Keeping a system fit - avoiding "glitchy" behavior

User Support Hub Hardware & Peripherals
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I am sure that the lion’s share of the people here already know this, but. . .

There are a lot of posts by people who have strange, recurring or perhaps random, crashes, freezes, glitches, CTD’, and other seemingly random “Space Ghost!” types of behavior.

In many cases, the behavior is not strictly repeatable, but happens often enough to be troublesome.

First caveat:  I don’t claim to be an expert in gaming systems, but based on decades of experience building servers and business-class workstations, there are a few things I have learned.

Second caveat:  This advice is primarily directed to purpose built PC systems, though a lot can also apply to laptops and consoles to a greater or lesser degree, depending on accessability.  (i.e. How easy they are to open.)

  1. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

    • 99% of all the glitchy problems I saw with customer’s systems was resolved by a thorough cleaning.
    • Dust, crud, pet hair, and other cruft accumulates remarkably quickly, especially if the system is sitting on the floor and/or under a table on the floor.
    • Opening the system up, (preferably outside, preferably if there is a breeze), and using up a case of canned air (depending on gunk level), solves many problems.
    • Don’t forget to blow the dust out of the PSU, CPU/GPU coolers, the front of the system behind the trim panels, behind the motherboard, and anywhere else you can find dust.
    • Laptop and console users can blow dust out of their systems, even if they cannot be opened for service, by blowing backwards through the outlet vent(s).  if there are covers for memory or add-on cards like Wifi, open them and blow there too.

  2. Refresh heatsink compound at least annually.

    • Assuming you have access to things like the CPU and GPU heatsinks, it’s important to periodically refresh and renew the heatsink compound, no matter how excellent and expensive, because it eventually dries out and/or looses thermal conductivity.
    • When I was servicing systems, those systems that weren’t cured by a thorough cleaning, responded well to refreshing the heat sink compound.
    • I typically refresh heatsink compound on very active systems at 6 month intervals, and less active systems at 1 year.

  3. Adjust CPU, Graphics, and system fans so that they never shut completely off.

    • I have mine set to a minimum of 50%, rising steeply to 100% beginning at 50° reaching 100% at 60° C.

  4. Avoid overclocking.

    • Overclocking is not always your friend.  It can overstress the graphics, cause glitchy instability and overheating.

  5. Keep an eye on BIOS, Windows and graphics card updates.

    • Don’t be afraid to back an update out of it makes things worse.

  6. Check graphics settings.

    • High graphics settings can cause problems if the graphics card can’t handle them due to insufficient memory or capabilities.
    • For example:  I had a problem in XP-12 where if the distance rendering was set to the max setting, it would crash with a Vulcan error.  Things like this might happen to certain individuals in MSFS too.

  7. Make sure you have lots of system memory, especially if you have lots of add-ons or fly over complex scenery.

    • My system has 32g of memory which I consider a practical minimum, and I’d like to have more.

  8. Adjust power settings so that USB Selective Suspend, PCI Power saving, Hard drive “spin down” or sleep modes are set to “Never”.

    • Disable any other power saving features.
    • Make sure the CPU cooling policy is set to “Active”.
    • Disable “fast start” in the power features settings.  You will have to select “Change power settings that are currently unavailable” to change it.  This allows a shutdown and restart to completely refresh the system, releasing used memory and clearing out all the cruft from the last session.

I might add to this list later on if I remember other things.  However the suggestions about cleaning out the system and renewing heat-sink compound are the ones I recommend the most highly.

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Also:

  • Avoid “Hibernate” and “Sleep” when shutting down the computer.
    • Not only are they potentially unreliable on restart, they don’t clear any cruft from memory and don’t reset necessary system features and peripherals to give you a fresh start.
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All good advice, just two observation on 2 and 3.

  1. Once a year is excessive IMHO. It’s an invasive intervention and not free from risks, especially for the GPU. According to my experience, even the standard thermal compound used by manufacturers (low-mid quality) is still good after 3 years. Of course I am talking about a gaming PC, not a 24/7 3D rendering workstation.

