Memory problems on long flights

I have a problem with FS2004 crashing if on a long flight.

The example attached is on an attempted flight from Seattle (Washington, USA) to Miami (Florida, USA). The memory used gradually climbs from around 600,000 K at start up in Seattle to around 1,100,000 K then FS2004 freezes and the OUT of MEMORY error box appears.

See enclosed screen grabs with Resource Monitor.

I thought it might be caused by rogue sceneries I had loaded so I tried the same route with a complete virgin install of FS2004 (no added sceneries and no added aircraft) but the problem persisted.

The only workaround I have found is to save the flight before the memory climbs above 1,000,000 K quit FS2004 and re-start, loading the previously saved flight. The memory is then typically back to the 300,000 to 500,000 K.

Is it normal for FS2004 to accumulate memory like a snowball? And does it not relinquish memory from scenery it is no longer over?

Any help would be appreciated; it's a pain to have to quit and re-start on a long flight.

Memory on start-up in Seattle:

Memory just after reaching cruise altitude:

Memory just after half way:

Memory at memory crash:

Error message:

Regards Mike

Assuming your virtual memory ("swap file", "page file") is large enough and working properly (if you are using a dynamic swap file, is there always enough free space on that HD?), the other thing that comes to mind is a memory leak, often caused by faulty scenery files/folders. A common cause, though some debate this, is empty texture folders in scenery files; scan all your scenery and delete any texture folders which contain no files. This definitely improved the stability of FS9 for me.

OTOH, FS9 is not known for good memory management and will often allocate more than it needs, or never release memory that it no longer needs. Not much we can do in such cases except find bandaids, such as saving and reloading a flight. I've had FS9 on three computers now, and could consistently cause a memory crash whenever I like on any of them - go to "create flight" and scroll through the aircraft list, viewing each aircraft; after three or four dozen views windows pops up quacking about low memory (this actually seems worse in Vista and later than in XP).

Thanks for the reply jgf, the hard drive is 931 GB with 644 GB free so there should be no problem there. As mentioned I tested with a brand new install of FS9 with no add on sceneries or aircraft and the problem still appeared, so unless Microsoft have some scenery files with empty texture folders in the basic default install I don't think that is the problem.

How can I check the “swap file”, “page file”?

It may well be I will just have to live with the problem, it mostly appears when crossing the USA, I suppose because the developers have put in more detailed airports and there are more of them in the USA therefore more memory gets grabbed.

Thanks for your help.

I found where to set paged memory and it was set to 0 MB so I set it to 12259 MB and repeated the Seattle to Miami flight and had no memory crashes, the most RAM used was at Miami (it is quite a demanding scenery) no more than 900,000 K.

Thanks to jgf for what looks like the solution :)

This might note be the case, but check for empty texture folders in the sim. If you find any, remove them. Also, and if you haven't done it already, have a look at the Windows Event Log and see if there are any interesting error messages relating to the sim.

My two cents...

Thanks flyer8, as mentioned earlier in the thread the problem WAS occurring equally in a clean install of FS9 with no add on sceneries or aircraft, so unless Microsoft have some scenery files with empty texture folders in the basic default install I don't think that is the problem. I had in the past gone through all my add-on sceneries and removed any that had empty texture folders (no small task with over 800 layers of scenery installed :-( ) and it did improve FS9 stability. Now if I install new scenery I check that any texture folders are not empty.

As mentioned setting paged memory to 12259 MB seems to have cured the problem.

Where will I find the Windows Event Log in Win7?

Where will I find the Windows Event Log in Win7?

I did read that part about the clean install so the texture folder thing is a just in case and an FYI. The event viewer is a view into all of the windows event logs and it can be accessed by the following from any administrator command prompt...

%windir%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s

The summary pages might have other sim related errors. One day you're going to have to discuss the 800 layer thing. Total immersion, pretty cool :)

I found where to set paged memory and it was set to 0 MB so I set it to 12259 MB and repeated the Seattle to Miami flight and had no memory crashes, the most RAM used was at Miami (it is quite a demanding scenery) no more than 900,000 K.

 

Thanks to jgf for what looks like the solution :)

Wow, I'm surprised you weren't getting complaints from windows; no matter how much RAM you have windows still expects a minimal swap file, and many programs will not run at all if they do not detect a swap file.

FWIW, a dynamic swap file is more efficient in terms of HD space used - windows will only use as much space as it predicts it will need, up to the max allocated, so the size varies minute to minute ...and thus the file gets fragmented like any other files, slowing access. A static file gives better performance, since it is never fragmented, at the cost of always occupying the maximum space allowed.

To use a static file, remove the swap file (ignore windows complaints) and restart windows; defrag the HD and immediately create a new swap file, check the box to allow you to set the values and set min and max to the same figure (whatever windows recommends as max), OK this and restart windows. The swap file is now a reserved contiguous block on the HD that will never become fragmented.

And if you have two internal drives, placing the swap file on the secondary drive also improves performance since those read/writes will be done by a different head than the one accessing the OS. You will still need a small (about 200meg) swap file on the C drive as that is where most software looks for it, but windows will use whatever space is allocated wherever it finds it.