g3d.dll causes / fixes... in FS9?

[Geoffco]

Hi,

I have been recently plagued with g3d.dll crashes in my FS9 setup - I have had to recover three of the last five flights from an autosave. I understand that currently there is code in the FSX version of FSUIPC to detect and prevent some instances of this crash, but if I recall there was no such implementation in (or planned for) the FS9 version.

Two questions:

1) Is there any change to the above in that is there any chance of FS9 g3d.dll prevention?

2) The details given by MS on g3d.dll errors is fairly generic. I wondered if there is any better information as to what can cause these crashes? (eg if I get an fe.dll crash I know to go hunting for bad textures) My logic here is that if you have made a fix for them in FSX, then you knew why they were happening...

PS. Sorry if this has been covered already, I tried a search but of course g3d.dll and fs9 are not very good search terms...

Cheers,

Geoff

[Pete Dowson]

I have been recently plagued with g3d.dll crashes in my FS9 setup - I have had to recover three of the last five flights from an autosave. I understand that currently there is code in the FSX version of FSUIPC to detect and prevent some instances of this crash, but if I recall there was no such implementation in (or planned for) the FS9 version.

There is only one very specific G3D.DLL crash for which FSUIPC patches a work-around in FSX. I'm sure it isn't related to anything you might experience in FS9.

In all the years I was using FS9 I never had one G3D.DLL crash, and I've not heard of them happening before. I am therefore pretty sure that your crashes must be down to an add-on. You'll need to go through a process of elimination to ascertain which.

1) Is there any change to the above in that is there any chance of FS9 g3d.dll prevention?

No, not really. Sorry.

2) The details given by MS on g3d.dll errors is fairly generic. I wondered if there is any better information as to what can cause these crashes? (eg if I get an fe.dll crash I know to go hunting for bad textures) My logic here is that if you have made a fix for them in FSX, then you knew why they were happening...

No. I knew WHERE they were happening, and observed that it was the attempted use of a bad pointer which caused the crash. The routine in which it occurred was small and was merely going through a loop testing values before returning TRUE or FALSE. No other result was provided, so it was relatively easy to patch it to check the pointer for validity beforehand, and if invalid to simply do the FALSE return. I have no idea what the routine was doing nor what such a return might do, but since the end result displayed no adverse symptoms (or at least none that folks could detect), it was judged successful.

There were several other crashes in G3D.DLL for which I knew the location, but which were in areas where there was no work-around possible without understanding what the code was doing.

Regards

Pete

[Geoffco]

Thanks for the information. Fair enough that there's no plan to do something for FS9 if it's not a problem you've encountered and it's not the same issue as in FSX.

Interesting that you didn't get this crash in your FS9 experience - I would say it is the most common one I have seen over the years. I have always assumed it to be related to scenery loading / generation... I'll just have to see if I can identify some commonality between the crashes and see if there are add-ons that could be to blame. The problem with these seems to be that they are not very repeatable - there are certain places in my FS world where they sometimes occur but then they don't happen when I go 'testing' for them with process monitor etc running / logging!

Cheers,

Geoff