System Crashes

Note: If not your whole system, but just FlightGear crashes, please see Howto:Debugging FlightGear Crashes.

If running FlightGear causes system instability or even crashes your whole system, it is important to realize that something really is wrong with your whole system and not necessarily FlightGear: modern operating systems generally don't allow user space applications to affect system stability.

So if you are running a modern OS (such as any more recent version of Windows, Mac OS or Linux) and running FlightGear still affects overall system stability in one way or another, something is likely very wrong with your hardware or software setup. Things specifically to look out for include:

• insufficient free system resources (memory, CPU or GPU power) (see Hardware Recommendations)
• OS/driver issues (graphics/sound)
• insufficient CPU/GPU (hard disk, memory) cooling
• faulty RAM, CPU or mainboard
• computer viruses

If you do experience system crashes or so called "blue screens" (on windows), you'll want to increase the FlightGear log level and have all output be redirected to a file, so that you can later on inspect the file and check for suspicious warnings or error messages.