Hi All,
I have a nasty bug here in IL2 and its driving me nuts not to mention slowly hurting my machine , which is practically brand new (3 months old). I have a 400 watt tower with an Asus board running the AMD Athlon 2200XP processor with 1/2 gig DDR memory , the WD 80 gig drive with 8 meg cache , and the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card. I have deinstalled previous drivers for the ATI card and installed the newest ones , and I get the same issue. Im running Win XP and have installed all the recommended Windows updates to the machine.

 Issue is , that after a while of flying , or viewing tracks for that matter , the machine will just suddenly reboot! Either that or the video will just plain lockup and I will be forced to do a hard shutdown and then start it again!
This seems to happen during every runtime of IL2 no matter what ! Sometimes it happens after 5 minutes and sometimes it happens after 30 minutes , its not predicatable. What is predicatable though is that it will happen.

Desperately searching for an answer..........


Thanks in advance,

Tyler/ "Ghost"

Tyler "Ghost" Blake

By no means am I the resident expert here, but...How is your cooling system?  Heat may be the problem.  Try taking the sides off your case, and running it.  See if that makes a difference.B~Black 5... end ...

BK, any thoughts on this?TX-ZenBlack 6TX Squadron CO

Well , to further update this issue , I have not ruled out heat as an issue , however I do have like 4 fans , blowin on the processor , the drive , the video card , and exiting the case , not to mention the fans on the video card itself. I have updated to Direct x 9 as of today , and tweaked with a couple settings in the ATI control , and the issue seems to continue. It may have gotten a hair better , but is still there. I bought a top of the line heatsink for the processor itself , so I dont think its related to the processor , but the video card instead. Im about out of ideas and patience , as I pretty much built this machine strictly to fly IL2 with ..... :-(Hope this might help in outlining the situation...Thanks again,"Ghost"Tyler "Ghost" Blake

Oh my, the dreaded directx9. Like the killer rabbit of monty python, this often under estimated program is known to be the ruin of flight simmers in IL-2. From what i gather x9 is uninstallable and incompatable with some apps. Rather than add insult to injury let me refer you to our resident veteran on this issue. Ladies and gentle men, may I introduce, TX-Black Knight

1. I sent you a PM to see if we can hook up and chat while TS this.2. I hate Directx 9 and so do the majority of people that I have seen install it. It has major issues with half of the software out today.3. I need you to post your processor temps and MB temps please.4. I need you to run the directx diagnostics program..usually you can run it by going to the run command line and typing in dxdiag.  Run it and see if it comes up with any faults/problems.5. I also ned to to go into the harware setup and check to see if you are having IRQ conflicts.  Video cards do not like to share IRQ's with ANYTHING. They also like to have the slot right next to the AGP slot OPEN and not being used.6. Your problems have been duplicated by people with their Video Cards and a Sound Blaster audio card sharing the same IRQ. THAT'S A NO-NO.Trust me..little by little we can get this problem resolved. Don't get frustrated....believe me it don't help."We can fix it...my dad is a TV repairman and he has an awesome set of tools.."   Fast Times At Ridgemont HighBlack2B~

Hi All,So , its the day after the disasterous attempt to join in on a round of missions with you guys. Sorry for slowin you up. Today I did quite a few more things to the machine , including the deinstall and reinstall and updating of IL2. Deinstalled and Reinstalled the ATI driver. I ran dxdiag as you had suggested to find that there are no conflicts found and no IRQ conflicts either. I ran some of the important tests in there and all showed as clean an smooth. After doing all the things that I did today , I seem to be running the app alot cleaner now and after quite a few rounds offline with it , it hasnt crashed once. I'll cross my fingers on this one. Being a mac network admin and technician , I know quite a few technicians  and technically savvy people , and one of these suggested that the Invidia card might be a better long term bet. Anyone agree with this opinion ? Im not really familiar with the Invidia cards. Bottom line is it appears to be running the game alot better for now , but I dont like the uneasiness of thinking that its so unstable that it wont stay running right for very long maybe...dunno. Any opinions on video cards of choice are highly welcome.Anyway , at the moment it looks like I just have to work thru an issue with Game Voice , and this I think may be a problem with the built-in sound card and the way its handling the mic input. I think Ill probably end up putting a soundblaster card in it , so its not relying on a low end built-in sound device.BTW - Thanks for your time at the meeting Sun. night . During the meeting , I had good radio input for preflight and half of the flights and then I lost voice comms completely. I still had a great time tagging along though. Hope to get these last few things patched up in short order so I can get back up there.Thanks again..Tyler "Ghost 201" Blake

If I am not mistaken, most of us at TX are Nvidia fans.  I have been looking forward to the new Nvidia FX card coming out soon.  I am sure it will be a pretty penny though.However, I might end up going with a Matrox card for surround gaming with 3 monitors.I am waiting for the release of the FX to make my final decision.S~ or B~TX-Cage     Black 5... end ...

