[Software] Blue screen when starting scenario orbiter

[Nej1119]

Hi,

i play orbiter for almost a year now and i love to play but i recently got a very serious problem with it. Everytime i start a scenario i see textures missing and glitching spread out all over the screen then my computer crashes with a blue screen and restarts. It happens with any orbiter i tried a clean install and also tried the latest beta version but still the same problem.

my pc specs are:

Intel core i7 2,80 ghz
6 gb ram
nvidia geforce gt220 OC 1GB
windows 7 home premium
64-bit

I hope that someone knows how to fix this.

[dbeachy1]

If you're getting a blue screen it is almost certainly either a video driver bug or a hardware problem. Can you test with another video card (even a an old one)? Also, I see you're overclocking your video card:

Quote:

nvidia geforce gt220 OC 1GB

I have seen overclocks work for a while and then start to cause problems as the card ages. Can you reset your video card to stock clock speeds and retest?

[Nej1119]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dbeachy1

 If you're getting a blue screen it is almost certainly either a video driver bug or a hardware problem. Can you test with another video card (even a an old one)? Also, I see you're overclocking your video card:



I have seen overclocks work for a while and then start to cause problems as the card ages. Can you reset your video card to stock clock speeds and retest?

The overclock is not the problem i overclocked it a week ago. And i have this problem for a month now.

[Keatah]

If the card(or any bit of hardware) was built right up to spec, with no margin for error, then there could a problem with that. As hardware ages it becomes unstable, or, less likely to run at spec. It is also possible a key component of the host system software is corrupted. That isn't saying much, because, we have little to go on right now.

In any case, stop all overclocking of all components for the duration of troubleshooting. One step at a time. What is the faulting module on BSOD?

[Nej1119]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keatah

 If the card(or any bit of hardware) was built right up to spec, with no margin for error, then there could a problem with that. As hardware ages it becomes unstable, or, less likely to run at spec. It is also possible a key component of the host system software is corrupted. That isn't saying much, because, we have little to go on right now.

In any case, stop all overclocking of all components for the duration of troubleshooting. One step at a time. What is the faulting module on BSOD?

But the weird thing is that it is only happening to orbiter and i also play games like GTA IV and other high end graphic games and those are working perfect.


I actually have no idea what the blue screen says i got to make an picture of it to see what it is saying.

[palebluevoice]

Thing of ANY changes you have made to your computer over the past week. Have you went into control panel at all? Have you plugged in anything new? I had an external harddrive causing BSODs and crashes, I unplugged it and everything started working perfectly; you could try unplugging everything except monitor, mouse and keyboard and see what that does. A clean install of orbiter might help; I have had blue screens on windows 7 due to software issues, so maybe something isn't working with something else.

You might try, as someone else said, installing different drivers. Try installing to the latest version; if that doesn't work, install the earliest version of the driver. Then you can try downloading CC cleaner and clearing your registry, then finally, try downloading driver sweeper and using it to do a clean driver install(DO NOT DELETE CHIPSET DRIVERS AND READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS)

That's the standard troubleshooting I know for your particular problem.

[dbeachy1]

To put it another way, there is no way in a properly functioning system that a normal program can cause a blue screen: blue screens occur when a kernel-level module crashes. Also, since the system was previously working fine with Orbiter for a year, that also points to hardware problems.

The first thing I would do to troubleshoot the issue is revert the card to its stock clock speeds. If it still crashes I would try swapping it out for some other video card as a test (and be sure to install the latest video driver).

[Keatah]

All it takes is ONE bit of memory out of the 7GB in your system to effect a crash - if the problem is memory related. Right now I have no clue. We'll need a little more info to get the ball rolling in the right direction.

The faulting module on BSOD might be somethingxxxxx.sys or somethingxxxxx.dll or somethingxxxxx.exe

The standard methods of troubleshooting this includes trying a different graphics card and trying (and reinstalling) graphics drivers, sometimes a revision forward or backwards.

The beauty part of this is that the base config of orbiter works on 14-year old hardware and doesn't change things in the system and registry. So you can always have a reference point. I will assume you have a separate test directory set-up just for the basic orbiter install, and that is what we are using. No add-ons whatsoever.

---------- Post added at 07:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:13 PM ----------

For fun and games, you can try memtest86. This is how it works:

1-Download it from -- http://www.memtest86.com/
2-Burn it to a cd (or usb key)
3-Boot it
4-Watch for any red lines of text.