  2. When the PC is idle or just creating content / browsing the Internet, this is totally unnecessary and increases noise, dust and fan wearing. I use custom curves that keep fans at low speed when idling and make them ramp up quickly with temperature.
    These are the curves I use for my 360 mm radiator and GPU for an inaudible - while I work - and cool PC - while gaming:

image

image

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Well, I will share my biggest issue and its fix here.

Once my CPU was heavy loaded I was experiencing massive packet loss, random crashes/ PC shuting down, issues may goes up to the router desynchronizing it and loosing internet. However, I discovered that the main cause was the excessive interference generated by my CPU and motherboard on the LAN port due to unstable electric flow… That is my understanding, maybe my home’s electric installation being old doesn’t help.

Anyway I managed to resolve all of these problems, including internet instability, crashes to desktop (CTD), and sound glitches, simply by investing in an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

A UPS does not only protects against power surges but also provides a more stable energy flow to the system, effectively eliminating my issues.

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This is partly true. A simple (i.e. cheap) UPS will switch to battery power in case of an AC power loss.
You want to look for a UPS that also provides AC sine wave regulation - sometimes called AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation.) Not all have that feature, and is generally only found in more expensive units.

It’s true that the computer power supply regulates voltage to the motherboard and other components, and the motherboard itself has a voltage VRM (Voltage Regulator Module) but if you feed it quality sine wave AC power with a good UPS it certainly it reduces jitter and other power supply anomalies that can affect system stability.

I suspect many CTD’s are caused by house wiring voltage fluctuations (without an AVR UPS to smooth them out.) But also having a cheap power supply, and motherboard without a quality VRM is a recipe for instability.

I don’t have a really expensive motherboard (MSI B550-A Pro) but I chose it because it has a beefy VRM. I spent some extra money on a good 850W power supply. And I have a 1200W UPS with sine wave AVR.

I have never had a CTD.

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All good advice, but for many it is purely software. It is a good today and bad the next.

It is hard to get advice, because the responses are links to settings and in this case hardware.

I’m not having a go at those who help because they have good intentions. The issue is the constant frustration with this inferior program that creates these highs of the best fun ever and then to have that taken away for a reason that is often not possible to work out.

So from the position of someone who has had everything working, then unplayable to not even starting, my frustration can be seen as being hostile.

Because often those giving advice can’t understand that MSFS is so variable, and problems are well beyond their comprehension.

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I should have mentioned that an underrated PSU is a recipe for disaster too.

Many well known gaming machine builders on the internet recommend:

  • Getting a PSU from a reputable brand with a name you can pronounce. :wink:
  • Over-specify the PSU by a factor of about 1.5x to even 2x the expected power consumption because graphics cards can pull current spikes several times their rated steady-state power draw, and the PSU needs to be able to cleanly source all that extra power.  (That’s if you can afford it!)  I have always observed in all my electronic designs and construction projects that a beefy power supply eliminated a lot of glitchy behavior caused by a wimpy supply.
  • If you overclock, you need even more.

In my own case, the power draw was such that a 650w supply should have done the job, but there were issues. I upgraded to an 850w supply, (I couldn’t afford the 1kw supply I wanted to install!), and it cleaned things up nicely.

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  1. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
    This applies not only to the hardware but also to the software. Don’t load your system up with garbage apps. If you buy a pre-built system full of bloatware, reformat the drive and reinstall Win before doing anything else. Don’t let your kids download stuff of dubious provenance. Don’t let yourself do it, either. Always be sure to trust your software vendor/download source. The Win OS itself gets full of digital dust, crud, pet hair, and other cruft. I’ve been known to do a clean reinstall every 2 or 3 years if things are getting wonky.
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agreed, was about to mention debloating your system and keeping it clean and efficient.
personally I use ChrisTitusTech WinUtil program to debloat the system.
and every so often I also use ccleaner.

on top of that, remember to keep your drivers up to date, not just the graphics ones.