I think I can help you here. I have an ASUS board (A7V8X) and the same vid card. After some research at guru3d.com and amdmb.com, I found out that some ASUS boards have a voltage issue with the 9700. The fix, go into BIOS and make your AGP voltage 1.7 or 1.8 (try 1.7 first). That should clear up the issue.Best of luck!Sammie

S~Many thanks go out to Sammy !I went into the bios and adjusted it up just a hair on the power to the AGP port and what do ya know ! Ive been running the game and quitting out of it repeatedly for a couple hours now with no glitches whatsoever !!!I really appreciate it. The rounds are on me  :-)Looks like between that huge fix and the fact that I installed a new sound card and voice comms work properly now, this bird is truly ready for launch.A big thanks to all !"Ghost"Tyler "Ghost 201" Blake

DOH !!!Sorry about the spelling...Thanks Sammie !!!"Ghost"

WTF over

Happy to help Ghost. Good luck and enjoy the new hardware. It's a great card once you get it tweaked to fit your system. I average approx 80fps in single player and 50 in multiplayer. It truly makes the game more enjoyable with the smoother frame rates...Now, where is that beer??

Hello, I'm having similar trouble with the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and have thus far been unable to fix it.I am not a member of the TX Squadron, but would really appreciate it if someone could help me out.  Problem:  Game freezes, usually just locks up, sometimes turns off the display, but the result is always the same, I'm forced to turn the power off.  This usually occurs either while loading a mission, or within 5 seconds of loading.  A few times it has made it about 15 minutes into a mission.  System:  2.2 GHz Pentium 4Intel D845GEBV2 Motherboard512 MB DDR Memory40 and 34 Gig hard drives, both at least half emptyATI Radeon 9700 Pro Video CardSound Blaster Live! Platinum, with Optical I/O Sound Card.Attempted Fixes thus far:Initially thought that the problem was a simply a driver error, I had trouble with Warcraft 3 until I installed an old ATI driver.  This combined with turning off Fast Write actually worked for a time, I played for well over an hour after changing those settings, but this was not repeatable.  The problem returned the next time I tried to play, without changing the settings.My power supply was too small, only a 250W power supply, and I believed that this was likely my problem.  I have now installed a 430W power supply, but the problem continues.With the larger Power Supply I also purchased a cooling fan, for what it's worth my onboard thermocouples are registering at under 90 degrees Farenheight, so it is probably not a heat issue.Also:  I've had trouble with Never Winter Nights crashing, but it is neither consistent, or as common as Il-2.If anyone has any advice, I am quite desperate now.

Well, unfortunatelly Shadow never actually worked out his Radeon Issues, though he did have some initial succes as stated above though he is now running an nVidia Ti4600. His issues seem to be different from the fairly common OpenGL issues that others have.TX-Ersky did get his 9500 to run well, though he did a full reformat and reinstallation of everything on his machine. Did you happen to use an nVidia card in this machine before adding the ATI?There is no doubt that the ATI cards produce excellent quiality images and performance when running well, it is a shame that they can be so finisky in our chosen sim.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

Thank you for the timely response, I sure hope that I am not forced to replace my video card, they're simple too expensive.  This was the first video card used on this system other than the one built into the motherboard.

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Originally posted by TX-EcoDragon:Well, unfortunatelly Shadow never actually worked out his Radeon Issues, though he did have some initial succes as stated above though he is now running an nVidia Ti4600. His issues seem to be different from the fairly common OpenGL issues that others have.TX-Ersky did get his 9500 to run well, though he did a full reformat and reinstallation of everything on his machine. Did you happen to use an nVidia card in this machine before adding the ATI?There is no doubt that the ATI cards produce excellent quiality images and performance when running well, it is a shame that they can be so finisky in our chosen sim.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

