Should I wipe my system and start over?

Let’s be honest. Back in the days of tape drives and floppy discs, file corruption was a real thing. The users only hope was to reinstall the software to correct hidden gems.

Today’s SSDs are far less susceptible to corruption than modern HDDs and modern HDDs are light years ahead of the 20MB grinders we used 40 years ago. The chance that a read-only file would become corrupt is so exceptionally small that even the space program works on a “reboot” not a “re-install” protocol.

Unless your computer was recently struck by a hypersonic micro meteoroid that by some miracle actually piped a hole in a platter, there are really only two possible states. The drive works, or it doesn’t. A HDD may corrupt data but, in most cases, only while in the throws of death.

There can be a load of garbage in your computer that can cause no end of mysterious effects. There are also some very simple tools available to “take the garbage out”, for users that do not have the computer savvy to do the clean up manually or don’t want to.

Basic computer maintenance/management dictates that we don’t randomly accept requests to download stuff on the internet and we don’t ask for more information about our long lost Saudi relative. If you don’t know what is on your computer, take it to someone that can clean it out.

Bottom line. Wiping and reinstalling is a sledgehammer that can quickly put the inexperienced user in a black hole of crashes and fails. In the process of doing a wipe you will lose all the chipset drivers as well as Windows and MSFS and GPU drivers. How many out there even know what chipset they have? How many know whether they should be using Realtek HD Audio drivers or Windows HD Audio drivers. Do they know that only one of those will allow sound through the HDMI cable, depending on the motherboard chipset.

Pretty sure I am going to get spammed for even mentioning it, but a lot of problems users are having are the result of bad or missing chipset drivers, poorly configured bios settings, invalid overclocks or conflicting settings. Sure there are bugs, too. Really hard to tell the difference sometimes. A reinstall is not going to correct any of those issues. Sure you can always use a restore point and roll your system back to the last clean install. Question is, when was that done? Does it have the same drivers? Were the chipset drivers done correctly when that install was done?

The right thing to do is to make sure that you know what drivers your computer needs and make sure they are installed and configured properly. If you don’t know, that’s OK. There are tech shops out there that can help. Be sure to check around and make sure you are taking it in to the right shop. The shop with the reputation for doing it right.

Let’s stop wiping and re-installing. Let’s stop un-installing and re-installing. Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it. The time spent on useless endeavors could be spent so much better by cleaning and confirming everything is right. Then you will be able to concentrate on settings. If your issue is persistent, document it and submit a ticket. It just might be a bug.

Just remember that if it is a bug, re-installing Windows probably isn’t going to fix it.

Disclaimer:
There is always an off chance that something malicious has corrupted a file somewhere. Usually only a safe mode scan will find it. Sometimes the only way to fix some Windows errors is to start over. If you must do that, make sure you have done your research and do it right.

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If you only have problems with MSFS the problem is likely MSFS, not drivers or windows or whatever. The typical game forum isn’t full with posts about CTDs and stutter issues. Most games work fine regardless of which virus scanner you use or which Windows update you installed. Let’s not search for problems outside of MSFS too much, distracting people from the real issue. The software is unstable.

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I don’t know about that…MSFS is probably the only program that uses all the resources a PC has. One weak cog and you know how that goes.
Not to say that MSFS does not have some issues it does but not the kind that are going to cause Crash to Desk Top or as some people say “unflyable”.

I have a mediocre PC, 2 year old technology, 2 -2tb drives, I formatted it and reloaded WIN10pro last August just to use it for FS. I don’t have any problems that would cause a crash to desktop I’m happy to say so, all I’m saying is if the problem cause was/is MSFS then we would all have it.
I wrote industrial sw for the past 35 years.

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How do you mean? Minecraft uses all of my GPU too if i turn off v-sync. I will have 500+ fps but it will use 100% of my video card.

If i run a CPU stress test it will use all of my CPU cores running an unrealistic heavy workload but it doesn’t crash or cause other programs to crash even if i let it run for 24 hours. There are enough applications heavier on the CPU and GPU (rendering etc.) heavier than MSFS. These run on all cores at 100%.

If a program crashes to desktop because it doesn’t get enough resources it’s badly written. It should use the resources available, and when it’s not available it will just run slower. You cant use hardware more than 100%.

