Ctd ctd ctd ctd ctd ctd ctd

Getting constant CTDs as well, only managed to actually finish about 3 in 30 or so flights since the past update, and those were all short VFR hops. Tried all of the suggested fixes I can find on the forums.

Are you getting CTDs just as you press a switch? It doesn’t crash on every switch press, but ever crash seems to coincide with a switch for me. Touching anything on the overhead panel in the A320 is like playing russian roulette for me.

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I guess I can consider myself blessed, as I have 2 adult sons who are programming and hardware techs.

I spent a long time discussing with them my “gamer” frustration and we came up with a plan after all the online/forum suggestions, that I faithfully implemented, did not work “for me”.

Along the way I have discovered that there is not a single cause for CTD and that “my” cause may not be “your” cause. Which makes it more difficult for asobos and gamers alike.

I will skip to the end…after doing everything that I am about to type, last night I successfully, for the first time ever, flew a full flight, a perfect ILS approach, with no CTD.

I am well aware that one flight does not prove much, but for me it is a BIG step forward.

Here is what we did:

  1. Added a new 1TB ssd drive, as my current C: drive did not have enough space left.

  2. I installed a fresh copy of windows 10 on that drive. Added updates to the windows 10 install, but did NOT install the “latest updates”.

  3. I installed all factory motherboard, video card and sound drivers, NOT the generic windows 10 drivers.

  4. Installed steam, and steam vr installed on a faster drive.

4a. I have a second hard drive, a very tiny drive, that runs about 7 times faster than my standard C: drive ssd. This is where I installed steam and my msfs2020.

So to be clear:
a. I have a normal C ssd drive that boots into my much crowded windows 10 chock full of all types of apps and nearly full.

b. I have another D ssd drive added last night with a fresh install of windows 10 and nothing else. Both a and b are set up as a duel boot on my computer.

C for my normal day chaos, D for my flight sim needs only.

The I have a G drive, very very tiny, extremely fast. This is where I installed the steam, steam vr and msfs 2020.

  1. NO anti-virus installed

  2. NO additional programs installed

  3. Turned “game mode” OFF in windows 10.

  4. Set up Nvidia 2080Ti. This can only be done with a more advanced video card I am told…right click on windows desktop / select display / select graphics settings / hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling / turn ON


at this point I tried loading a sim brief flight plan into msfs 2020. Immediate lock up.


  1. Under the windows power management:
    a. Tell windows NOT to put any hard drives to sleep - set minutes to “0”
    b. Disable windows power management

At this point I tried a flight. CTD right after takeoff.


Started another flight, noticed my wireless USB headset was off, turned it on, immediate msfs 2020 lockup.
Installed manufacturer drivers.
No more lock up.


  1. Device manager / on ALL USB and human interface devices / UN-check the power management scheduling that allows windows to shut the device down or put it to sleep (i.e. so they will stay ON ALL THE TIME).

Following all this - I flew successfully, perfect ILS, no CTD

I will need about 1 month before I am truly convinced this is a permanent solution for my situation.

I post it only in hopes that it might help some.

Stay tuned…you never know what could happen LOL

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Thank you very much for that write up! I may end up directing a couple people this way.

Alongside the virtual memory increase, I also freed up 100GB of data from my C:// drive… I went from 5 GB free to 125GB free. Given that is the common denominator between our stories, maybe this should be given more attention as a reason for instability and CTDs

Edit:
2 more CTD.

Went into the bios, set everything to default.

No overclocking anything via the bios.
This had no effect.

My memory speed was dropped to 1/3 of what it was: 3200 down to 2100
This had no affect.

Set up and flew again.
Not even out of the traffic area and CTD.

Edit 2:
Found that the new m.2 drive that my msfs 2020 is installed and running on was using Microsoft generic drivers from 2006.

Downloaded and installed the current drivers for the m.2 drive.
This had no effect.

Then…a little light at the end of the tunnel.

I was speaking with my son, and he told me of a time then he was having trouble with a server that kept dropping.

He found that is was running on USB 3.0, which I understand has issues.

He moved the server to USB 2.0 and it ran like a dream.

Could it be that simple?

After checking I found that my VR PIMAX 5+ was running off a USB 3.0 port.

We changed it to a USB 2.0 port.

The following flight was perfect, smooth, seamless, crash free, AND my VR was not as “glitchy” when I move my head.

I realize again, that it is only one flight, so I’m not getting too excited…but I really am.

