You mentioned that you had recently upgraded your GPU so you could take advantage of 4K. You also mentioned that the system ran smoothly at 1080.
Am I correct?
Agree 100% with your philosophy regarding troubleshooting!
Since I am not experiencing ANY CTD’s I am going to be bopping out of this forum, soon. I just kind of hung around to see what I might contribute. I am very glad I did, because of this post of yours!
I went into my Device Manager, as you recommended, and found perhaps 50 or so “greyed out” icons.
Although I didn’t notice any effect on my MSFS after deleting them all, I still feel better at least knowing that I don’t have all that unnecessary stuff loitering around in my system anymore.
Thanks for your advice!
BTW, as you seem to have some history in this area, I was wondering what your thoughts might be regarding my GPU driver. I did a complete removal and reinstall of both the GPU and driver recently (a GTX 1050ti) and just allowed Windows to “find” and reinstall both following a cold reboot.
I now have Nvidia 391.25 installed and working great, I might add. However, checking with the Nvidia site and others here in the forum, it appears that the latest driver is considerably newer - 465.89!
What to do… what to do?
There are always updates. Many of them are to provide new or better support for specific titles. Some users recommend rolling back any NVidia drivers to 391.25 for best performance. I tend to always apply updates when they are released. If I notice a downgrade or an issue arise I will roll back to the previous one and wait for the next update, which usually solves any issues. (The same holds true for Windows updates. I have had some that completely sewered my system.)
I am running 465.89 and not seeing any downside. Just make sure you DO NOT use NVidia Experience to “Optimize your game settings”. It will overwrite any settings you have in MSFS and usually do a poor job. I tried it once and lost 25% fps as well as horrible visuals. Automatic is not always better. Spock said it best, “a computer may be more efficient but that does not logically mean a computer is better”.
Thanks for your reply. Tried the NVidia Experience after first installing MSFS waaaay back last year. You are dead on with how it messed up the sim all around. Abandoned it, immediately.
But I do prefer to try to run everything as close to “stock” as possible, so as to at least least minimize so-called “self-inflicted” problems.
I hadn’t noticed folks recommending V. 391.25, but I’m taking your word for it and I’m going to fly-along with it until Windows itself recommends an update.
Thanks again!
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Thanks for pointing out… but Im not crying about a mod. I was merely weighing in on the statistics. Starting to have CTDs after Sim update 3, also with the default CJ4.
And yes, I have submitted tickets to zendesk.
Νo i didn’t said anything about 1080.It makes no difference when i lower any option which i have
Yes, I am having CTD,s every day now, have only one Aircraft in the Community folder and two Liveries, it was only a month ago when I was really happy with the game because I didn’t have any at all! Now it’s just a nightmare. Going to take all the settings down to the next lower level. But as someone stated on this post, my CTD occurs in settings but more often than not when planning a flight, or something really basic never in flight, or even at airports that lower the FPS to 19 still no crashes there.
When in the air going from A to B I have 30-40 fps the CPU is @ 22% usage and under 60°C
The GPU is around 70% usage and under 62°C in other words loads of headroom?
I have 32Gb of ram and the highest I have seen is 20gig usage in the game.
P.S.Edited the CPU usage.
Connection 65 Mbps Ping 10 ms and as steady as a rock!
Window 10 pro 64
Ryzen 7 3700X
GIGABYTE RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB GAMING OC Pro
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (DDR4-3200)
Gigabyte 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe
Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE
MSI Mag341CQ 3440 x 1440
P.S. Zendesk? I cannot get to it, just going around in circles?
Not picking on you Scandi. Your post just happened to be the one that motivated my post. I could have grabbed a quote from any of a few dozen posts recently, all saying the same thing.
Wanted to add a little perspective to why this may be.
There are thousands of posts that say that they have been flying for months with no CTDs until INSERT UPDATE HERE was released. They always follow that opening statement with, “Nothing has changed”.
In my experience through all the previous incarnations of flight simulator, the one thing we all do is try to squeeze the most performance we can out of our systems. While tweaking settings we often overlook the basic principles of a clean, stable baseline. That does NOT mean a wipe and reinstall of Windows and MSFS. That step is WAY overused and often improperly done, creating new demons. Not to mention it is a monumental waste of time is is unlikely to solve anything. You can read here how to get that baseline.
My point is that in the pursuit of that last 1fps increase we put our system at the hairy edge of stability. Now any feature addition or maybe a graphics change introduced as in SU3 the settings we so carefully balanced, become unbalanced. Maybe we dip into the unassigned memory pool and now something breaks. Often times, when that happens, the answer is to start dialing back some of our tweaks. Find the stable baseline again and slowly push the limits back up again.
To say that nothing changed, or that the update caused the CTD is merely our way of passing the blame. “I had my system running perfectly and now the sim crashes”. Why? Because the developers added something or changed something that pushed your finely tuned system ‘out of tune’. If we had left a margin of error in the tuning then we would not have gone over that hairy edge.
