How many CTDs do you have per number of Flights? Lets compare?

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103

@spaced1969, I simply don’t know what else to tell you.

As myself and others on this very thread have noted, CTDs don’t “just happen”. Like I said earlier, there is something about YOUR computer that is giving you problems other people simply don’t have.

Now, you say you’ve tried everything. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the reality is that you have not. If you had, somewhere along the line you would have found the problem, and hopefully been able to fix it. I’m not going to sit here and go through every single possibility with you, because it’s a long list. Literally any part of your PC could be just broken enough (which is to say it works right 90%+ of the time, but that 10% is what’s doing you in). If your system still has any warranty left, I’d be on the horn with tech support and absolutely INSISTING that they just flat up send you a new one, and hope that you just have that one in a million computer that’s a problem child.

If they push back on that request, then send them a copy of this very thread, and insist that they slowly start sending you replacement components, one by one, until you just stumble on the offender.

On the flip side, if your warranty has expired, then you’re on your own. Your only option may be to buy (or build, which ultimately is the better choice, but also comes with it’s own downsides) a new system. You could try doing it part by part, until you find the one that’s broken, or you can just go all in. Your call.

Do you know why computer bugs are called bugs? Turns out, one of the very first computers ever built (ENIAC, I think, but don’t make any bets on what I think), that was vacuum tube based, was having intermittent problems not unlike you. Well, they started going through the tubes one by one, thinking one might be a problem, and they were right. There was a moth (aka a bug) inside one of the vacuum tubes, and once they found it and replaced it, the “computer” (which your phone is stronger than by several million times, if not much more) started acting right once again.

You, my friend, have a moth in one of your vacuum tubes. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Now you have to decide if you’re going to go through them one by one until you find it, or just to replace them all and be done with it.

Alternatively, you could choose to do nothing, and just hope that one of the updates somehow magically fixes the software in just the right way to work around your moth. But I wouldn’t hold my breath about that. Since you don’t even know where your moth is, you can’t count on Asobo being able to magically find it either. Not to mention they’re not going to spend an ounce of effort fixing a bug that is affecting one person, especially when that person (you) can’t say what the root of the problem actually is.

Personally, were I in your shoes, I’d start by replacing my RAM, running at stock speeds (yes, that means no XMP, at least to begin with), and seeing what happens. Memory seems to be a frequent offender when it comes to intermittent problems. But the downside is that it may not be your RAM at all. :man_shrugging:

Anyway, I’ve written half a novel here (not unusual for me), so I’ll stop.

Good luck!

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104

@iSeek4Edmund, you may want to consider an actual RAM upgrade as well. Virtual memory is basically an insurance policy that prevents your system from having a hard crash in case you run out of physical memory. But it’s so much slower, even if it’s on an SSD (which in 2020, it should be) than actual physical memory, the best option is to just not need it at all.

I have 64GB of physical RAM, and I’ve never even come close to using it up, so I’ve gone back and forth on whether to even have the virtual memory turned on at ALL, to not give Windows an excuse to use it in the first place. I’ve got it on now, but now that you’ve got me thinking about it, I may turn it back off for a bit and see if anything bad happens. If it does, I can just turn it back on, but I have it set to something quite small. But with 64GB, I don’t think I’ll actually need it anytime in the short to medium term future.

I decided to go with 64GB because it was cheap, and I wanted to be 100% certain I could get the same brand with the same timings as the 32GB I started with. I’ve come d-a-r-n (come on profanity filter, stop acting like I’m a 3rd grader on a catholic school message board) close to using that original 32GB, but never even close to the 64GB I have. Of course, I’m not constantly monitoring it either.

Anyway, think about adding a couple of RAM sticks. It might help.

106

Oh no, that’s not good where you live. Can’t you just dig up another radioisotope thermal generator, it worked before… :joy: srry couldn’t resist!

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109

OMG stop it.

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110

I think you must be reading different posts from different people to me because that’s not my impression of this forum at all. I mean, there are always going to be a minority of people who don’t try to fix issues and are quick to complain, but in my experience, that’s not the normal type of post on these forums and I think it’s unfair to say things like “full” of “crybabies” or “infested”. And most people just need a hand trying to figure stuff out… and realise that this place is full of people with knowledge and expertise.

You and I seem to have completely different perceptions and experiences on these forums. Sounds a bit like you don’t really like it here.

