I’m finding it impossible to install MSFS 2020 on a fresh Windows 11 install. I’ve been happily running MSFS2020 since the day of its release on this exact hardware (excepting a Video card upgrade a few months ago) but chose to re-install Windows recently after replacing my OS drive with a new, larger NVMe. I didn’t think anything of performing a fresh install.
But I’ve be trying for days to get MSFS 2020 install - the installation manager blue-screens at random points during the initial update. Always during the fs-base-cgl-0.1.75.fspackage.XXX file downloads, or during the extraction of that file set. Sometimes it gets stuck and downloads the whole 60+GB file set repeatedly, deleting the old files and starting over and over, until it blue-screens. Sometimes it simply hangs during file extraction for hours until it blue-screens. Usually it just blue-screens somewhere in the middle of downloading. The stop code is MEMEORY_MANAMGMENT and sometimes I can see an error pop-up that says there was an attempt to write protected memory.
I’ve tried un/re-installing MSFS, deleting the update files, installing on other dives (2 NVMes and 1 SSD), installing as Administrator, upgrading/downgrading Nvidia drivers - I’ve even freshly installed the entire system. I’m out of ideas. The fact that it’s a memory management issue makes me suspect drivers somewhere.
This system happily runs other games (Cyberpunk 2077, X-Plane, Stray, odds-and-ends) and I work on it all day without any issues. The MSFS install manager is the only thing that hits of weirdness. I’m using the Steam edition. Hardware is Ryzen 9 3900 CPU, 64 GB RAM with an Nvidia RTX 3080 with the latest drivers.
I don’t see any similar issues in the forums - excepting some odd download behavior - nothing about hard crashes like this.
I did some digging and it’s running at 1800Mhz which I believe is stock. My mobo is an ASRock X570 gaming board, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt great about the board, but I very pointedly have not over-clocked the CPU either.
I bring up the board because it has an Intel network adapter built-in that has been acting up - intermittent freezing. So I disabled the device and have been using a USB adaptor which does a full 1Gb just as well. On the one hand, that could indicated a larger problem with things. But on the other, MSFS is the only thing on this very busy system that has a problem.
Honestly I feel like there’s something “wrong” with my hardware that only manifests with MSFS. But I can’t figure out what. Wish I could read the memory dumps than happen when it crashes.
Additional info: if it gets to “Decompressing fs-base-cgl-01.75.fstackage.030” before crashing - it always hangs on that file and never gets passed it.
This is likely the case, and MSFS is exploiting this hardware instability more so than other games.
3600 Mhz (or 1800 Mhz) is not stock RAM speed for Ryzen 3900. The stock supported speed is 3200 Mhz, so you are running a slightly overclocked infinity fabric. I would suggest to bring this back to 3200 Mhz (which would be 1600 Mhz frequency) and see if this helps. The Ryzen 3000 memory controllers don’t handle 3600 Mhz RAM as well as the Ryzen 5000.
But yes, we know that XMP mode is OC and cause errors, in special that AMD CPUs. So disable that for test-case might be good idea.
Reason for BSOD is in 99% of the cases caused from a system issue ( hardware, driver ). We had also some cases where users upgrade hardware and while this somewhat goes wrong ( cable, lose hardware, psu not sufficent , etc ).
In some rare cases the BSOD was caused from Anti-Virus tool.
@thirstler1884 … you can try to lower the fps max in nvidia control center. If that helps, you know its somewhat with GPU ( in rare cases cpu overheat ). If not , you need to check drivers. Also candiates for causing BSODs are e.g. the Bluetooth drivers.
I remember also a cause, where a defective ssd caused BSOD.
And of course execute the usually things like chkdsk , sfc /scannow, etc…
Thanks! I cranked-back the fps in the Nvidia control center and it solved the BSOD problem - it no longer crashes. So it’s something with the video card or driver. I do still have that issue where it gets hung-up while decompressing files so I still can’t get installed. I’ve deleted the offending folder and started over. Hell, I’ve delete the whole contents, uninstalled MSFS and let it start over but it still gets hung up. chkdsk did ok but sfc found problems that I’ll have to address offline when I get some boot media created. Perhaps all of the crashing that was happening has turned the drive into confetti. I’ll update here if that fixes it.
not 100% only GPU … in case you lower the fps, you reduce the system-load in general.
Very often it points to the GPU, in special these BSOD case is like a safety feature. But CPU or RAM can in that case also the reason and the crash now while decompress might point to that too.
What I would recommend in each case is, that you try to disable RAM XMP-mode in bios. It is realy so often the root cause for trouble ( therefore also @ncbartschi mentioned it ). If that works, you can still try to tune the values, but for finding the problems always try with disabled xmp-mode
Also good idea is to download a little monitoring tool, eg. HWMonitor, and check the temps of CPU etc while its decompress.
Thanks all! (especially @MichaMMA ) Tried a lot of things. MemTest64 checked-out (but I didn’t believe it). I use NZXT CAM to monitor - temps never get high for GPU & CPU (and they are not over-clocked). Since the errors were memory-related I yanked two of the 4 mem modules out and was able to finish installation. yay I noticed in the BIOS that each unit was clocked differently when I looked at the low-level info. No clue what to make of that. Mem clock speed settings never seemed to make a difference for stability. I suspect the memory bus gets flaky with all 4 slots occupied? I’ll juggle the memory modules and put them all back in and see what happens after everything is installed/updated. I’d rather be flight simming than all this ■■■■.
Running with four memory sticks (especially dual rank modules) will always put more stress on the memory controller than with two sticks, so I’m not surprised removing two sticks fixed the issue. Even at stock memory speeds without XMP enabled, four sticks can give problems for picky memory controllers. Just because your system will boot and appears fine with four sticks, doesn’t mean you won’t run into stability issues.
I would suggest to increase the VSoc voltage to increase stability, but if you’re not comfortable doing this, it would be better to try and run the four sticks but at a lower frequency than before. Ryzen processors will typically require a Vsoc voltage increase to be stable above 3200 Mhz memory speed or when running four sticks. For example, my system will only boot with Vsoc at 1.1v using four sticks at 3600 Mhz.
… in case you lower the fps, you reduce the system-load in general.