The act of pushing technology to its limits is inherently unstable. We can overclock until the system gets unstable, dial it back a smidge and call it good, but when the load increases, we need to dial back to find the new stable limit. It is part of this hobby. Technology will never “catch up” with the flight sim world. We will always be out on the edge. If you build in a wide margin, (eg: I can get to 65fps but 50fps looks pretty good), then you will reduce the surprises.
“Keeping up with the neighbors” is going to either break the bank or break the relationship you have with MSFS. If your maximum performance is 28fps at 1080, then dial back your settings a titch and be happy with it until you can upgrade the hardware. Just because a user here says they have a similar system and they get 75fps does not mean you should melt down your GPU to try to get there. Either they are lying about the frame rates or they are lying about the specs. Find YOUR stable spot and ignore everyone else’s.
This post rambled WAY past my initial thought, but suffice that, If it crashes now and it didn’t before, something HAS changed.. It may well be a bug. More likely it is an increase or change in the load on your overstressed system. Get back to baseline and tweak away.
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Thankyou for your earnest and thorough post. Absolutely right, dialing back and find a stable starting point is always the clever thing to do. After 30+ years of flying in virtual skies I can surely muster some more patience, as well 
My system is falling behind and I really should upgrade, but getting hands on hardware in these times seem to be tricky.
In the meantime I make sure to have most my sliders “to the left”, either “low” or better: OFF 
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Hello guys,
I still have CTD problems too, this was after I updated the FS2020 to the latest version.
The sim is closing alone between 20-40 during the simulation.
Before, I played normally, without any drop in framerate.
Here is an error I captured in the event viewer:
"The FlightSimulator.exe program version 1.14.6.0 has stopped interacting with Windows and has been closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.
- Process ID: 251c*
- Start Time: 01d723f998a57f45*
- End Time: 4294967295*
- Application Path: \? \ Volume {f1cc20c0-215c-0d50-6ce2-66f16e0f254b} \ FlightSimulator.exe*
- Report ID: f882171a-20af-4d4d-9fe7-456153094e1b*
- Failed full package name: Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.14.6.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe*
- Application ID for the failed package: App*
- Failed type: Quiesce "*
In my opinion I think that above all who has to solve the CTDs is Microsoft together with Azobo, an end user should not try so hard to have a simulation experience.
I still have CTD problems, anything I update and I inform you here.
My configuration:
Intel i5 10400F
NVIDIA GTX 1650 4G
16GB RAM
480 M2 SSD
Windows 10 Home
I am about to leave this thread, since I haven’t had any CTD’s since last year and my hardware is not really very representative of those posting their problems in this thread, anyway.
However, I would like to submit one final observation:
I know for a fact that a key element to obtaining zero stutters is to set a cap on your FPS that gives you a solid straight horizontal FPS line (no dips or dives). You should use VSYNC in some form or other to set a sustainable FPS. That target is absolute. If your system can’t meet it, then you must lower something - FPS cap or graphics settings.
Typically you have to adjust the MSFS graphics settings, I.E. Terrain Level of Detail, etc. to attain that solid FPS. But a non-fluctuating FPS, I believe, has to be your standard against which everything else is adjusted. When FPS is allowed to fluctuate all over the place, stutters and jittery visuals usually result.
I have read in many of the other forum threads about folks seeing FPS variations during their flights typically with high-end GPUs and CPUs and complaining of stutters and CTDs. That seems to be a common denominator - FPS variability. Don’t tolerate it!
Lock your FPS to something you can live with, 30, 40, 60 FPS, whatever, but do NOT let it vary. If you’ve set it too high, your GPU will overload and FPS will fall below your cap. (Bells and whistles sounding!) Drop your cap, or drop your graphics settings. But do NOT turn your FPS loose and let it vary, or you’re probably going to have issues.
Just my experience! Perhaps it might help someone…
Lenovo Legion Lap-top
7 Generation I7
GTX 1050ti
16GB RAM
250GB NVME SSD
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This is the wrong attitude to take if you want to have any level of flight simulation experience other than short and poor.
It has been said hundreds of time. There has not been a system built yet that can run MSFS at full settings and resolution at an acceptable frame rate without stressing the system to the limit. If it doesn’t crash it will stutter and slow.
Take the time to find the base stable rate that your system will run the sim and tweak from there.
If it ran fine before, then it will run fine again. The updates will inevitably add load to your system. That is what happens when you ADD to a program. They also changed the way the graphics are drawn and presented so the settings you had before are now obsolete.
You chose to participate in a growing, evolving hobby. This is NOT an out of the box and done experience. Eventually the ideal recommendation will not be able to run at any where near the settings it is running today. If you do not want to adjust and upgrade as the sim grows and evolves you have embarked on a frustrating journey.
