ATC.DLL crash

[BigRick]

Morning Pete. Had something crop up here and it was suggested that I contact you as well. I'm running Proflight Emulator 2.7 (I'm one of the beta-testers) and FSUIPC 3.829. One of the new features for PFE is to resume a flight. When I do so, FS9 will crash with an error in the ATC.DLL file. Now, I have RemoveATC=Yes in my INI file and I thought that fixed that particular problem. Any suggestions? I've got Dave March looking at the PFE side. BTW, I'm running Vista 32 and FS9.

-Rick

[Pete Dowson]

Morning Pete. Had something crop up here and it was suggested that I contact you as well. I'm running Proflight Emulator 2.7 (I'm one of the beta-testers) and FSUIPC 3.829. One of the new features for PFE is to resume a flight. When I do so, FS9 will crash with an error in the ATC.DLL file. Now, I have RemoveATC=Yes in my INI file and I thought that fixed that particular problem.

No, that on its own doesn't fix the problems in ATC.DLL. The object of that is to remove most of the inbuilt ATC stuff so you can use Radar Contact okay. i assume it should be okay with PFE too. But I think to avoid some of the crashes in ATC.DLL you have to leave some of the ATC options enabled in FS -- the RemoveATC was to simply allow you to do that without seeing the effects.

Does the FSUIPC Log say FSUIPC has patched ATC.DLL? And have you updated to FS9.1?

There are at least 4 serious bugs in ATC.DLL, places in the code where a crash is inevitable if they ever get executed. I really have no idea how MS let them through, but mostly they only happen in two cases:

1) when you try to suppress any of FS's ATC facilities (which is why "RemoveATC" is added), and

2) when a COM frequency in your neighbourhood is the same as one at the limit of FS's checking, maybe 80 nm away, and you tune that frequency. I think one or the other has to be an ATIS. With Radar Contact some folks changed some of the frequencies in RC's frequency file to get around that.

There were some ATC.DLL crashes which we never got to the bottom of. Microsoft acknowledged these bugs, but by then they were deep into FSX and were simply not going to do anything else with FS9.

Regards

Pete

[BigRick]

I'm sure it is caused by the 2nd of your two reasons. PFE will make me tune to the ATIS on a resume (this is something I think Dave needs to fix). Naturally, the majority of the time I'm over 80mi away from where the ATIS is active, so that would trigger the crash. I'll let Dave know about this.

-Rick

[buick552]

Hi Pete, this is an old topic but i thought you might help me. My p3dv4 CTDs the second time due to atc.dll error at the same place at the same flight route. Do you think it's about the radio frequency? And also, is there a fix for it? My p3d version is 4.0.28.21686

[Pete Dowson]

12 hours ago, buick552 said:

Hi Pete, this is an old topic but i thought you might help me. My p3dv4 CTDs the second time due to atc.dll error at the same place at the same flight route. Do you think it's about the radio frequency? And also, is there a fix for it? My p3d version is 4.0.28.21686

No, that isn't likely, though you can suggest it to L-M, that it may be the old bug carried over from FSX.  It will be a bug in P3D, maybe fixed in 4.1.

Why are you still using an old version? There are many bug fixes in 4.1 as well as enhancements, and the next version of FSUIPC will not support anything earlier than 4.1 because it is using newer features.

[LATER] There is in fact a thread in the private developers Forum in L-M where at least two others have reported crashes in ATC.DLL and they are providing dumps to L-M so it can be investigated. I don't think those reports are specifically related to geographical position, but you never know. It may turn out to be the same old problem.

Pete