111

I think @KevyKevTPA may be using a little hyperbole here, maybe even over generalizing, but he does make a valid point. CONFIRM there are no system instabilities or conflicts before assuming a bug in an extremely complex, system intensive program.

This is where much of Kev’s frustration comes from. There are many people on this forum with the knowledge and expertise to help those that reach out. Not one of those people have ALL the required knowledge but when pooled, the Ju Ju is strong. When the majority of those people are telling you that there is likely a problem with your system and spend hours of their free time, at NO compensation, to help you find it, it becomes very tiresome having those that came and ASKED for help continuously push back with comments like, “XPlane runs fine so obviously this game is broken”. All other software is OLD technology by comparison.

If you ask for help and the people that step up to help, who’s combined knowledge exceeds your own, suggest a troubleshooting path, PLEASE, just keep an open mind and follow their instructions closely. If asked to remove ALL overclocking, don’t moan that it will slow down your computer. Pushback will inevitably drive the helpers away and you will be left to your own devices.

There are plenty of people that have had serious issues. There are a large percentage now flying happily because they deferred to that greater knowledge pool.

Your insight is not far off Eddie. We all have different experiences with this forum. Just as we all have different experiences with the sim. To those here to try to help, The ones Kev speak of are like a CTD. We know they will always be there. Doesn’t mean we have to like it.

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112

Thanks @willisxdc and really all I have to add is really just around the fact that if something’s winding a person up and they’re not enjoying themselves, then it’s time to divert attention into something else, a different part of the forum or just go fly. It’s our spare time after all, and life is too short to be getting annoyed with people on forums.

I vote for self care every time. After all, one can’t help another if they don’t look after themselves first. It good ethics. :+1::+1::+1:

Have fun friends. :heart:

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113

its a new system i built myself…first built a pc back in the 486 days and probably built about 200 pcs back in the day…last pc i built before this was an amd A8 ayatem for my htpc which believe it or not im still using today, as have 6tb storage. I was introduced to xplane 11 VR by a friend, and picked up a cheap i7 4th gen pc with a gtx 1660…and bought a hp reverb g1…it kinda served its purpose but had to endure v low settings. I then bit the bullet and ordered a msi carbon ac b450 and ryzen 5 3600…32gb oloy ddr4 3200 …new case with modular 650w psu and 2x2tb sabrent nvme ssd plus an aio cooler for the cpu…the only used part is a asus rog strix 1080ti that i bought from a friend as he just got a 3080…system initially had a fair few bsod until i manually set voltage and timings for the ram, as per oloys website…since then everything has been good and have some good settings in xp11 vr, and have had some good 2hr flights. i did experiment with oc cpu, but decided gains wernt worth it. so everything is running stock…memtest has shown no errors on ran with 10 passes…cpu has been stress tested in intelburn and have run superposition many times. Its just msfs that has been a pain from 1st purchase…1st time run i got a 5min vr flight before cdt…then after that it mainly cdt at main menu…but sometimes it would CDT at asobo logo.
So where to from here ???

114

LOL nay thanks. 16GB RAM is honestly enough for the game. Upgrading to 32GB doesn’t really improve things for me, and an overkill since I don’t use my PC for work. I don’t think there’s fast 32GB RAM stick out there for my mTIX PC, so I’ll probably upgrade to that amount when DDR6 RAM is cheaply available LOL.

Increasing virtual memory fixed the problem, it’s free and easy. Yeah it’s much slower, but this game is main-thread limited.

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Not sure I agree with you there. I’ve got 64GB, which is definitely overkill even for super-apps like MSFS, but I’ve seen at times after a fresh boot, and with NOTHING running except for WMR and MSFS, and I’m using more than 20GB. And yeah, I know if you have more, windows will use it, but I figure if you keep your apps happy by giving them the RAM they want (even if it’s more than they “need”), then they’ll keep you happy by running right.

The phrase “Happy Wife, Happy Life” also applies to apps you want to like you, too. :rofl:

I don’t know what a “mTIX PC” is, but I would go for 2x16GB of a quality brand, as close as possible to whatever specs as what you’ve already got. When I built my system, I got 2 of those 2x16 kits, and they were Crucial CL16 3200MHz with the fancy RGB and all that stuff, and they were just $150 each. I don’t think most of us will be DDR6 ready for quite some time, especially if Intel keeps their promise and you can use a LGA1200 MB for their 11th Gen stuff, which YouTube has “promised” me is coming in March.