Will fly a few more flights and report results.

2 more CTD.

Took msfs 2020 “offline”, made a quick flight, still CTD.

Put msfs 2020 back “online”, took steam “offline” to where it would not communicate with my computer except to authenticate the msfs 2020, and after that it disconnects.

Flight was smooth. Flew all the way to the airport. No CTD.

Will report after a few more flights.

All the tests I did to try to
solve CTDs with my HP Reverb G2

I would add that you have to close all the applications that are running in the background, which can cause CTDs, because they can start for example to make an update.
On my last flight, I didn’t have a CTD during the flight, but RTSS.exe (RivaTuner) (Installed with MSI Afterburner) made me switch from VR to 2D. But it would cause a CTD.
I already had CTD because the Bluesoleil software (Bluetooth device management) which wanted to update.
For ÉnormeMercure163 it is GameBarFTServer.exe (Xbox Game Bar) which created a CTD for it.

I am always experiencing CTD when I have AI traffic set above 50%. I stopped using AI traffic.

Now that is one I did not think of. AI traffic.

I found a hang up when rebooting or shutting down with my motherboard, and then found out from the person I had acquired the board from that he had problems with it also.

So now that I know that, I spent the weekend upgrading a new board & cpu.

Still have a separate clean windows 10 partition to boot the flight sim off of, and a very fast drive exclusively to run the flight sim off of.

Will report as soon as I am able to test it out.

Gtx1060, 5800x and a quest 2. Was fine in vr previously but since last update or two, it’s a ctd the moment I enable vr in plane. Fine in menus. Usb disconnected event and yup, I’m aware of the usb issues AMD are having in that regard.

But this was rock solid and VR is fine via oculus link in star wars squadrons.

SO! Turns out it was the FA-18 mod. Selected another plane and it worked fine, no CTD and no USB disconnects either.

Also found this link https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/kic7em/psa_microsoft_flight_simulator_with_virtual/ that explained how to use it with Virtual Desktop so no USB cables/issues to worry about either. As I have plenty of CPU, this worked great - and I’m convinced it was even smoother than when cabled, which is a surprise…!

Main thing is no CTD, and no cables for me - so delighted once again. Something to try if you’re still plauged with CTD - clean out the mods folder!

No more CTD

IF YOU NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW WHAT WE DID TO SOLVE THIS, SKIP TO THE END.

Keep in mind, I still believe there are more than 1 reason for CTD.
This is mine. It may not be yours.
I only share it for us to co-mingle ideas and maybe we can all fasttrack a fix.


But first let’s Recap - what did NOT work for me:

I do thank everyone for their contributions and thoughts.


Tried creating flights with different software - did not make a difference.

Tried running as user then as administrator - did not make a difference.

No mods in my community folder - did not make a difference.

Not running any other add-on software - did not make a difference.

Not running any add-on aircraft - just what was supplied by msfs 2020 - did not make a difference.

Msfs 2020 up to date - did not make a difference.

Added 32GB to my page file - did not make a difference.

Added a new drive, for dual boot, with sim files only - did not make a difference.

Added a very fast M.2 drive - now flight sim boots to a prestine boot drive, and msfs 2020 then runs off a very fast additional M.2 drive - that did not make any difference.

Re-installed all factory motherboard, video and sound drivers - that did not work.

No anti-virus installed - did not matter.

No additional programs on the sim boot drive - did not matter.

Turned “game mode” off in windows - did not matter.

Turned off "hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in windows - did not matter.

Had a script created that in a few seconds will scan the entire computer system, and turn off anything that will put a hard drive to sleep and disabled windows power management - did not matter.

Exhaustive analysis of my bios - many tries and changes - did not matter.

No overclocking - of anything - did not matter.

I lowered AI traffic, then turned off - did not matter.


2 things I believe helped ME.

  1. Motherboard update
  2. Reverting from usb 3.0 to usb 2.0 for ALL my flight periferals.

After these, no CTD.


I noticed that on occasion my motherboard would “hang” when rebooting. I would have to turn the system completely off and then back on.

So…I installed another motherboard I had sitting around with an AMD 3900XT. Used the same 32GB ram, after all installed - computer worked better, but was not sure if it made any difference to my flight sim.

Finally last weekend, I notice that my throttle leds were “off”. They were always “on” I thought I had forgotten to hook up a usb cable while upgrading.