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Well, the instant action items are to check the power supply, check the fan on the card, and verify that it is seated on the chip (carefully), and given that your running an ATI card, to try running in DirectX.  There is another ATI thread here that had a fan mounted on the card that had no thermal compound on it, and another that had a metal GPU guard that held the heatsink too high above the chip. In reality taking teh card out and messing with the heatsink is a semi risky operation depending on how careful you are.  Just in case, dont use any metal tools on the chip, as tehy may have acquired a magnetic charge, and also, you must ground yourself so that you do not give the card a static discharge, do this by keeping one hand against a portion of the metal case of your machine. Simply getting a freeze/crash seems like an overheating issue, since power isnt an issue. Probably the easiest thing to do to test this is to render the game using the DirectX mode, to verify if it is driver related. What have you tried as far as software goes? New drivers? running it next to an open window with the case open etc? Have you tried running the sim in DirectX?S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

You may have done this already but what they hay....You mentioned that your system board has an onboard video card also... Have you gone into the bios and disabled thie card.  It still may be utilizing resources and causing a conflict resulting in a system crash.  Just a hunch...Regards,Rah

Thank you for all the suggestions, I'll respond to them the best I can.I've only done a superficial check of the card's cooling, the fan itself seems properly placed and functional.  Whether or not there is a thermal compound on it I cannot tell as I am not supremely confident doing too much to the card, without damaging it.I've run the game in DirectX mode on a few occasions, when it worked for nearly an hour was through DirectX (something I surely ought to have mentioned).  However, running it through DirectX now results in the same behavior as using OpenGL.I've tried both new and old Video Card drivers, performed all of the windows XP updates, and have the most up to date motherboard drivers, bios, etc.  I'm currently running the case open, since I've been taking it apart and putting it together so much lately it's not worth the hassle, and this should keep it a bit cooler regardless.  I've not put it against an open window, but then again it's 20 degrees hotter outside than it is inside so I am not sure what good it could do.  The only thing I can imagine doing to provide more cooling is to blow a fan into the open case on top of what I currently have.Unfortuantely I'm dissappointed with the BIOS for this board, I'm unable to disable the on-board video card, and have no options as far as power distribution goes.  If the Intel Active Monitor is correct, then my new PSU hasn't helped the voltage on my 3.3V rail, it still runs just below 3.25V.  I'm currently running a True Power 430W PSU, made by Antec.  I'm considering returning it (just purchased yesterday) and getting an Enermax or Topower PSU, which may provide more power where I need it.  However, I am not convinced that this is a power issue, though it may be.Lastly, just want to thank you again for the support.  One of these days I'll get the game working, and you guys will always be my favorite squadran

And I assume you read the post that sammie made". . .The fix, go into BIOS and make your AGP voltage 1.7 or 1.8 (try 1.7 first). That should clear up the issue.. . . "   He is talking about a specific issue with an ASUS mobo but its just a thought.About your cooling, I guess if it is cooling related it may infact be that the metal guard on the GPU is too tall, or perhaps there is no thermal compound on it. At least for me, the fact that the same issues pop up in OGL and DX seems to point at a hardware and not a software issue. And if you go to "start">"Control Panel">"System">"Hardware">"Device Manager" you dont see a listing for "Display Adapter" with your video card listed next to the built in device???? That is odd. . .but if you do, just right click it and click disable.To see an example of an ATI card that came with serious heatsink issues, and the remedy, go to this thread and see the links:http://www.txsquadron.com/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=&TOPIC_ID=741S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

On the subject of my onboard video card, I do have an entry labelled as "Radeon 9700 Pro- Secondary" whatever that is, I have disabled it, to no avail.I also decided that it was time to pop off the heatsink and see what there was, the metal guard does not appear to be too big, and there is what appears to be a wax square for head conduction.  Does anyone believe that it would be worthwhile to put some heat conduction compound on it instead of the wax that is already on there?  I have never used such compound myself, as it's never been an issue for me before, but I am willing to do so if it would help.

Hmm .. interesting that it says secondary, is that the only listing? That one is your add in card, so that is the one to have enabled. . if there is another listing under graphics adapter, that is the one to disable.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

The lists are:Radeon 9700 ProRadeon 9700 Pro- SecondaryWith the first one disabled, I do not get the crash, but I also get absolutely unplayable performance.  I'm not sure what the "secondary" is but I do not think it's the ATI card.

