Note: If not your whole system, but just FlightGear crashes, please see Troubleshooting crashes.

If running FlightGear causes system instability or even system crashes, 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 at all.

Other things too look for

So if you are running a modern OS (such as any more recent version of Windows, Mac OS or Linux) and starting/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:

  • Overclocking
  • Insufficient power supply (make sure that your power supply can handle all your hardware, especially graphics cards!)
  • Insufficient free system resources (memory, CPU or GPU power) (see Hardware Recommendations)
  • OS/driver issues (graphics/sound)
  • Insufficient CPU/GPU, hard disk or memory cooling
  • Faulty RAM, CPU or mainboard
  • Computer viruses

Startup log file

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. As of FlightGear 2.12, you can find an automatically created startup log file in your $FG_HOME directory.