I’m curious if people find using MSFS a stressful experience, when you start experiencing CTD’s.
I am reasonably new to PC’s (built mine in June) after suffering through countless crashes and unpredictability on the Xbox, and it’s been pretty good. A faulty GPU aside (that was refunded and replaced) I’ve only had a handful of crashes.
This week however I’ve experienced 4 or 5 in the last week.
It starts to dampen my enjoyment a touch (although I still love it) that we have to go through so much troubleshooting at times, to enjoy the sim. It’s so unstable at times, and although I am realistic about the size and scope of this thing, and that there will invariably be issues at times, it can occasionally be infuriating and hands down the most unstable and error prone piece of game software I’ve ever come across in 25-odd years of playing games.
I wouldn’t swap the PC simming experience for a console, having said that.
Just my own observations and feelings from 2 years of using this sim, anyway.
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CTD’s are very annoying when they start to crop up. I had some a couple of weeks back very coincidental with buying the V35, I was convinced, then I found out loads of people were having the same CTD. It’s now been fixed.
Other CTD’s are less frequent. I’m constantly updating everything. Windows 11, drivers patches, NVidia drivers etc.
Few things to keep in mind/try -
- after NVidia driver install always clear the direct X shader cache. Failing to do so can cause CTD’s
- often some mods can cause CTD’s so either manually move them out or use the linker program to set up what you need. eg. I installed the Orbx Iceland mesh but had issues with 737 CTD afterwards. Uninstalled and 737 is fine.
- Make sure windows install isn’t corrupted. I’ve been using this and not had a CTD since.
Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files
- I can still get intermittent CTD’s when doing flights over longer distances, so I generally keep all my flights under 2hrs. It can be hit/miss otherwise if I get there or not & there’s nothing more annoying than wasting 2+ hrs of your time before getting a CTD.
- CTD’s do create error logs so use windows event viewer to see what any errors say and research them
I’ve got a lot to say on this matter!
I’m busy with work and stuff right now but will reply deeper tonight.
Suffice to say I think I’ve spent equal amount of time troubleshooting as I have actually flying (320 hours on log at the moment). I get that some of it is my doing by adding a lot of payware and freeware etc. but yes it’s unfathomably unstable and strange behaving at times. I can often see no pattern or reason for the various ways it crashes as often even with a few crashes in a row, if I remove all mods and load the game, it loads, then re-enable THE SAME profile of mods that was crashing a moment ago and it works fine.
Then it’s ok for a few sessions. Then it breaks the next day with no changes.
Heart in mouth every time I boot up now. But it’s worth it!! 
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I do update religiously myself but I’ll try some of those.
I don’t use an addon linker, would you recommend it? I don’t exactly have tons of community files but I do have about 250, so it’s a fair amount.
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I don’t use the add on linker, but many people do, I really should do though. I generally run with loads of mods, but sometimes if I encounter a problem have to copy some mods out and hide them elsewhere to debug the linker is what many use to circumvent that.
Unfortunately one annoying aspect to add ons is the official store add ons. There is no way to temporarily disable them from being loaded without uninstalling them. I wish they’d fix that.
tbh 250 is getting up there in mods! I do run with a similar amount and the associated slower load time.
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I am one of the (possibly few) ones that haven’t experienced many CTDs throughout the last 2 years.
Not sure why, but I am keeping my flightsim PC clean - religiously!! - not even internet browsing from there, and obviously, with addon linker, activate the addons that will be useful in the flight.
When CTDs occur, everyone says “empty your community folder”, but that’s an easy thing to say; how am I going to debug a CTD that occurs after a 2 hr flight on a PMDG plane, if I empty my community folder?
Regardless, I believe that good housekeeping improves the experience overall. For me MSFS is an absolute joy.
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Exactly how I feel, mate. Haha. It’s a truly wonderful, unmatched experience when it all comes together and works flawlessly. It is a sobering reminder of what the sim is capable of.