In fact, even though I’m quite happy with my 10600K, if I can just drop in an 8-core 11th gen something into my existing MB, and it offers a significant performance increase (on a per CORE level, not just by adding up more and more cores that MSFS won’t even use), I might actually be very tempted to do so. Plus the extra cores will let me run other things at the same time without starving MSFS of all the resources it can possibly use. But that’s several months out, and we’re talking about memory in the first place.

Anyway, if I were in your shoes, I’d drop the $120-$150 it’ll take for a nice RAM upgrade and call it a day. Sorry about writing an entire book to just say that lol…

116

@iSeek4Edmund, here’s what I’m talking about. This snip of task manager was taken after I did the following:

  • Rebooted my system
  • Started WMR
  • Started MSFS from an Icon, to avoid having Steam running in the background. Although it does fire up momentarily, I’m assuming to check that my license is legit, and then goes away.
  • Flew a simple daytime VFR flight in really nice weather that took about an hour in the Carenado PA44 from KEYW to KFLL.
  • Taxied to the ramp and shut my b1rd off.

And that’s it. Nothing aside from what I described above (and iCue that starts automatically and controls my lighting, but I’ve tested it and it uses basically no resources) was running.

As you can see, just Windows, WMR and the sim used almost 25GB of RAM. It surely could have run on less, otherwise people with “just” 16GB systems would be crashing left and right (unless that’s simply being compensated for in super slow virtual memory), but like I said earlier, give your apps what they want and they’ll return the favor.

Anyway, give it some thought. Ultimately the decision is yours.

Thanks!

Task Manager
Task Manager702×909 77.4 KB

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you can try take out your RAM and run 16GB with enough memory. You’ll be surprised how good it runs. Nothing like you mentioned. I’m glad you have 64GB RAM.

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I don’t remember ever having a CTD since the first release in august.

I do get some unexpected behavior if I don’t empty my community folder before updates, but everything is just fine and dandy.

I have about 125 hours logged (plus those that didn’t get logged in the past), mostly in GA aircraft w/ WT mods. Some turboprop and jet time, no airliners.

119

Same place we were before. There’s something about your PC that is causing you problems other people don’t have.

First, you’ve got a 5600 paired with a (used!) 1080ti. Not the world’s strongest gaming PC to begin with, and when you try to throw MSFS (with VR, no less) on top of that, well, IMO that’s just asking for trouble from the getgo.

Next, you’ve overclocked your memory. How many times has someone in this very thread said you need to remove ALL overclocks and see if that helps? Manufacturer’s instructions notwithstanding, an overclock is an overclock, especially if you have to start playing with voltages to get it done. Though 32GB is a perfect amount (for now anyway) for MSFS.

Next you have a 650W PSU. Is that really enough to power your components? (Not a rhetorical question, BTW, but one that I don’t know the answer to.) And are you absolutely positive it’s in 100% working order? 98% might be just fine for just about anything, but PSUs can get flaky and that 2% may be a problem for MSFS, as it just PUNISHES systems, especially mid-range ones like yours.

Hell, I’ve got a 10600K paired with a 2070 Super, and it punishes THAT, which is still close to the top of the line especially taking into consideration how few people have actually managed to get their hands on a 3080 or similar. Yes, they’re both overclocked, but if I was having random CTDs in MSFS, removing those overclocks would probably be the second troubleshooting step I would take, with emptying my Community folder being the first. And when you throw in that you’ve already had stability problems (which is what causes BSODs most of the time), it raises my eyebrows.

And even after that analysis, I go back to the fact that it could literally be ANYTHING in your system that isn’t operating at absolute peak performance and efficiency. Your PSU, your RAM, your (used) lower end GPU, your lower end CPU, and of them could be the culprit, and you have know way of knowing or testing aside from changing them out one at a time. Which I would do in your shoes, starting with the PSU and RAM. Actually, being in your shoes, I’d probably just buy (or have warranty replaced, if you still can) basically new everything until I found the guilty party.

MSFS just laughs at your stress tests!

Actually, if emptying the community folder and memory OC doesn’t help, the next thing I’d try would be reinstalling Windows (and I mean a FRESH install, not some bloatware filled OEM recovery partition crap), and MSFS from scratch, and going from there. It’s easy to do, fairly quick if you prepare a USB stick ahead of time, and only starts becoming a pain if you have a lot of other stuff to reinstall. Oh, and do a backup first, even if it’s just a copy/paste to an external drive, as doing a complete wipe and install is really your best bet.