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Back when I was doing software QA (and hardware qualification), I used to keep a clean, pre-configured, bare-metal system image, (a-la Acronis True Image), and would periodically dump the system, write zeros to the first 20-or-so meg’s of the hard drive (using “dd” in Linux), and then specially wipe the first 512 bytes before doing a bare-metal restore.

Unfortunately, systems with things like MSFS can’t really be imaged without huge amounts of offline storage.

I typically rebuild my “main system” laptop about once every two years or so.  Maybe earlier if it needs it.

If you do want to do pre-configured bare-metal images to restore when things get squirrelly, I cannot recommend anything better than Acronis, it will back up and restore everything except, maybe, a wet pancake.  (And that might be an installable option soon! :wink:)

One other thing:
System Restore is your Friend!

If you don’t have system restore enabled, go do it right now!  (And create a manual restore point right away.)

With that enabled, Windows will periodically create “automatic restore points”, and most updates and installs create a pre-install restore point.

If you think you might be doing something dangerous with the system, (an update or install, etc.), create a manual restore point first.

If, (when!), something goes all pear-shaped with your system, you can open System Restore and revert the system/registry to a pre-disaster point in time.  All happy, joy, joy!

That one feature in Windows has saved me from a total reinstall so many times that it’s worth it’s weight in Gold.

Note:
If a program (like a word processor, browser, or MSFS itself), goes all pear-shaped, System Restore might not help unless there’s a underlying system issue that’s causing it.

There are other system repair utilities that you can search for on the web.

Note that unlike others, I do not recommend 3rd party system cleaners/repair tools.  I specifically look for native tools written for these purposes by Microsoft.

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That could be part of the problem. People ‘update’ simply because it is available. I never update a driver unless it contains a definite fix for a problem I am experiencing. I never update just because the driver is released as ‘improved’. ‘Improved’ for some, ‘deadly’ for others.

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Agreed. I’ve been using Acronis for years. System Restore is probably one of the most ignored utilities, yet it takes almost no effort to implement. System cleaners are another avoidance. When I’ve suspected a Registry problem, for instance, if restoring from a backup didn’t fix it, then reinstall Windows.

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i’d say don’t keep your fans on especially if not under load (like making posts on flight sim forums). It increases wear and tear and reduces lifespan and efficiency of your hardware.

Typically speaking your computer is pretty smart about adjusting fan speeds as necessary.

2nd this. Just because that plane looks cool on flightsim.to doesn’t mean it’ll work. If you need to visit…erm…certain websites there’s half a dozen that are actually safe and you’ll still be able to find what you’re looking for and get your needs met. And they don’t require a credit card number either!

But yeah the less shady websites you stay off of all together, the more likely you won’t have issues.

Also Windows Defender got pretty good in the last couple of years. I’ve never needed a 3rd party antivirus. As long as you stay off shady websites and keep the garbage off your computer Defender does just fine on it’s own. Plus you don’t have to fight the AV app when it decides that app you’ve been using for the last 9 months for flight simming is all of a sudden a virus.

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I agree. I draw a steady 630W on my 850W P/S when running a GPU stress test (there’s a meter on my UPS) but I’m sure there are instananeous current draws at times. I feel like my 850W P/S has enough headroom.

Another computer guy whose opinion I respect once told me (like you said) about 1.5X the max sustained current draw should be the minimum target, but that you shouldn’t go crazy. If your system draws 600W when stressed, you don’t want a 3kW UPS. :sweat_smile: Not only is it a waste of money, it’s actually not good for them to run with very low loads.

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Not to mention that you’d need an entire 'nother case just for the PSU!
:rofl:

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And a bigger home AC unit. :wink:

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Guys awesome informations! How about paging file on os?

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And a specially installed 380v, 3 phase supply to run it all!
:wink:

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Ideally, you should have enough RAM so that you don’t need to swap out to the paging file.

Swap space is always HORRIFICALLY slow compared to RAM.

If you’re swapping AT ALL you need more RAM.

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“Honey, why is your Tesla parked in your man cave?”
“I’m charging it with my Flight Sim computer.”

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