I need to stop downloading stuff from flightsim.to that I’m not overly going to use, as I seem to have some sort of compulsion to do it. Haha.
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It’s an affliction we all have! 
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I haven’t suffered much myself, to be fair. I just know how stressful it is, from owning the Xbox version previously.
I only use my PC for flight simming. I keep it updated religiously, and try to troubleshoot extensively if issues arise.
I understand it’ll likely never be CTD free but I would love for it to get more stable. Perhaps this will come with time.
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I think I’ll go through the community folder and do some housekeeping, and maybe attempt to exercise a degree of restraint
As I say, I would not swap the PC experience. I took it on knowing there would be a degree of troubleshooting involved, and that it was a risky undertaking, spending £1500 on a computer without knowing if the sim would work etc.
But I think most of us PC owners accept the risk, and understand it.
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Also worth keeping an eye on other stuff like say your motherboard BIOS updates. In prebuilds like say HP or Dell you have their proprietry support manager pushing those out before windows update will ever do so. On your own build you may have to check for those update yourself, but it’s honestly worth doing. New motherboards usually have quite a few bios updates in their first yr or two of their life.
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I try to refrain from updating the BIOS unless it’s necessary, given the risks. My board manufacturer (MSI) has released one small update, a couple of months ago, since I bought the board. I may update but I’m reluctant to mess with it haha. I wish the MSI center app updated BIOS without me having to mess around with flashing it. It’ll update chipset drivers etc itself with no problem.
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From my Dell/Alienware prebuild there have been about 5 bios updates for my motherboard (AMMT) pushed since January this year. Most labelled ‘red/critical’, so don’t discount bios updates would be my advice, they can be critical to your PC’s security as well as stability.
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Sorry to say but I have had less than 4 CTD in nearly 600 hours flight time and consider I have been lucky. I do not fly airliners but I do fly anything else. The CTDs I have had I can attribute to pilot error or silly connections. I do not have more than seven or eight Items in my community folder at any one time so this may help. Suffice to say I am very happy with the SIM.
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May possibly be worth me doing that, only having mods that are going to be relevant to whatever flight(s) I am taking at that time, in my community folder.
Trying it will do no harm.
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Another crash, here’s the event viewer log;
-
-
1000
0
2
100
0
0x80000000000000
2555
Application
DESKTOP-ISMH9KT
-
FlightSimulator.exe
1.26.5.0
00000000
FlightSimulator.exe
1.26.5.0
00000000
c0000005
0000000000b8ab52
c2c
01d8c1d8996b6524
C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.26.5.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe
C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.26.5.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe
2b78cd77-4d3d-4ce9-a991-14a080002d99
Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.26.5.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
App
Now I’m no expert, but this reads like it’s something in my community folder at fault.
Coincidentally (or not) around 80% of these recent crashes have come when using the Black square Caravan. Hmmm…
Edit, no it doesn’t indicate the community folder is at fault.
I still don’t think it’s a coincidence that this increase has occured after getting the black square caravan, though.
There’s one easy way to find out. (remove it for 24hrs). Also keep in mind that if you are using a mod like that then there can be issues with other GPS like mods, so another thing to try would be to remove any GTN750, GNS530, G1000NXi etc too.
I had CTD’s with the Iceland mesh in my community, but to find out I ended up removing all the mods I’d added since it was last stable. So revert to a last known good state as it were.
One support line for a major dev actually tells you to try removing the Garmin mod stuff first before reporting a bug.
I have removed the Garmin mods, I do have the TDS 750NXI as well. I will remove the Caravan first and see, then I’ll have to remove the TDS if that doesn’t work. I’d rather it isn’t that, seeing as I paid 50 quid for it.
But this rise in CTD’s only really started with the caravan. I had one crash yesterday in the Sting S4 and that was using the TDS. So I think it’s one or the other, that’s conflicting.