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I’d wait until there are very few posters with negative posts … be a little more sure that your machine is the problem.

Coincidentally I just talked myself out of doing just that this morning.

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A CPU stress test does not test USB 3.0 chipset drivers. It does not output layers of audio through the wrong onboard audio drivers. It does not check compatibility of NIC software.

I have seen some of strangest “bugs” solved by changing from Windows Update drivers to proprietary MB driver packages. Don’t kid yourself. There is a lot going on in that unassuming box and MSFS REQUIRES that it all plays well together. I am unaware of any stress test available that hammers every component in a system simultaneously or one that confirms API compatabilities.

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MSFS shouldn’t require that it all plays well together. MSFS should be written in such a way that it works regardless, and if it doesn’t it should at least notify the user what is happening, give an error code or providing a log file to the user so the issue can be investigated and solved.

Also MSFS has nothing to do with audio or chipset drivers, the operating system is in between. Just like DX11 (the graphics API) is in between MSFS and the graphics driver.

The game runs on the operating system, the operating system talks to the drivers, the drivers run the hardware.

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Oh my, do you have any idea how many hardware combinations they would have to be responsible for!

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However the overall stability of your system is affected. The windows API needs to be able to accomplish the tasks asked of it by software that use the Windows API structure. That does not mean that low level programming does not have access to the component drivers directly. Unless you are one of the programmers that developed the software, you do not know what MSFS is accessing.

I have a golf simulator that refused to run unless I disabled the HDMI audio. I realized that a Windows update had replaced my Realtek HD Audio driver with the generic Windows Audio driver. Until I found that, my simulator constantly crashed as soon as I clicked out of the setup and the birds started tweeting. Replaced the driver and have not seen a crash since. Who knew? Not all software goes through Windows to get things done.

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You can still have a problem with your system but if software runs bad for so many people with CTDs and stutters it’s no longer an individual issue. It’s buggy software, too many issues. Very unstable.

I agree with the OP wholeheartedly.

However, people often come into these kinds of threads and shift around responsibility between the end-user and the developer of the software in question.

Let’s face it. There are boatloads of very demanding software out there that use everything your PC has to give. Be it 3D rendering software, video editing or distributed computing, etc., that run perfectly stable even at peak demand.

Any piece of software needs to be able to not oversubscribe system resources inadvertently and MSFS currently fails in these scenarios. The sim will just blindly take whatever is available and even more (causing a CTD).

For example, if the PC of a user can not handle the level of detail selected, the sim should be able to detect that there is not enough memory available and either automatically reduce the level of detail, draw distance or at the very least throw a warning message.

MSFS does nothing of the above as far as I know or at least not sufficiently. It’s tedious to troubleshoot and actually grasp what’s going on. I had constant CTDs for a while until I turned down the details. Now CTDs are rare, but in some cases, the sim still demands more VAS than my system is able to provide. That has nothing at all to do with wrong or missing drivers. It’s just not good memory management.

Every software provider needs to test on as much hardware as they can, Asobo just as much as Autodesk or Adobe or Pixologic. Other companies don’t get a pass on this and do better.

I am sure these problems will get fixed eventually but saying they are not present at this time or the fault of the user is less than helpful.

And of course, sometimes they are the fault of the user and this is what this thread is all about!

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I would not.

Of course, I would if I had a reason to do it.

Great advice except when it isn’t. I install the MB drivers, know how to set BIOS parameters, have the latest BIOS. Every Nvidia driver after 457.30 was bringing my system to its knees. My FS2020 system is a gaming system but mostly simulation system. I keep applications off my C drive as much as possible and Steam lets me do that easily. Wiping and rebuilding Windows is a PITA but not that bad.

I rebuilt Windows using my old install media, fully updated, and still couldn’t update the Nvidia driver past 457.30. I downloaded a fresh windows.iso from Microsoft and installed from that. This time I could install 466.11 and that day 466.27 hit. Upgraded to that just fine.

The repair option using the new .iso didn’t fix it for me. It did work for another guy. I had to do a full reinstall but that appears to have been key - using the new windows.iso. There probably is a more surgical way to fix whatever is the root cause but I don’t know it. What I do know is nothing was fixing my incompatibility with Nvidia drivers after 457.30 until I did the wipe/reinstall with a new windows.iso.

