PeterPanPan

Thanks winz. Well, unfortunately, it seems to be the joystick, an old but still perfectly fine Saitek Cyborg Force. However, I searched on this forum and found a thread which suggested I uncheck the force feedback box from the DCS settings menu. I did that and voila, all seems to be ok. I still get odd crashes at the end of a mission, so all is not 100% but at least I can play and get on the learning curve. Cheers PPP

I disconnected my printer, joystick, Track IR and webcam (all USB) and blow me down, this worked!!! Thanks :) No idea why any of these would cause such a conflict. I guess I now have to reintroduce 1 at a time to see which caused the problem. I can live without the printer and web cam but if it's the joystick and/or Track IR, then that's not good news. Anyway, thanks for your help winz. PPP

Thanks for the pointers. I ran the Win 7 memory diagnostic check and this found no errors on 2 passes. Also, my PC has just come out of the repair shop with 2 new hard drives and a totally clean Win 7 install, so it would be odd if this was a memory problem seeing the PC has just had a complete health check - it better have seeing I paid £100 for the work done! 4GB RAM is also as per the recommended spec as shown on http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/world/dcs_world/. I fly FSX and IL2 CoD with no issues at all too. I have a tried a few other things too. I closed Steam before launching - no good. Also ran as administrator - no good too. I have even removed my anti virus software completely (AVG) and that hasn't helped. I did try removing the DCS folder as per Mustang's suggestion above. After doing this, the next time I launched DCS I was prompted to install an update. I said yes and after a few minutes 'validating local files', it downloaded a 118MB update patch to v. 1.2.4.11855.154. This was 'applied successfully' but still the game won't run. This is very very frustrating. I have submitted a support ticket, so we'll see what the devs say. Thanks again for your help. PPP

Thanks Mustang, but this didn't work :(

..., so here's what I have done since posting the above: Uninstall v 1.2.2.7570 (as per the PC Pilot DVD) Clean install of 1.2.4.11652 via download from http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/world/dcs_world/ Update GPU driver for Nvidia GTX460 from 311.06 to 314.22 Game still crashes on start up, even with all graphics options set to minimum. I can get as far as the main menu screen and some sub-menus, but as the game tries to launch from there, I get CTD every time. Usually after the first CTD, it loops back to the DCS menu before finally throwing me out for good. Crash logs attached. Please help someone! Thanks, PPP Logs.zip

Hi, Just installed DCS from the free DVD included with issue 84 of PC Pilot. Really disappointed as I get continual CTD after I get to the initial menu screen. Dialogue box just says "DCS stopped working". Am running v 1.2.2.7570. My PC specs are Win 7 64 bit, 4 GB RAM, i7 2600 CPU, Nvidia 460GTS Latest crash log file says: # -------------- 20130505-093337 -------------- # C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION at EE6B6E6D 00:00000000 00000000 00000000 0000:00000000 EE6B6E6D 0F2CF090 0000:00000000 DllCanUnloadNow()+4E5D 76E6112B 0F2CF588 0001:0005012B C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll KiUserApcDispatcher()+2B 76E618CA 0F2CF590 0001:000508CA C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll ZwWaitForMultipleObjects()+A FC291430 0F2CF690 0000:00000000 GetCurrentProcess()+40 76C12CE3 0F2CF720 0001:00021CE3 C:\Windows\system32\kernel32.dll WaitForMultipleObjectsEx()+B3 76D28F7D 0F2CF7C0 0001:00017F7D C:\Windows\system32\USER32.dll GetScrollBarInfo()+1DD 76D262B2 0F2CF800 0001:000152B2 C:\Windows\system32\USER32.dll MsgWaitForMultipleObjectsEx()+2E EE6B709C 0F2CF880 0000:00000000 DllCanUnloadNow()+508C 76C0652D 0F2CF8B0 0001:0001552D C:\Windows\system32\kernel32.dll BaseThreadInitThunk()+D 76E3C521 0F2CF900 0001:0002B521 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll RtlUserThreadStart()+21 Any help much appreciated. Many thanks PeterPanPan