I was plugging it into a usb 3.0 add-on card, same card used with last motherboard that was “hanging up”. I moved that one cable from 3.0 to a 2.0 slot and the throttle began working again. Guess I stuck it in the wrong slot when upgrading. First I knew about the problem with usb 3.0.

We ordered a new 2.0 usb add-on card, and after installing it on Teusday, and installing ALL by usb cables into the 2.0 slots, all hardware worked smoothly.

Last night I flew a short 30 minute flight. No problems. No CTD. While flying, I would go in and out of the flight to make msfs 2020 changes. All kinds of things that used to freeze the program and/or CTD. All worked well for me. This is all in VR. I will comment about the VR in a moment.

Finally, in VR, made a 5 hour flight. No CTD, no freezing.

Too soon to tell for sure, but I am hopeful that I solved the problem.

I will post further, only if there is another CTD.


Conclusions:

  1. No one should have to work so hard to make an expensive product function. But with that said, it may have been me and a hardware problem all along, nothing to do with msfs 2020 or updates.

    I only do this because it helps me stay current with eye/hand coordination when flying IRL and you don’t have to spend all that money on fuel keeping your skill set up. I’m not using this as a “game”. Plenty of those. I using it as an unofficial training tool.

    Not sure yet if the problems I’m experiencing in VR is my hardware, software settings or the flight sim. At least now with CTD hopefully solved, I can begin troubleshooting this problem.

  2. VR is in cave man mode. Last nights flight was the most horrible VR visual I have ever experienced in msfs 2020.

    I use Pimax 5k+ with all current updates. Works flawlessly with Fly2, X- plane and DCS.

    I will post more about the VR in the VR section.

The CTDs are a lottery. On the same flight from point A to point B, you can have a CTD at best, on take-off, or after 5 minutes, like 30 minutes, like 1 hour or several hours.
The worst is when you have a CTD approaching the airport, after 10 hours of flight. The least “worst” is when you have a CTD 50 meters from the bridge.
But one thing is certain, it is that virtual reality is not in question.
When you do a 10 hour flight, you don’t spend 10 hours at FL430 with the helmet on. After a while the headset goes into standby, and the display switches to 2D screen. Yet there is still CTD.

i had the same story, what I did: use only wired stuff, mouse, keyboard etc then ok, go figure …

I would add that to my list of 156 possible solutions already tested that did not work. Hoping that this 157th solution will work …
But first, I still have to incur costs, without any guarantee of result.

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My sim is again working on 4 FPS. The performance update was great but they ruined everything. I don’t even know what’s new. Yesterday everything was great. Today it lagged in approach and then crashed!!!

I’m not using VR…yet…but I started having CTD’s for the first time after last update and this was an instant fix for me. I would sometimes get this breakpoint exception error along with the CTD.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/flightsimulator-exe-application-error-0x80000003/334962/19?u=tangoflyr670

Mmmm, virtual mem stuff should be only used in case of lack of memory, which is far from being the case here … Gotta go down the top-bottom approach, remove try, remove try etc.
For me I removed a lot of CTDs by scaling down slightly graph setting, and especially online traffic although I do have 75 Mbps.

Memory is not just about compensating for a lack of RAM. It is used, among other things, for several applications, to be able to use DLL…ect files at the same time, because it can be partitioned, something which would be impossible with RAM. But it is much more complex to understand, and even more to explain.

True that, just explaining how I got rid of my ctd in the end, although not logical… But yeah there are probably 1024+ reasons to ctd.

To begin with, it is not by having 50 subjects on the CTDs that things will get better faster.

no interest in being here and there Crash to desktop without error message
If to do that instead of having everyone on one subject with weight, with 50 subjects, smaller, the problem is diluted.

This CTD situation is driving me nuts. Bad enough I lost all my 1225 flight hours AND my entire Logbook, these CTD’s are getting worse and worse. I have experimented using most every airplane from the 747 to the yellow Cub in manual, IA and AP modes where available. I use Clear Skies only with Unlimited Fuel. My last 27 flights have resulted in 21 CTD’s. I have this sim installed on 2 very different PC’s with totally different hardware. My older PC meets all the minimum requirements while the other newer PC, which I bought specifically for this sim far exceeds the requirements and runs on all Ultra settings.
This sim is both my favorite program and also my most despised one. I am right on the verge of dumping this sim.
The makers of this sim need to address these HUGE issues like the CTD’s and lost data packages and stop putting lipstick on a pig with these other cute but unimportant “updates”.

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