Ding Dong, you're driving me crazy. Or how to love and understand Windows User Experience Rules

[mjl1966]

Pete-

This is going to be a complaint.  Before I get to that, yes, I know that FSUIPC has done more for the FS community than probably any other piece of software ever written.  I do know that and respect it.  A lot.  Nevertheless, I really have to complain:

I kept hearing what sounded like a Windows system sound several weeks ago.  I heard it so much that it persisted when I was NOT on my PC.  (I'm not kidding, this really did happen.)  I thought I was having aural hallucinations.  I thought I had a brain tumor.  I thought... all kinds of things.  (Again, I'm being exceedingly serious here.)

Then it stopped.  All was well.  I thought I had driven off whatever virus, demons or spirits had possessed my life with ... oh, no it came back.

But this time, I confirmed that I wasn't crazy.  I turned up systems sounds and voila, the sound revealed itself in all its glory.  But what was causing it?

Complaint number one.  I'm going to shout this.  You would if you were me, trust me.  DO NOT EVER SOUND A WINDOWS MESSAGING SOUND WITHOUT A DIALOG GO EXPLAIN WHY.  EVER!

Every ten seconds, this sound was slowly driving me insane.  But I narrowed it down to FSX.  But no tasks under that were doing it.  Closed them all down.  Looked through background processes.  Nothing there made any sense. 

Then, by some miracle I found a post somewhere that said "I keep hearing a Windows systems sound." OH?  And then: FSUIPC.INI.

But this can't be.  FSUICPC doesn't even show up in my task manager anywhere.  Oh -- because  it's a MODULE.

Sure enough -- WARNING! Free memory is very low.  And thus the insanity-inducing ding ding ding ding ding ding...

Your log is the only place that reported the source of this constant sound...  refer to my complaint above.  I'm going to shout it again.

Yes, I have seen the OOM dialog box before.  Yes, I was playing around with various add-ons and tweakings to get my VAS under control.  Yes, I got OOMs during that process.  An YES, I got my VAS under control.

No more OOM messages.  But still, the constant ding ding ding ding.

I have an 8G video card, so there is no way that got low on memory.  During my last flight, I was monitoring task manager very carefully.  The highest FSX got was 2.6G

And yet, in the background, very faintly because I had system sounds volume turned down quite low - the incessant ding ding ding worthy of a tale from Poe himself.

No dialog.  Not one. 

And if 2.6G is enough to tirgger "very low" VAS, well, sir, you're just wrong.  There's still 1.4 left.  You can do a lot in 1.4  80% is the rule of thumb for alerts in the IT world.  Here, that would be 3.2G. 

No matter the number --- DIALOG!

I"m sorry that this is the only time I've ever talked to you and it has to be this way.  But, seriously, you cannot do this to people. 

It's not nice.

Thanks for free FSUIPC.  Please fix it so it properly reveals itself as the source of incessant systems sounds.

Not expecting a reply.

Michael J Lawrence
USA

 

[John Dowson]

Pete retired several years ago.

Please see the following parameters on the OOM warnings (from the Advanced User guide) - you can adjust to your needs:

Quote

OOMcheck: FSUIPC4 operates a check on the amount of process memory remaining free. It warns of a potential "Out Of Memory" crash (OOM), hopefully, giving time to avoid it, or at least saving a flight in case. The warning is two Windows error/warning beeps, plus explanatory messages in the FSUIPC4 log file. This warning occurs when the total remaining free process memory in FSX is less than 250 Mbytes (I found this to be just about sufficient to do something). You can turn off this warning by changing OOMcheck=Yes to No in the FSUIPC4.INI file, and you can suppress the beeps whilst retaining the checks ad logging by setting OOMcheck=Quiet.

OOMcheckInterval=10: This controls the frequency of the OOM check described above. The default is every 10 seconds and that is also the minimum. This can be increased if needed up to a maximum of 1 hour (parameter value 3600)

John