My freezes are from a USB keyboard that has a rechargeable battery.
Goes to sleep to save battery (I think).
Always is 30 seconds.
Anyway, there are some good threads for stuttering.
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I resolved my MSFS freeze issues by changing a setting that has plagued Windows for many years: power management of ports.
To reduce energy consumption, Windows has a default configuration of turning off ports that it perceives as being idle. At best, you will experience a lag while the affected port is re-activated (e.g. you moved your mouse), or you may need to unplug/plug your peripheral device, or the port may not come alive at all (the source of complaints about dead ports). This power scheme made sense years ago, when it was important to squeeze out every watt. With today’s machines, not so much.
This issue can affect both USB and BT ports, which is why troubleshooting often seems to have random results. It’s not the type of port, per se. Rather, it’s how effective individual devices are at re-energizing sleeping ports. And meanwhile, MSFS pauses while it’s waiting for the device input while the port is waking up (or not).
Here is how I resolved my freezes:
Device Manager > Human Interface Devices > BlueTooth HID Device > Power Management Tab > Uncheck 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controllers > Intel® USB 3.1 … > Power Management Tab > Uncheck 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
. . . and repeat for everything in Device Manager that appears to be relevant.
Note that you will not be changing how the ports function, nor how they are configured. You will simply be telling Windows to refrain from killing the power to those ports when you haven’t moved your mouse or controls for a while.
I have not experienced any freezes since I changed these settings.
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Thanks to FederFlyer;
I stopped it but only via the USB 3.1 Host Controller
Windows 10 has a feature that you can turn on off for certain
wireless and Bluetooth devices.
“Power Management” tells the computer if it can turn the power off to save power"
Right click “Start”
Click Device Manager
In Bluetooth Devices, I didn’t see any device with the Power Management feature
Double click Human Interface Devices.
- I have 2 Bluetooth HID Devices - both have it
- I have 6 USB Input Devices - all have it
Double click System Devices
- Then double click Universal Serial Bus ontrollers
- Then double click Intel(R) USB 3.1 Xtensible Host Controller - 1.10 (Microsoft)
Click Power Management
On this USB Controller is a Check Box for “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”
Mine was checked.
I unchecked it.
My Bluetooth Rechargeable Keyboard stopped causing the freezes like it did before.
Note: I don’t know if this applies to any device that is plugged
into a USB 3.1 port or if this is only for this one device and it installed this controller.
In this case, it’s a Bluetooth so what does that have to do with USB 3.1. I guess a BT gismo that plugs into a USB port would be if your PC didn’t have BT built into the MB.
What is confusing is to determine which device in this Device Manager list pertains to the device that is causing the freezes.
I unchecked it but I’m not sure that I want this rechargeable
keyboard to sit here for hours draining the battery when I am not using it.
If I keep it unchecked, I’ll have to be sure to turn it’s power switch off.
Like, yea, that is going to happen.
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To clarify, the power management issue is more relevant to ports than individual devices.
In other words, if the power to the port is automatically turned off, then any device using that port will be affected if that device is idle for a while. The results for individual devices vary because device designs vary in their ability to wake up ports, and to wake themselves. Thus, when you are in Device Manager, you certainly should look at the device settings (e.g. keyboard), but mostly you are looking at the computer ports (e.g. USB host).
I take a simple, blunt force approach. In Device Manager I start at the top of the list and and look at the properties of every potentially relevant item. If an item has a Power Management tab then I uncheck the box.
For many items I am unsure what they are or what they do. But because all I’m doing is setting it so that it won’t randomly surprise me with power-off actions, I change the power management setting. If that creates a problem (never has over the past two decades) then I can always go back into Device Manager and re-check the Power Management box.
For those who are interested in more details:
The reason individual devices are a factor is that not all devices are designed equally regarding waking up sleeping ports, which makes troubleshooting a confusing endeavor because you get different results for different devices that use the same port.
One device may be designed to periodically ping the port while the device is idle, an approach called “keep alive” or “heartbeat” that prevents the port from powering off. It may appear to be the device that works best with your software program, but it’s not a program compatibility thing; it’s just the device preventing the PC from putting the port to sleep.
Another device may be designed so that it has a fast response to your actions. The port is asleep and the device wakes it very quickly. It may appear the software program is slow to recognize your input but actually it is the lag time of the device waking the port.
