"Debugging" FS9 (and others)?

[vic365]

I've seen several posts which show a lot of info on "what happened" and was wondering how that is done. I've had several issues with FS9 lately. Most I can "sorta" trace to "FSPause"...those are hard freezes with no mouse or keyboard input available (my backlit keyboard even goes dark). I'm not 100% on that one yet...but I'm working on it.

The problem I had today was the old reliable "Microsoft Flight Simulator had to close...blah, blah". I was not using anything other than MyAAS at the time. I did also have an error from MyAAS stating it could not connect to FSUIP...but I'm guessing that is to be expected if FS9 shuts down. How does one go about deciphering what went wrong? I must admit that I was..."really very upset"...as I was around 9 hours into a multi-leg bid flight, KHOU-LKPR, in the Citation X and have no idea where Martin's classic jukebox ended up? So "really very upset" was I that I just hit "don't send a report" while attempting to not destroy some piece of hardware. In truth those error messages are something I have never been able to decipher, anyway, and we all know how much good it does to send MS a report .

What do you use to try and troubleshoot these types of problems?

"Hey...I'm down hear...at the end of this rope!"

[JSkorna]

Hi Vic,

Windows preserves a record. Go to Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Event Viewer and on the left pane click on System. Information will show on the right pane.

Thanks,

[vic365]

The only thing I see is one entry at the time FS9 error occured:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: EventLog
Event Category: None
Event ID: 6006
Date: 11/21/2009
Time: 1:09:27 PM
User: N/A
Computer: YOUR-CJ6A796E04
Description:
The Event log service was stopped.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: ff 00 00 00 ??...

I've seen posts in the MyAAS error forum with info from something called JIT (Just in Time)?

[vic365]

OK, wait... I was looking under system instead of application:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 11/21/2009
Time: 12:33:04 PM
User: N/A
Computer: YOUR-CJ6A796E04
Description:
Faulting application fs9.exe, version 9.1.0.40901, faulting module terrain.dll, version 9.1.0.40901, fault address 0x000277f0.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 66 73 39 ure fs9
0018: 2e 65 78 65 20 39 2e 31 .exe 9.1
0020: 2e 30 2e 34 30 39 30 31 .0.40901
0028: 20 69 6e 20 74 65 72 72 in terr
0030: 61 69 6e 2e 64 6c 6c 20 ain.dll
0038: 39 2e 31 2e 30 2e 34 30 9.1.0.40
0040: 39 30 31 20 61 74 20 6f 901 at o
0048: 66 66 73 65 74 20 30 30 ffset 00
0050: 30 32 37 37 66 30 0d 0a 0277f0..

What can I derive from this? I see it's a problem with terrain...but that's all I can decipher.

Thanks!

[vic365]

OK...I think I'm on to something here (Oh, the wonders of Google). Thanks, Jim, for pointing me in the right direction. For some reason I thought the Events Viewer was one of the services I disabled in my gaming hardware profile? Anywho this seems to be pointing to either a duplicate afcad or UK2000 scenery. The only duplicate AFCADS are the one's I expected...many sceneries use a seperate BGL for taxiway signs and they show up as duplicate AFCADS. I have been reading, however, of problems with UK2000 scenery and I recently added UK2000-EGKK. However...as my crashes have been 95% duplicate textures I ran a check and found "ROOF2.BMP" duplicated in my recently installed CYQX Gander scenery. So...is there some way to find which sceneries call "roof2.bmp"? You would think that I would have crashed FS9 at Gander but I took off and flew from CYQX without problems. I'm wondering if the next scenery I ran accross (after the empty Atlantic) that also called roof2.bmp, is when the error occured. I'm really pulling at straws...down hear at the end of my rope .

[as099mw]

Vic,

during my yesterday flying, I'd been watching You departing Gander and roaring across Atlantic and above Ireland and England. Somewhere (very roughly) near Birmingham for the last time, just before my logoff.

If Your flight time is still on Your disc, saved by MyAAS and if You haven't cancelled the flight, You can still continue. Of course, if Your aircraft model allows repositioning somewhere to the FS9 "CTD location" by entering aircraft coordinates, altitude and speed using the FS9 map. And of course, if You roughly know fuel on board just before FS CTD to restore it and if You know, how to fill a new IFR flight plan while in flight.

If the aircraft does not allow such a repositioning, simply depart from any airport close to the FS9 event location, fly to the desired place and altitude, then adjust fuel on board, fill a new F/P, THEN start MyAAS again and continue to the destination.

