Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - Post-virus FSX freezing/crashing

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | Post-virus FSX freezing/crashing

DVA9262
Senior Captain, B737-800

Joined on December 09 2010
Everett 250 Club
Nine Century Club

Canton, MI USA

920 legs, 1,411.7 hours
13 legs, 12.0 hours online
918 legs, 1,409.5 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on September 13 2011 21:41 ET by Jeffrey Putz

Hello. I've recently experienced some type of virus/malware which caused my windows icons to be hidden and rendered various programs inaccessible. Unfortunately, the only option for full recovery was paying the obscene amount of $200 for Best Buy's technical people to address this issue. After four days of scanning, cleaning and analyzing, I picked up the device today, and of course the first thing I did was ran fsx and ACARS, both to assuage my symptoms of withdrawal and to test the systems functionality. To my great disappointment, it only took about 15 minutes into the game before fsx crashed and I found myself in windows. I assumed this was anomalous and attempted the flight again, only to discover that after another 10 minutes I was to be met with a frozen screen and unresponsive program. I thought this might have been a result of the new anti-virus software they installed, so I removed it and restarted fsx. The same problem was recurrent. Should I demand my $200 back, or at least some reimbursement, since 70-80% of the time spent on this computer is devoted exclusively to fsx? If anyone has any suggestions I would be extremely eager to hear them. Also, try not to recommend, a reinstall, I dont have the software with me and I've modded the game so heavily, it would take many hours of tedious work to restore it. I also have many payware items I'd prefer not to lose. Thanks for reading.

Jeffrey Putz (DVA9262)

DVA7016
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on February 14 2009
B757 100 Club
Everett 250 Club
Triple Century Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary

"I5 2500K - 560GTX - 8GB Ripjaw"
Essex GB

385 legs, 1,090.6 hours
384 legs, 1,089.6 hours ACARS
1,821 legs, 4,442.9 hours total

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 02:25 ET by Alan Barber

I would return to Best Buy and tell them that your PC is not working properly since they worked on it. The idea of paying out your $200 was to have a machine that functioned correctly. Something they do not appear to have achieved.

Alan Barber

Senior Captain, B767-300

DVA9677
Captain, B737-800
OLP

Joined on April 11 2011
50 State Club
Online Double Century Club
Quincentenary Club

"American 1482, your APU is leaking baggage."
Kissimmee, FL USA

543 legs, 735.9 hours
247 legs, 299.2 hours online
538 legs, 725.6 hours ACARS
2 legs, 2.8 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 06:17 ET by John Anderson

Alan Barber wrote:

I would return to Best Buy and tell them that your PC is not working properly since they worked on it. The idea of paying out your $200 was to have a machine that functioned correctly. Something they do not appear to have achieved.

+1

Be sure to tell them exactly what's going on.
I've heard it said . . . "that's crazy. We're gonna have to spend time to figure out your game?"
But make sure you explain . . . "No, you're going to spend time to do exactly what I paid you to do."

John Anderson (DVA9677)

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 10:33 ET by Jeffrey Putz

Thank you gentlemen, I will indeed be in touch with those responsible for completing the work in such an unsatisfactory manner. As you say though John, I'm quite certain they will protest and disclaim any responsibility for software problems. I'll update you on the situation after I attempt to redress this issue with them.

Jeffrey Putz (DVA9262)

DVA6573
Captain, B737-800

Joined on November 02 2008
Century Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary
Online Century Club

Greenville, SC USA

157 legs, 215.2 hours
128 legs, 175.5 hours online
119 legs, 164.9 hours ACARS
21 legs, 35.8 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 11:04 ET by Steven Rodriquez

It sounds like you have a memory issue to me, not enough RAM to run FSX, which is why you get the crash 10-15 minutes into running the software. It could also be an overheating issue. I have another question though - why don't you have the software? It seems to me that if you have FSX modded up like you say, you would have backed up everything you have on your system in an external hard drive or storage unit. Surely you can't expect your hard drive to last forever. Anyone who has owned a computer can say the same thing. They have had a crash a time or two in their past. Personally, I don' t think you can blame Best Buy for your issues. They fixed the Window's issue didn't they? It could be that they had to remove a file from FSX. If you had the software you could run a repair with your FSX discs. That is, if it isn't a RAM issue to begin with. Something sounds fishy here...

Steven Rodriquez

Captain, B737-800

DVA3931
Senior Captain, L-1011-100
OLP, COMM

Joined on January 19 2007
50 State Club
Tri-Jet Triumph
Million Mile Club
Online Quadruple Century Club
Flying Colonel
Globetrotter
Burbank 500 Club
Eurocap Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary

"De oppresso liber"
Surry, ME

1,882 legs, 3,806.7 hours
478 legs, 767.8 hours online
1,107 legs, 1,674.5 hours ACARS
55 legs, 114.8 hours event
195 legs dispatched, 134.4 hours

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 12:06 ET by Andrew Kaufmann

I would request a refund and take your business elsewhere. I wouldn't take my machine, whether or not purchased there, to the Geek Squad at all. My one and only experience many years ago was terrible at best.

