Ddhelp Errors and lockups.. help please!

[WindyCity340]

LAST EDITED ON Feb-23-03 AT 00:39AM (EST)[p]Hi everyone,

I know we have all seen hundreds of these posts, so I appologize. I have searched everywhere and am stuck!! If anyone can help me out here, that would be great.

My situation is that I am consistantly encountering either a total system lockup when running FS2002, or getting a Ddhelp Error.

I have gone to the lengths to download updated Nvidia drivers (using 41.09), downloaded and installed Direct X 9.0 , reinstalled FS2002 from scratch... THEN reformatted C: and reinstalled windows, FS2002 and the above mentioned items. I am still having problems, and wondered if any of you smart individuals have already slain this beast?

I appologize if this is a bit elementary - Im not a computer genius but seek the help of those of you out there!! Hope to get some ideas - im off to download detonator destroyer to see if that helps any. THanks in advance!

-Cory

[chasw]

System bios is probably not optimised. Usually it's Fastwrite or Sideband addressing that's the problem. Disable them one at a time. The speed gain isn't worth the instablity anyway.

Try the bios guide at
www.omegacorner.com

Chas

[WindyCity340]

Thanks for the tip!

I tried it but with no avail. The only thing I could find in the BIOS was about AGP Fast Write so I disabled it and encountered the same problem. Oh, I should mention that the card is actually a PCI Geforce2MX400 so I wouldnt THINK it would have anything to do with AGP, but I dont know much about this stuff. I should give the computer specs maybe that will help...

Its an oldie but a goodie... this probibly sounds like "well geez, the problem is your computer!!" but i can assure you prior to these recent problems, it was giving me about 25-35 FPS at Meigs with full scenery etc so I know the computer can handle it. So here are the specs...

-AMD 1200 mhz athalon
-Primary card is Geforce2 MX400
Secondary card is an onboard AGP card (i sometimes use the second monitor to display other info/panel, but I havent been doing that, so Im pretty sure this is not part of the problem)
-fresh install of windows/fs2002
-direct x 9
-using nvidia drivers 41.09
-384 RAM

Also, this may shed some light? Just before lockup, Ill often start to see some random flashing on the ground textures and sometimes a couple very rapid short flashes in the sky even. I had not seen much of that before this, and also it happens JUST before lockup. Any help will be greatly appreciated! I think Im about to go do another reformat and make sure that I just use the direct x 8 that comes with FS2002 and see if that helps. I'll check back here on the other computer. Thanks guys and gals!

-Cory

[wsieffert]

After you installed the fresh OS, did you install updated drivers for your controller chips, i.e., VIA, Intel, SiS, AMD, ALi? If not, that may be part of your problem.

W. Sieffert

[WindyCity340]

Wow this has really got me stumped! To answer the question - yes i have the drivers all installed. Right now I have it with the old 30.82 nvidia drivers (stable), direct x 8 as comes with fS200, and all the standard drivers i had on my computer before. As it stands right now, the drivers are as they were configured like it was a few months ago. I've double checked to make sure all the directx and drivers contain only the appropriate files. Im really stuck here. I am wondering however, if there is anyting I need to adjust with the BIOS. Im no expert there but I did try a few things that you folks had suggested earlier. I also tried turning off ALL of the checkboxes in FS2002 (anti-aliasing, MIP mapping etc) just to see what would happen - it still locks up.

IS THIS THE END OF MY FLIGHT SIMMING CAREER?? ;-)

P.S. No Ddhelp errors lately, just consistent lockups (every time...within a few minutes of startup - locks the entire OS up so I have to turn the computer off to restart)

Getting desperate,

Cory

[WindyCity340]

P.S. Would you think FS would matter this much to a CFI/CFII??? LOL

[ANDYNICHOLLS]

Cory i think most of us have been there at one time.The first time it happened i eventually got rid of it by changing sound acceleration to standard rather than full acceleration in dx diagnostics.Six months later it came back and it turned out to be a faulty stick of ram.

[mrauh]

I second to that last post. I've been experiencing lockups of FS2002 after I had upgraded my computer. I got two 256 DDR-RAM sticks and after weeks of trying to find out what the problem was, it turned out that one of those sticks is bad.

Get "memtst23.zip" to test your RAM or remove one stick at a time (if you've got more than one) and see if that helps.

Matthias

[WindyCity340]

Thanks guys!! Thats the problem with this stuff... computers sometimes seem like they do stuff "just because"! I appreciate all of the input! Well I followed everyones advice, and someone in another thread suggested that I check to see if it could be my computer power supply going bad. To test this I unplugged my CDRW drive to see if that helped- but nothing. But then I tried removing an OLD video card (3rd... unused) and now I have not experienced nearly the problems that I was before. Now I dont know if its the power source, the card, or the fact that the computer is running at 105F instead of 145F with the case open, but SOMETHING worked out I think. In any case, I'd say that the previous two posts apply! Its not always what you first suspect! ;-)

Cory