This site is being deprecated.

Please see the official X‑Plane Support page for help.

0 votes
asked by (45 points)
Good day all,

I have recently experience weird computer crashes in XP 11.32 when using the external view.  

I have downloaded few extra sceneries which, in this case, are affecting my flight.  If have downloaded the following add-ons with all required static sceneries:

- Ottawa McDonald - Cartier airport (CFXP - CYOW); and
- Air Canada New Livery Boeing 737-800 XP11 Default 1.2.0 (by mofata).

I basically start my flight at the Ottawa McDonald-Cartier airport at gate 14 with running engines.  As long as I'm in the cockpit, I do not encounter any issues.  When I "get out" of the airplane and use the external view, then I experience the problem...  Sometimes, it will crash right as I see the rear view of my plane, sometimes it will crash when I start circling around the airplane and the other times it will simply not crash at all...  And when I say it crashes my computer, I'm not talking about crashing the XPLANE.EXE app to Windows, I mean it crashes the computer like someone just pulled the plug from the AC outlet!  After few seconds, the computer will restart and reboot on its own...

Has someone ever experienced something similar recently when using external view?  Not that I'm someone who's really using the external view quite often, but every time I used it in the past, I've never experienced that problem before...  I cannot say if this was created in 11.32 or previous versions...

I have submitted a Bug Report to Laminar to see if there is anything they can find about this...

Thanks!
Jeff

1 Answer

+1 vote
answered by (2.2k points)
edited by

Hi Jeff

I'm not with Laminar Research, just a fellow simmer in the UK.

As I am also a qualified computer technician, I would say that it is highly unusual for any software application on its own, to cause a complete PC crash to the point where it has to reboot itself.

Consequently, I would venture to suggest that there is something else going on here that is likely to be hardware related.

To begin with therefore, would you be kind enough to confirm your hardware and operating system specifications and whether or not you have had a total PC crash with any other type of application? 

As far as hardware is concerned, I am particularly interested in what type of graphics card and power supply unit you have installed, but information on your motherboard, CPU and RAM memory would be required also?

Secondly, could you please upload your X-Plane 11 Log.txt file to this post, so that this can be reviewed for any other possible crash indicators?

If you're not sure how to upload the Log.txt file, please click on the following link to view some instructional PowerPoint slides that I have prepared for this purpose :- 

http://questions.x-plane.com/?qa=blob&qa_blobid=7477798873028464095

Should the answers to the above not provide any indicators one way or the other, then I would further suggest that you download some 3rd party software to 'stress test' your PC and I can advise on this later if required.

Regards

Paul

commented by (45 points)

Good day Paul, 

Jennifer from Tech Support suggested that I look at my power supply as I may not have enough power to drive my system.  After a quick research, I found a website that calculate your power requirement based on the equipment you have in your PC.  After I had completed the exercise, it was evident I did not have enough power available to support all my stuff.  My system is basically as followed:

  • Intel Core i9-9900K CPU
  • AORUS Z390 Master MB
  • G-Skills 32GB RAM DDR4 3000
  • 2x EVGA GEFORCE GTX1080 Ti SC
  • 3x Samsung Pro M2 SSD (2x 500GB and 1x1TB)
  • 1x Samsung Pro SSD HD (1TB)
  • 1x 7200RPM HD
  • Cooling
  • LEDs with fans, etc.
Based on all that hardware, I would need at least 1150W of power to run everything while my existing Power Supply only provides 850W of power!!!  Although I have configure my system to use only 1 video card with X-Plane (which saves roughly 300W and brings me to the max capacity of the Power Supply), I had recently changed the Anti-Aliasing (AA) in the graphic settings from 2xAA to FULL (I believe it is 8xAA).  I presume because the lower AA settings I had before, the video card was not consuming its max power until I recently changed that setting.  Now using the external view with all the items it has to render, it is most likely asking for too much power and causing my computer to simply shutdown.
I will be able to confirm this very shortly as I have ordered a new Corsair AX1600i Power Supply which should suffice in providing the required power that I need!
I have still attached the Log file for your review but unfortunately, you will see it does not reveal too much info. 
If you find anything out of the extraordinary, please let me know...
Thanks for your help!
Jeff
commented by (2.2k points)
Hi Jeff

Glad to see that you're making good progress towards a resolution of your PC crashes and also glad that my initial diagnostic thought process about the graphic card and PSU were going in the right direction!

Happy trails my friend :-)

Regards

Paul

PS - Re: the log file, I couldn't see anything obviously wrong in there either!
...