I've encountered many such CTDs during my FS9 years (I use default scenery, only except LKPR airport), especially during flights longer than, say four hours. They came always at the moments of extensive memory usage (eg new scenery loading), the more I was browsing the web and/or watching Youtube clips or reading large PDF documents during the flight. To be able to recover, I'm now always keeping track of the aircraft position and status and I save my flight (in FS9) times to times (and always before descent and again before final approach, during which an airport scenery is loaded). Also there is a small utility, AutoSave.dll, which can do it for You automatically at preset intervals.

As a precaution, I always check my Windows Task Manager and disable all apparently unnecessary services (like Nokia services for mobile phone etc.) before flight.

I see, You've returned the bid. If You did not delete it from MyAAS (= from Your computer), book it again at first to be able to pirep later and try to continue. If You have deleted it even from MyAAS repository, then Your flight time is probably completely lost, I'm afraid

Martin, AS099

[vic365]

The Eaglesoft Citation X, as with most payware, is a pain to reconfigure in saved flights while airborne. I may try the bid again before it expires, I just wish I knew if any sceneries over England call for "roof2.BMP" texture. That would help greatly in determining if the duplicate texture could be the problem but I can find no easy way of determining all the places that texture is called for.

I have a "gaming" hardware profile set up on my machine. It has all unnecessary Windows XP services shut off and uses a 4:3 (1600x1200) resolution so my flat panel monitor doesn't stretch my sims (FS9 and SH3). I'm going to leave UK2000 Gatwick installed, for now, and see what happens. If the problem does not re-occur I guess I can point to the dupe texture I removed.

[TheDude71]

Vic,
Can you run a search through XP and search fir that roof2.BMP?? Maybe an advanced seearch of your fs9 root folder?? And if you got a dup, trace them from there??

Also, the autosave.dll us very nice, it will reload all fuel flightplan ect. Only prob if had with that is running FSPassengers. It will reload but CG will be off.

I would run a search for that bmp and see what you get.

[vic365]

Brett, I think you might have misunderstood. I found, and deleted, the duplicate immediately, using FSManager. I use it all the time to find duplicate textures and other troubleshooting tools. What I'm after is a tool which will tell me all the addon sceneries which use a texture (or any scenery which uses it...but that would be a LARGE list, me thinks). This would have been helpfull in this way: After crashing over Great Britain my first move was to check for dupes. FSManager found one (roof2.bmp)...in my newly installed Gander scenery...I deleted the dupe. Now, my question is...why didn't FS9 crash when I was at Gander...as that was my departure airport?? Why did it wait to crash until I was 1,000 miles away, over Great Britain? My theory is that, upon arriving over GB, I flew near a scenery which also uses the Roof2.BMP and that is when I crashed. But how can I prove that theory? I would need to know:
1. Where FS9 crashed, exactly (I wasn't at the computer at that moment).
2. If I had known where, exactly, I was, I would then need to see if a scenery element in that area used Roof2.BMP. If there was one, that would help prove my theory. If there wasn't one then it's back to square 1. So...how do you find where roof2.bmp is used? I don't see a tool in FSM to do that.

What I'm trying to do is eliminate the "I think this is what fixed it" attitude. I'm a mechanical guy and I run a power plant operations shift. I tend to go nuts when the repair guys tell me they did 7 things and it's working now. "Which one fixed it?" is ALWAYS my first question I want to KNOW...not guess. Call it my #1 pet peeve.

[TheDude71]

Im with ya Vic, You know of way more tools than I. But I would still use the search option on windows and do a scan of all files, and see how many hits I get containing that name of the .BMP file. Thats where I would start. I know on Vista you can do an advanced search, can't remember if XP has that search feature. Also, really think about that "autosave.dll", it saves your flight every 30s I believe, so all you would have to do for example, like you said, you were away from the computer when the crash occured, load fs, load saved flights and load the last autosave, pause it, shift-Z and get the coordinates, this will give you the exact point of your crash and help you narrow down the area that dup might be hidding. BUT, it sounds like you got a grip on it!! Just my .02$

Weird thing is, if your addon scenery loaded that .BMP file, and other scenery has the same file, why would you get the crash. Scratching my head on that one also?? In a perfect world, that .BMP file shold load many times over with out causing a problem you would think. Who knows....Ah the fun of working out FS bugs!!

[vic365]

Near as I can tell from what I've read...it's not that the scenery BMP is used in many areas...the problem is having more than one instance of the BMP texture file in FS folders. It can be used in a hundred scenery's BLG files...but if there is more than 1 actual BMP, FS gets lost trying to figure out which one to use and crashes on memory. That's the simple explanation I was given.