It's that simple. And it will test and eliminate memory as a problem. Remeber it takes but just 1 bit out of 8,000,000,000 bytes to make a crash.

[Nej1119]

Quote:

Originally Posted by palebluevoice

 Thing of ANY changes you have made to your computer over the past week. Have you went into control panel at all? Have you plugged in anything new? I had an external harddrive causing BSODs and crashes, I unplugged it and everything started working perfectly; you could try unplugging everything except monitor, mouse and keyboard and see what that does. A clean install of orbiter might help; I have had blue screens on windows 7 due to software issues, so maybe something isn't working with something else.

You might try, as someone else said, installing different drivers. Try installing to the latest version; if that doesn't work, install the earliest version of the driver. Then you can try downloading CC cleaner and clearing your registry, then finally, try downloading driver sweeper and using it to do a clean driver install(DO NOT DELETE CHIPSET DRIVERS AND READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS)

That's the standard troubleshooting I know for your particular problem.

I installed an older driver for my video card and everything is working perfect right now. Thank you very much for all the help and quick responses

[mojoey]

It was probably the GPU driver then. Nvidia cards (from experience) don't like the latest driver.

[orb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojoey

 It was probably the GPU driver then. Nvidia cards (from experience) don't like the latest driver.

There's a simple solution for that -- wait until there are released even newer drivers, then yours won't be the latest anymore, and your card will like them again without even installing older versions.

But now seriously, from my experience NVidia cards don't like drivers not fully supporting the card, or buggy drivers, and not the latest drivers.

[mati140]

I have exactly the same problem, also with nVidia 200 series card (GT 240 in my case - my thread is still floating arround). The last drivers wich worked with Orbiter for me were 280 or 285 IIRC. The problem is that installing old drivers gives errors in newer programs.

Let me give an example - when Fable by Microsoft Games came out on nVidia cards the rain and snow effects didn't work - there where just single raindrops floating around making ideally cubic net. Once Microsoft raged on them they solved the issue in next drivers. However, for a long time already (I don't even remember the last working drivers - 200?) the issue is here again, and nVidia doesn't care about it.

The reason here is not hardware related, it's because nVidia guys are dickheads. There is no proper technical support for they cards. There's only a section on their fourums which they never check called something like 'user self helping forum' in which u can be 'helped' by other people which have the same problem and can't solve it either because it's a bug. They simply don't listen to ppl's complaints.

They don't care about bugs either. Gosh, it had to take a medial affair for them to solve broken shadows in Battlefield 3. But BSOD caused by drivers?! It should be reported - but it can't bc there is no support on nVidia. Maybe if I installed some latest graphic card by them, it would work better with it's drivers.

So, I doubt it will be solved in upcoming updates. Nej1119, what's the latest driver version that works for you?

[KC013]

While not directly related to the above problem, this utility allows you to view all blue screens that have occurred on a system.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb897558

[Nej1119]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mati140

 I have exactly the same problem, also with nVidia 200 series card (GT 240 in my case - my thread is still floating arround). The last drivers wich worked with Orbiter for me were 280 or 285 IIRC. The problem is that installing old drivers gives errors in newer programs.

Let me give an example - when Fable by Microsoft Games came out on nVidia cards the rain and snow effects didn't work - there where just single raindrops floating around making ideally cubic net. Once Microsoft raged on them they solved the issue in next drivers. However, for a long time already (I don't even remember the last working drivers - 200?) the issue is here again, and nVidia doesn't care about it.

The reason here is not hardware related, it's because nVidia guys are dickheads. There is no proper technical support for they cards. There's only a section on their fourums which they never check called something like 'user self helping forum' in which u can be 'helped' by other people which have the same problem and can't solve it either because it's a bug. They simply don't listen to ppl's complaints.

They don't care about bugs either. Gosh, it had to take a medial affair for them to solve broken shadows in Battlefield 3. But BSOD caused by drivers?! It should be reported - but it can't bc there is no support on nVidia. Maybe if I installed some latest graphic card by them, it would work better with it's drivers.

So, I doubt it will be solved in upcoming updates. Nej1119, what's the latest driver version that works for you?

Sorry for late response. I have a new card now but the driver i had was GeForce 280.26 Driver WHQL