But you can get a copy of your Windows Key (and any other applicable ones), plus a complete list of pretty much everything you have by using the free version of Belarc advisor, that you can get here. I’d also start using LastPass or another password manager so you don’t have to write down and remember all your logins. But make sure you have a secure, hard copy version of your master password, or you’ll be unable to get it working after you reinstall everything, and you might want to give it a few weeks to file all your passwords. Chrome and I think Edge offer similar things, but you have to be logged in to your google account (or maybe something different for Edge, not certain about that) for it to be portable. I’d also write down your MS account password, your Google account password, and any other ones that could be a serious problem (email?) if you couldn’t recover them automatically.

Now, to where should I send my tech support bill? Because your statement that you’ve “done everything” is now completely and thoroughly debunked.

Good luck!

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120

Guys, although a very good discussion on trouble shooting, this conversation is starting to derail the OP’s thread. I really don’t want to see this thread get closed because it is off track. There is some useful info here.

More appropriate location to hash this out would be over at…

121

So this has been odd. As per the link below, I’d reported a CTD ever 3-4 flights since the last patch.

But oddly, as of Tuesday this week (Jan 5), I haven’t experienced a single CTD.

Nothing has changed on my end. No mods added / removed. No driver, hardware or config changes to my system. No overclocks. No Windows updates. No changes to MSFS settings. Still using the same external tools as always (Navigraph, LNM). Yet it’s back to being rock solid as it was before the patch.

I can’t make sense of it.

122

I have noticed a lot of users complaining about, “can’t load”, “never crashed, now does”, “won’t download update”. Makes me wonder if the A/MS servers aren’t getting hammered when we have an update, even a small one. Literally millions of users trying to update at the same time people are flying test flights after updating. The load must be catching up to the infrastructure.

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No crashes again since the very latest update! 2 IFR flights with live weather and traffic. TBM from YBBN to YSSY and A320 from KPHX to KLAS. Beautiful. I did not include a destination runway or STAR in the KPHX-KLAS flight plan and had to Manually enter the ILS freq for 26R and add 26R with FYES transition in the FMS. Easy to find with a little poking around, everything worked beautifully. Nice jetway animation in Las Vegas. Much as I have loved Xplane, I haven’t touched it lately.

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In over 200 hrs of simming I have had 1 CTD. And that was from a known and now fixed problem. Having a USB device unplug while FS2020 is running.
So less than 1 CTD per 300 flights.

Happy new year all. This sim is fantastic.

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I had an odd one, just trying to load the game. It said I wasn’t connected and had to log in to xbox live while it was loading. After I did it simply locked up and I had to end the process. Second attempt no issues. It seems there are still some critical spots where it doesn’t like to have interrupted internet access.

The easiest CTDs to trigger are by going too fast, close over terrain. That is in slew mode or sim rate increased. Streaming obviously falls behind and at some point the sim will CTD instead of gracefully trying to keep up or simply showing the base terrain.

I’ve also seen areas where memory use goes up without any clear reason why. In South Sudan (very poor coverage) memory usage went up, just flying like regulalry, 152 knots ground speed, couple thousand ft above the ground. I wrote it down in my notes

12-09 Leer HSNI 9:24 AM
12-09 Malakal HSNJ 9:36 AM Odd memory usage increase, keeps rising, fps tanking
12-09 Malakal HSMZ 9:49 AM Bad memory leak, landing at 2 fps, slowing sim rate down as well
Memory usage more than doubled to 12 GB system ram, restart, not responding on exit but ram usage is going down
Patch appeared on restart, small patch
12-09 Malakal HSMZ 10:00 AM Still 7 GB ram in use despite flat terrain
12-09 Bentiu HSDF 10:05 AM Weird double airport marker (HSCY)
12-09 Bentiu HSDG 10:09 AM
12-09 Bentiu HSDD 10:13 AM
12-09 Malakal HSNB 10:21 AM Memory down to 4.3 GB, back to normal

It finally cleared up, not sure if that patch going live had anything to do with it. It was still elevated after the patch. Anyway that was a month ago. There is still some degrading performance over time, suspect memory related, couple crashes a week.

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