Another device may have a poor design that is very slow to wake up the port (long lag) or may not wake it up at all (program appears to freeze, but actually it’s just waiting for a signal that never comes).
And if these things don’t make troubleshooting confusing enough, battery-powered devices have their own power management schemes. Was the long pause in your program because the port went to sleep, because the device was slow to wake up the port, because the device itself went to sleep and was slow to wake itself up, or a combination of these things?
I eliminate these potential issues by turning off power management for every USB, BT and WiFi port on my PC.
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Thanks for the additional info.
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Thanks everyone, some really great information here.
Many thanks to all the technology experts for the good advice. Whenever I didn’t use the keyboard or mouse for a while (on long flights), there were dropouts of up to 20 or 30 seconds. Now all problems are solved. Many thanks for that.
Thanks everybody, this has (so far! crossing my fingers!) solved my freezes and crashes after an hour or so of a flight. Great tip.
I’ve been getting constant freeze up since I bought this simulator. Through every upgrade. Nothing has improved. Freeze freeze freeze freeze. Apparently they do not know how to fix this problem. I have given up on this Simulator for the most part. I went back to xp11. It works way better and it is way faster on frame rates. And I do not think it looks too bad.
Since Update 5 I’ve got these freezes that I’ve never had before. Even on the update manager, in the menus or in flight. My SSD and RAM are tested ok and my CPU and GPU are not fully used. My Community folder is empty. Windows 10 and all my drivers are up-to-date. I don’t use any wireless device.
I can make a freeze happen by disconnecting any USB device. I read all your previous posts and unchecked every “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” everywhere in the Device Manager. But the problem still occur in the same conditions…
Does anybody have the same issue ? Could you help me please ? Sad my game became unplayable…
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i have the same exact issue and its basically stopped me from playing because my controller has a dodgy wire connection that always disconnects and it just freezes completely for so long, only happened since the new update and its ruined my experience
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Same here, since Update 5 i get 10 second long freezes nearly every minute. This happens both in the menu and in flight. Everything up to date and never happened before this update.
since SU5 I have random long pause, sometimes up to 30 seconds, I always think it’s about CTD, but no.
as the pause are very long, I had time to check several things.
windows is still responding normaly, I can open task manager and check performance, during this pause the GPU drop and stay at 1%, the rest looks ok.
what the hell is happening.
I never ever had this before.
except this the performance are good.
I try to roll back to older nvidia driver but same.
I have no clue
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Getting CTD’s at the home menu, just spawning into the world, at the controls menu. Haven’t even been able to start an aircrafts engine yet.
Completely unplayable for me.
3080Ti
11700k
I have this random freezes too: GPU is maxed out at 99 %. Then drops to 0 % for a view seconds, then back to 99 %. After a view minutes it repeats this process. It happens in flight and in the menu-screens as well. I did not had this pre-patch. Empty community folder, fresh rolling cache and latest drivers. Less frequent when using rolling cache. Looks like a memory allocation/purging thing. Im using a 3090, so plenty of memory available. Im fairly tech-savy, but here I have no clue whats going on.
Also getting this annoying long freezes.Happens when I move my camera around or when the water weather with water effects.
I have the same issue, freezes like 1 or 2 minutes , seems like it’s gonna CTD but returns
other times I get the CTD
Some here have suggested the long pauses are due to USB device/ports powering off, thereby forcing the game to re-enumerate the USB devices. So I disabled power management for all USB devices to let them stay ON, and connected only my keyboard, mouse and XBOX controller to the motehrboard’s USB ports directly, yet still continue to experience long pauses. Is there a way to monitor which devices are connected/disconnected in the time order, using USBDeview?
Even if the long pauses are indeed due to USB device detection, I’d hope MSFS can work with USB devices in a non-main thread, and not exhibit the long blocking behavior… I’d really like to understand how the pause is happening.
That was the solution for me. I always suspected the USB Ports as problem for the freezes and therefore disabled power safe mode in energy settings. But that didn’t help.
After finding this old threat where MSFSRonS suggested to disable the power management in device manager for the HIDs and USBs I did just that. And now I don’t have no freezes anymore. To be honest, I just had two. But before I had at least 2 every minute.
Happy hippo!! 
I installed 1.18.14.0, and flew over Tokyo in C172 for 17 minutes. No freezes! It looks very promising! Before this hotfix, I had a freeze at least every couple of minutes.