There appears to be different versions of Windows depending on the installation media heritage. I do know there have been around 10 revisions to windows.iso since I got my install media and license.

I’d bet a lot of people’s problems are something else, but I had exhausted everything else I could find to be able to upgrade the Nvidia driver. Wiping and rebuilding Windows only worked for me when I used the latest windows.iso to do it. But that was the ONLY thing I tried that did fix my system. And that’s the thing - it worked and fixed my system.

Some do apparently need to wipe and reinstall. I suspect there’s more than just me that need to do it. The thing for anyone doing it - don’t use your original install media. It can just put you right back where you were. Get the latest windows.iso from Microsoft and use that.

But this won’t be everyone’s problem. It is a PITA. But don’t blanket discount it. It was the only thing that worked for my system and only with the latest windows.iso.

Thank you for such a detailed Post.

100% agree with this.

When I built my machine last year, I intentionally went for bits and pieces that had compatible specs. I installed every driver, for every component. There is no such tool (of which I am aware) for Win 10 similar to BartPE for XP. Back then, I would use that great little utility to pre-load all my drivers when building a machine. Not to boast, but one of those old builds still runs today… with copies of MS Combat Sim and Flight Sim 2004 still running great. I’ve installed a new PSU, simply because after years and years I tend not to trust old capacitors.

“Wiping” a system is - more than likely - a waste of time and effort, and may even make things worse. Ask yourself this question: “Was my computer fine and dandy before MSFS got installed?” If the answer is “yes” then you probably found the issue causing the crashes, stutters, glitches, and resulting frustration. As a trusted old mechanic once told me back when I was a wee lad and aspiring mechanic, “If your car was running great before you changed the spark plugs, maybe you should start there.”

Having said that, I still fall prey to the temptation to uninstall/reinstall from time to time. Why? Because it is so easy. If it was as difficult as getting the number two spark plug out from under the A/C compressor on a 1970 Buick Skylark I might not be as tempted to mess with things. :slight_smile:

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Simple answer - is MSFS the issue? If so, no do not wipe your system. Just a waste of time.

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This is true to an extent. As mentioned earlier though, it is possible that through some low level access to various components, ie: sound drivers, it is entirely possible for errors to arise that had not previously been exposed. My golf sim example above is a classic case. Even though the system had been running fine prior to its installation, the golf sim crashed continuously until I found the generic driver conflict.

Anytime you encounter crashes, your first steps should always be to ensure no hardware issues exist. A hidden issue like my example can waste valuable time emailing back and forth with support just to have them scratching their heads and asking you to do a reinstall of sometimes dozens of libraries, attached accounts, Windows components, etc., leading to the inevitable full re and re of your system. All of which could have been solved with a simple setup change.

I know we have stability issues, but far too many people are NOT having issues to discount our own systems out of hand.

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True that.

I’ve taking to starting task manager prior to starting Flight Sim, and killing processes related to Radeon monitoring software (i.e. Adrenalin, crash reporting et. al.) so that I don’t have background processes polling the system at inopportune moments.

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I will say I have found a few issues by trouble shooting this game, I have no idea for how long but my memory was running at half speed … d’oh

I also figured out I was having a write issue with one of my drives, brand new Samsung needed a firmware update.

It’s sort of gimmicky but I found most of it with the “User Benchmark” program, it’s pretty good judging if components are up to baseline performance.

It totally crashed my VGA overclock that passes every other test I’ve ever run?

Thanks for this one.
Firmware. Amazing how many components need a firmware update right out of the box. More amazing how many users never even consider it. I have a 1080HD Wyze webcam that I could not for the life of me get to switch to 1080 HD. Worked great at 720 but 1080 was never even listed when opening cam menus, no matter whos software I used.

It wasn’t until I was writing a C++ library for a cam monitoring program I was mucking with that I noticed that when enumerating the cam 1080 still wasn’t listed as a capability. Never even crossed my mind that a webcam would have firmware. Was thinking driver but that was up to date. Stumbled onto a Wyze firmware update procedure and the bells went off. Updated the firmware and, boom, I now have 1080P available in all software.

Drives, some soundcards, cameras and even some joysticks have updatable firmware. I even had a monitor that wasn’t recognized by windows as anything but generic, until I did a firmware upgrade.

Little things…

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