Panel Goes Black

[olseric]

Okay, after tons of support questions answered, my turn to ask everyone for their help.

Recently, I installed the new ATI drivers (released 01-18-06 or so) for my x800 (256 mb) video card and now I have encountered a new
problem.

I have noticed that if I ALT-TAB out of MSFS in full screen mode and then back, it will sometimes cause the panel to go black. I have tried
turning it off and back on without success. I have even changed planes in mid-flight without luck. I canceled the flight, went back to the
main menu, switched planes, and re-loaded at a new airport without luck. The panel is obviously there because the "mouse-over" tips
are still visible, but I have lost all 2D views (yes, I can still see outside). On top of that, the SHIFT-Z to at least get some sort of bearing so
I can land is gone too.

What I have done thus far is deleted and reconfigured the FS9.CFG file which didn't help. I have tried re-installing the drivers which did
not seem to help either. I also disabled the Catalyst Contol Center from being in the system tray on start-up which apparently has not
made any impact either.

The strange thing is, this seems to be a random event. I flew online IVAO the other day from EGKK-KDTW with no issue whatsoever. I
also flew today from TNCA-KIAH with no issue. I then flew a short hop from KMSP-KLSE and when I landed, I alt-tabbed to check
something quick and when I came back, gone.

Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon? If so, how did you resolve it?

[Dutch64]

I don't have an ATI card but recognize the problem you described. For me (on a nvidia card) it turned out to be a combination of settings in my driver
setup. The settings for forcing mipmaps, triliniair optimization and forcing vertical sync seemed the be the cause for the problems. SInce i don't
have an ATI i cannot tell you exactly what to set it at but my guess is you should experiment with those settings... Well, it's nothing more than a
suggestion because with the sophisticated cards and drivers these days problems can be very difficult to tackle.

[olseric]

Allright...I'll start there and work forward.

[SaVas]

If it goes black while in flight when you alt tab back to it, see what happens if you disable the mini report.

[olseric]

Yeah, but it happens with or without FS Passengers running....with or without IVAP (IVAO Pilot Client) running...

It's obviously related to FS2004 exclusively, but I'm not sure why yet. I'm in the process of removing EVERYTHING ATI related now and
putting it all back on. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm almost leaning towards it being a driver conflict. I don't think the ATI remover got
everything like it is supposed to before.

[olseric]

So far so good....

I think it was a combination of several factors that had built over time and then just "came to a head" the other day.

In short, a driver conflict coupled with a memory leak from a couple of landclass files (thanks to Flight Sim Manager for finding those).

[olseric]

Well, good news and bad news.

Good news is I don't lose the panels anymore.

Bad news is I keep getting a "Flight Simulator has run out of available memory" error. According to MS, resetting the swap file should
repair that, however, it didn't seem to help.

PS and BTW, I have the swap file set at 3GB as I have 1.5 GB of RAM installed.

I also looked at the DirectX settings panel just about the time this happened and noticed that the swap file was using 1300 MB of 3500
MB available, so, it's obviously not that.

Any clue?

[Dutch64]

Weird, maybe your swap file is fragmented? If you have several physical disks, try placing it on another disk than where fs9 and/or your OS is running.
But it sounds like something else might be wrong and fs9 just throwing out an error message without knowing what's going on either
Maybe... a complete reinstall of fs so now and then might do the trick? After a fresh install i usually make an image so that if it's necessary i can
restore the clean situation within minutes...
Sorry, just guessing away here....

[olseric]

Weird, maybe your swap file is fragmented?

That was my thinking as well...I deleted the current one and then defragged the HDD, so we'll see how that works.

It appears, after an exhaustive search of all available FS forums that this problem is usually related to a "memory leak" occurring from
add-on scenery that uses Landclass files. I had two of them, so I deleted both and we'll see if that rectifies it.

Just for future info to anyone interested, it is my understanding that Landclass files that are part of an add-on scenery package should be
placed into a directory that DOES NOT also contain a texture folder. Apparently this causes FS to constantly re-load the textures for that
area until all available memory is consumed. If anyone is interested, I can go into more depth.

[SaVas]

Eric what addons for scenery terrains do you have and does this happen with the running out of available memory every time you fly no
matter where you fly?

[olseric]

It's a good question Savas, and the truth is, I'm not certain.

I was getting a bit frustrated, so I was continually flying from KMSP - KMKE and everytime, it was happening near Milwaukee. One time, I
actually landed, taxied to the gate and had half of my passengers off before it did it. I tried it online with IVAO, same result but sooner. I
tried it offline without FSP and same result.

I thought I had it tracked down to my Valleyfair/Flying Cloud scenery (it's a KMSP reliver), but that didn't help.

You know, FS was starting to run somewhat iffy anyway, so I have deleted and reinstalled it. I am in the process of reinstalling everything
that I had, minus some stuff that I didn't feel I needed anymore.

We'll see what happens now and if it still happens, I'll start ripping add-on sceneries (I only have about 4 on here now) off until I find the
culprit.

Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated.

[olseric]

Guess what...I figured out what the problem was.

Forgot that I had the NO-CD patch running with the version 9.1 update. The patch doesn't address or fix the memory leak issue identified
by Microsoft and rectified with V9.1. Thus, it all came to a head.

One thing led to another and the elusive snowball started to roll.