Take a moment…Crash to desktop without error message - #3149 by willisxdc
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This sounds a bit like my case, It generally started after early March update (1.14.5 I guess) and for whatever reason got worse about 10 days ago. Before I disabled Xbox Game, I’d get CTDs in the settings 99% of the time but if I managed to load a flight then the game wouldn’t crash (of course these were 5-minute flights so can’t be sure).
Since I disabled Xbox Game Bar, I’ll still get a CTD in the settings but only if I switch between MSFS and Windows apps while I’m browsing through the menus. So I’ll just remind myself to not press alt-tab or the Windows key and then I can stay at the menus as long as I want, I can plan a flight at my leisure, I’ll load it up and after that it goes very smooth. I’ll switch between apps without issues, I’ll pause and resume MSFS etc, no CTDs at all. Today I even did my first 1+ hour flight since the issues began. I’ll get the rare hiccup every now and then (like a 0.5-second stutter) but this may be due to my maxed graphics as I haven’t got around to optimize them yet after the several reinstalls.
I somehow doubt my workaround will work for you, but do try to disable Xbox Game Bar and see what happens (perhaps AMD Adrenaline overlay as well just in case, as I have both disabled).
All well and good, fine ideals and all that BUT, back in Sept I bought a brand new fit for purpose PC, with well over MS suggested specs just for FS2020. Got occasional CTDs up until the Dec US update. Nothing but trouble since. I have no add-ons, overclocks or anything else. I have an active Zendesk ticket which produces an occasional unhelpful response. In desperation at one point I gave my PC to a tech who wiped it and reinstalled windows 10 and FS2020. Nothing else. Still too many CTD to make it useable. As I sit, I cant get more than a few seconds into taxi before the screen freezes for as long as it takes for the dump program Zendesk gave me to put about 19Gib onto my C drive, then it crashes.
X Plane works perfectly. So forgive me for disagreeing, but the problem lies with the vendor. My children who are all mad gamers simple cannot believe my FS2020 experience/
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Hi Zeppos
I don’t use Xbox game bar or GeForce Experience now, just Afterburner… When I get on today I am going to try switching off AI first as someone said it helped them and see how it goes. If that fails I may try all medium settings and work my way back up. But if it crashes on medium settings then all hope is lost.
Hi Willas, so as for bloat on the PC, I have about 8-10 programs that are not Microsoft, so hardly bloat, anti-virus, photoshop, PowerDVD and when I check usage on the desktop I have GPU = 0 and CPU = 0.
I play World of Warships hardly a taxing game, but everything is Maxed Out even the sound is on Ultra and at 3440x1440 and zero crashes it is locked at 80 fps though.
CTD on decent into KSEA from KSFO… Time to put this garbage on the shelf for awhile. MSFS is just a giant waste of time at this stage.
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a note: have in mind this is not a private forum. you should not post your contact data public.
I assume you have already read the FAQ and increased your virtual memory (pagefile) ?
What, if I may ask, are the specs of the system?
- CPU
- GPU
- Motherboard
- PSU
- RAM
- Monitor / Resolution
In your BIOS, do you have,
- XMP enabled?
- Virtualization enabled?
- Is the CPU set to default or is the BIOS “turbo mode” (different names depending on BIOS)
- Other custom modes set?
- Is your memory set to default (according to your CPU/MB compatibility {in the manual}) or does it match the label on the memory?
Based on your post, there is absolutely NO reason for the sim to run. You either have an instability due to system configuration or you are attempting to run the simulator with settings that exceed the capability of the system.
I assure you that there is not a bug that targets one system and not another. I am sure that is why ZENDESK has been “unhelpful”. If they cannot isolate a sim specific fault, then they will be unable to solve your problem. The dump may help them understand why some configurations are failing. With enough data from enough users with the same problem there may be a config recommendation come out of it.
If you have an interest in solving your problem, there are some very knowledgeable people here that are willing to help. You will need to be open to the possibility that it IS the way your system is setup or the settings you have in-sim. If that is a stretch for you, let us know now, so we can turn our attention to someone that wants to solve their problem.
EDIT
I forgot…
- What anti virus software are you running?
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another example for why @willisxdc asking for the pc specs…
If you scroll a bit within the thread, you may find out that there are some users which get a brand new, but broken, PC or a completely wrong configured PC.
Drove an hour on the weekend to help out a buddy that bought a new PC about a month ago. He has never been able to use it for anything other than web browsing. Even trying to watch a movie would cause it to crash. Because he purchased it at a “Big Box” store and not a computer outlet, they told him that all systems were tested prior to packaging and if he wanted he could ship it to the manufacturer for warranty.
I booted it up and everything looked fine in the BIOS and Task Manager. Nothing obvious jumped out. I decided to make sure his GPU/MEM were seated properly and popped open the case. Problem solved.
The CPU heatsink was lying in the bottom of the case. Lucky for him it was a full tower case, or I am sure that those fins would have shorted something on the MB. A little paste and 4 clicks later, we sat and had a beer and watched a movie on his massive 4K display.
Got to love those “brand new” computers that run everything “perfectly”.
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