CTD on exiting KSEA after install of dll files

[Chris_CYWG]

Hi,

I was having several CTDs when simply exiting the sim. I could fire up the sim, goto the default KSEA with the 172, allow the plane to sit on the runway for 10 seconds, hit the close button, and I would get a gauranteed CTD involving nt.dll atc.dll weather.dll etc..

I thought at first it might be my sound card as I am running a Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1 with non WHQL XP drivers.. not being able to cleaning strip the drivers out, and up for some experimenting today, I reformatted my HDs and did a fresh XP install with no soundcard installed. I proceeded to add all the ASUS P4S533 drivers, the XP service packs, DX9b, and the Radeon 4.1 drivers, then installed COF. I set my display settings up, loaded up the normal default setting at KSEA described earlier, let it sit 10 seconds, closed out, and got a clean exit. I tried this several times proving to myself it worked. I then added in the fsuipc and pfc dll files, got a message from pfc.dll that I needed to select my com port. I went to the defualt setting, closed out, and bang CTD. I loaded up the sim again went to the default setting, selected my com port, exited the sim, and bang another CTD. Reloaded went to the defualt, closed out , exits clean. Reload, back to defualt, call up the menu to alter my aircraft settings, close out , CTD. Come back into the sim, go back and realter my ac setting as the CTD has not allowed them to save, exit out, its OK... go back in, call up PFC.dll to alter some of my buttons, exit out CTD.

Now the trend I am seeing is this: If I access a menu, or the dll dialog box to alter anything, it seems to be wanting to write something (some kind of new config setting) but for some reason when I exit out after accessing, I get a CTD..

This now seemed to be a break in trend, which has stopped all together after the original install of the dll files... I have added in my yoke commands with no CTD on exit at all.

Thanks,

Chris

[Pete Dowson]

I was having several CTDs when simply exiting the sim.

FS crashing on exit has been a regular problem throughout FS98, FS2000, FS2002 and, less often as far as I know, FS2004. I don't know which FS you are using, but my normal advice is not to worry so much about this.

It appears to be related to the order in which the modules are loaded -- not just mine, but all the modules. They are loaded in the order that they are listed in the disk directory blocks, on disk (NOT in the order you see in Windows explorer). Each time you change one or more modules the order probably changes, so you get different results.

After many experiments with past versions of FS I discovered that some modules close down before others which may be calling them still, or have references to data which they own and release.

Quite honestly, after many hours spent trying to track down these things I identified so many ways it could happen, all of them probably infrequent but possibly consistent with specific ordering or memory setups, that I gave up all hope of ever fixing it for good.

At least it does no harm. If you are exiting you wanted FS to close in any case. And it seems very very rare in FS2004 compared to earlier versions, so things are improving.

Regards,

Pete

[Chris_CYWG]

Hi Pete,

Thansk for the quick reply.. I am using FS2004. After getting my PFC equipment configgeg, and getting the sim configged I have tried at least 10X to reduplicate the problem and haven't been able to do so... hopefully they won't happen in flight!!

Thanks again for the clarification.

Chris