Andrew Kaufmann (DVA3931)

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 12:14 ET by Jeffrey Putz

Steven Rodriquez wrote:

It sounds like you have a memory issue to me, not enough RAM to run FSX, which is why you get the crash 10-15 minutes into running the software. It could also be an overheating issue. I have another question though - why don't you have the software? It seems to me that if you have FSX modded up like you say, you would have backed up everything you have on your system in an external hard drive or storage unit. Surely you can't expect your hard drive to last forever. Anyone who has owned a computer can say the same thing. They have had a crash a time or two in their past. Personally, I don' t think you can blame Best Buy for your issues. They fixed the Window's issue didn't they? It could be that they had to remove a file from FSX. If you had the software you could run a repair with your FSX discs. That is, if it isn't a RAM issue to begin with. Something sounds fishy here...

Steven, I appreciate your input and I can assure you that there is nothing going on here which would allow you to assume some impropriety on my part, although I clearly can see how you might have arrived at such a conclusion. I should have been more complete in describing my situation and for that I apologize. I own a copy of FSX, of course, but I reside at two different domiciles and my copy of FSX is located at the home which I am not presently at. I have backed up many of my files on a high capacity flash drive, but even with them backed up, its not simply a matter of copying and pasting to achieve functionality with some of the files such as the payware aircraft, which in my experience require a complete reinstallation, a process that is time consuming and tedious in my opinion, ergo my aversion for having to wipe the slate clean with FSX.

I too originally assumed that this was a memory issue and may have been attributable to overheating. Two factors bode strongly against this presumption. Firstly, I've never had a program fail due to overheating, in fact I've never had the processor really reach a critical temperature and secondly, there aren't any other programs running that would require a substantial amount of memory, thereby impeding or compromising the performance of FSX.

Best Buy was explicitly told that after avoiding any data loss my next priority was maintaining functional status of the games that I have on the system. They assured me that their methods would in no way effect either of these concerns and that I could expect a computer returned to me in the condition it was before the infection. I should be clear that this information was not provided to me originally when I gave them custody of my CPU, but rather during the course of their debugging procedures, when it became clear to them that neither they, or the virus program they were removing would have been tampering with any of my program files. Thus, my expectation to return to a game that performs as it did before my system was contaminated is reasonable and I have rightfully adhered to the prudent advice of my two wise councilors in this matter, Alan and John, and have contacted Best Buy, regarding the unsatisfactory nature of their work.

Jeffrey Putz (DVA9262)

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 12:23 ET by Jeffrey Putz

Andrew Kaufmann wrote:

I would request a refund and take your business elsewhere. I wouldn't take my machine, whether or not purchased there, to the Geek Squad at all. My one and only experience many years ago was terrible at best.

Thank you for your suggestion sir. It's not that I don't trust their competency or ability to properly remove any contaminants from the system, but rather their apparent sloppiness in the execution of their task and obvious lack of adherence to the instructions provided. I'm not quite ready to demand a refund, as they were helpful and accommodating when I spoke with them a little while ago and offered to address the issues still outstanding, if updating my drivers didn't achieve a positive result (which I don't think it will as it never has before). I do have a close friend who works as an IT executive and can easily remove a virus and restore a system, but he's out of town for awhile and at this point its more of a software issue. Hopefully there's someone in the Geek Squad detachment with experience with FSX or just gaming generally.

Jeffrey Putz (DVA9262)

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 14:59 ET by Steven Rodriquez

I certainly understand your apprehension concerning wiping FSX completely and starting over. I had to do that just a short while ago and then had to resintall all of my aircraft, which was quite a chore. In fact, I don't know that I fly any of the stock birds with the exception of the 738. Virtually all of my aircraft are payware. Then there's the livery installation that takes quite a while. I'm not a huge scenery guy since I don't look outside the cockpit too often as there's just too much to do to pay too much attention to the outside views, except when taxiing, of course. You haven't mentioned how much RAM you have, so it's hard to definitively say this is the issue. I have 8 gigs now, but before I purchased my current machine I used to have 3 gigs and would get FSX freezes quite often, especially after installing Windows 7. This machine is also a quad core, where as my last machine was a dual core. It may be hard to think about, but sometimes the best fix for FSX is to start over. I know you'd rather not have to, but maybe you can get the software and do a repair and see how that works for you.

Steven Rodriquez

Captain, B737-800

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 15:16 ET by Jeffrey Putz

Steven, as you've stated, I am indeed justifiably reluctant to begin anew with fsx and I do think that I can find an alternative solution if I invest enough time and consult enough people with relevant expertise. I have 6 gigs, so I think that can definitively rule out insufficient memory as the root cause here. I think I may have stumbled upon the problem when I discovered that the Geek Squad guys updated my drivers without advising me of this change. While it may sound counterintuitive, I find that many of my programs do not respond well to the most recent versions of updates and I therefore have replaced what was installed with what I previously had. I don't presently have time to commit to a long duration test flight of fsx, but I will certainly do so tonight and hope that this was in fact the problem.

Jeffrey Putz (DVA9262)

Posted onPost created on September 14 2011 23:27 ET by Jeffrey Putz

Ok, the removal of the newly installed driver update and reinstallation of my previous version seems to have spared me from the crashing and freezing of fsx, yet the screen periodically slows down as if I were encountering heavy visual effects at random yet consisten intervals. I think this amounts to a memory issue as Steven astutely suggested. FSX is using about a gig of memory and that's just in the menu screen. I'm not sure whether that is typical, but it seems quite high to me. Any suggestions on how to address this?

Jeffrey Putz (DVA9262)

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