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Originally posted by TX-EcoDragon:Hmm .. interesting that it says secondary, is that the only listing? That one is your add in card, so that is the one to have enabled. . if there is another listing under graphics adapter, that is the one to disable.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

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The 9700 pro has dual output.  The "secondary" reference you notice is for the second monitor output.  You should disable this, ATI has published that unless you disable the secondary monitor output, you will have trouble running games in openGL (at least prior to the latest driver release, which was on 6/23/03 -- get the new drivers if you don't have them already).To disable the second monitor, go to your device setting in the system control panel and locate the seconday monitor entry.  Right click on it and select "properties" and then choose "disable in this hardware profile".  After rebooting, you should be all set.WJiggyVFMA-333 Tres Equis=XXX=Anytime, Baby!

The odd thing is that even after disabling the onboard video, it still should be shown in the device manager. . but as disabled. So Iggy cleared up that issue, so it looks like you might botha  driver upgrade, and to disable the 9700Pro-Secondary.So does that mean ATI cards couldnt run dual monitors in OGL until 3 days ago?S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

My understanding is yes.  I have the 9700 pro and ran it in Direct X until the most recent driver upgrade, as there was performance hit with openGLWJiggyVFMA-333 Tres Equis=XXX=Anytime, Baby!

Ati problems with has dissapeard with catalyst 3.5 I had the same problem with my 9700 Pro.  Just download the latest driver .http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.htmlBack during development of FB, Oleg's crew was coding the new "perfect" settings for NVidia cards. As best we could gather, they did not have any ATI cards in house and did not do any development with them (and there were some problems evident as a result when the game was released.) Back then Oleg said that ATI card support might be improved in a patchOnce I did that the IL-2 FB runs like a champ...zero problemsSKULLS FalconMichael J. Lockhart

This is good news for those of us who had that as the main reason to not buy an ATI card.Thanks for the updateS!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX Squadron XO

Well, I have the new drivers, and have disabled the secondary listing on my device manager.  No luck unfortunately.I did experiment again last night, and turning off "Fast Write" and turning AGP Speed down to "1x" I did manage to get more time out of the game, between 30 seconds and a minute at a time, rather than the second or two (if even) before.This sounds like a heat or power problem to me, just not sure how it could be.  With a brand new 430W power supply that ought to be fine, and I didnt see anything wrong with the heatsink when I popped it off.

Thanks again for all the help, I'm sending my 9700 Pro in to ATI to see if it needs any servicing.  I just dont know what else the problem could be.For now I've got my old Hercules 3d Prophet II GTS 64MB card in, and Il-2 runs great.  Hopefully the ATI card will work at some point in the future.

can you post that for us..so we can see how it is set-up on your computer.Running/Posting DX Diag for support From the Windows desktop click Start and select Run. Type and hit enter.Run all available tests and save to a text file. You can then copy/paste for Diagnosis.  Let us know...maybe I or someone else can see what the deal is with your set-up.  Let me know SKULLS FalconMichael J. Lockhart

I'd post it, but I've already pulled out my card and uninstalled the drivers and whatnot in order to mail it to ATI.  Just running on my old 3D Prophet II right now.

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Originally posted by Falcon50: can you post that for us..so we can see how it is set-up on your computer.Running/Posting DX Diag for support From the Windows desktop click Start and select Run. Type and hit enter.Run all available tests and save to a text file. You can then copy/paste for Diagnosis.  Let us know...maybe I or someone else can see what the deal is with your set-up.  Let me know SKULLS FalconMichael J. Lockhart

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Sorry it didn't work out for you.....I had the same problems you had.....but thru trial and error...I found the solution to the problem.  When you download the new driver...3.5..you also need to download the 3.5 control panel also.  Funny all of the other games I've have play...never had a problem with those very high res games with this awesome card.  Good LuckSKULLS FalconMichael J. Lockhart

Well, I did install both the driver and the control panel to no avail.  I also have the same trouble in every single 3D game.  I'm hoping ATI will find something wrong with the card, and either fix it or send me a new one that will work.  I've heard great things about this card, and I really would like to have it working properly.Thanks again for all the help from the people out there.

It does sound like there is a defective of some kind on that card.Sorry to hear that....bummer....hope it get fix....if not get your money back.Sometime in the very near future...ATI new card will be out... That card should and will blow Nivida new card to Mars!SKULLS FalconMichael J. Lockhart

Hi  guys, it's been a few weeks now, I've shipped in my card, and just tonight have recieved the response from ATI.  They tested my card, and found it defective, and have sent a replacement.  I suspect that this shall fix my problems.Wanted to thank you all again for the help, and let you know that it appears that the card itself was faulty.

Sweet deal, glad we were of some help :).S~TX-TornadoBlue 3TX TO