re-installing the visual fx.dll from the install disc's...may help...

Happy Fathers/ Granpa's day!

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

Sounds like either the memory is incompatible with your current memory (try removing it and see if that cures it) or you are getting overheating (try increasing your cooling).

But it could be other things too...

[ashaman]

Sept 6, 2009 9:53:51 GMT -5 Tom/CalClassic said:

But it could be other things too...

...like some memory address of that add-on stick being damaged. Try asking for a exchange with a another similar memory stick.

[emfrat]

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I will look at it again tonight when I get home from work. At the moment compatability is the chief suspect, even tho' both pairs of sticks have the same spec, albeit from different makers. The machine is reporting the correct amount of memory. I don't know if it would do that if some addresses were inaccessible.

Cheers
MikeW

[emfrat]

Well, the drive home on Monday was IFR all the way, except when the lightning provided a few seconds of VMC, so I didn't really feel like getting into any tech testing.
Anyhow, the original setup was this:
Slot1 - e1; Slot2 - empty; Slot3 - e2; Slot4 - empty.

When I added the two new sticks this gave:
Slot1 - e1; Slot2 - c1; Slot3 - e2; Slot4 - c2.
The machine reported the full amount of RAM (2097MB , dual channel ) but I was getting black screen crashes after a few minutes' flying.

So this morning I tried:
Slot1 - c1; Slot2 - e1; Slot3 - c2; Slot4 - e2.
The machine reported 1572MB. I missed seeing if it was dual or single channel, but I flew from EGGD to EGLC with no probs.

Next I tried:
Slot1 - c2; Slot2 - e1; Slot3 - c1; Slot4 - e2.
This reported 1572MB again, at single channel, so I didn't go any further.

Then I tried:
Slot1 - e2; Slot2 - c1; Slot3 - e1; Slot4 - c2.
That reported 2097MB, dual channel. Fired up the Eric Dantes Twin Bonanza again, and repeated the earlier flight, again with no probs.

So I really don't know. I can only assume that despite carefully aligning each stick, firmly pressing it home until the locks engaged, then checking the locks were fully home, somehow one of the sticks was still improperly seated, and that that happened twice, which statistically is unlikely, to say the least.

But Granpa's best toy is working again, better than ever, so all's well with the world ;D

Cheers, and thanks for the help.
MikeW

[Tom/CalClassic]

Glad to hear it. Over 80% of the time my computer problems have been due to bad connections.