The new MSFS State Report is a file that can be generated within MSFS to help us at support try and narrow down the cause of the crashes. Deciphering this information, along with the other files we may request help us in providing an educated guess as to the cause. I personally look for the faulting module first, then base my troubleshooting off of the type of fault seen. As far as our response time goes, it is generally rather quick. We are a small support team, but very dedicated because we are doing something we enjoy and try to provide the best service that we can.
The most troubling CTD is the one that appears out of nowhere. Two hours earlier, youâve completed a 4 hour flight without issue, then load up again and CTD in the main menu. This happened to me quite recently. Sure would be nice to see what causes that.
In my experience, in the vast majority of cases, where a CTD occurs, the most effective cure/diagnostic will be to clear addons from your community folder and add them back until the CTD recurs.
Identifying the âguiltyâ addon might be made easier if you have recently installed something and you werenât getting CTD before. Otherwise, it might be a case of adding your addons back one at a time.
Iâve recently been getting CTD and it looks like its an airport scenery from flightsim.to that is causing the issue. I removed it and the CTDs went away, but as the CTD only happens as MSFS is starting and doesnât seem to cause mid-flight CTD, Iâm going to put it back until my Fenix A320 tour of capital cities has moved past it.
I second that. Could trace a few CTDs to faulty/incompatible addons myself over the years. I found Addons Linker of great help in enabling/disabling addons to find the faulty one.
Unfortunately, itâs not ever addons. I got a CTD after ~45 min into most flights after switching to DX12. Back to DX11 and no CTD since. Independent on drivers, I tried several ones.
And back to topic. Even if we are not able to extract much useful information from the crash reports ourselves, I find it a big step forward these are created now and can be submitted to Zendesk for further investigation.
Very useful for troubleshooting intermittent problems, obviously the hardest type of problem to resolve.
Deoxit, and other products from Caig Labs, are the real deal. Fantastic products. I did component level repair of circuit boards for 20 years. I learned of Caig Labs from my father, a lead repair engineer for Tektronix. Worth every penny.
Side note: worked like a miracle for noisy/scratchy Stratocaster pickup selector switchesđ
As my colleague stated earlier, we are a small support team. We are passionate and dedicated when it comes to the Sim and try to do everything we can to help community solve issues they are having with the Sim.
Investigating crashes is a process of elimination. It would make our job easy if we could create a report that would give us detailed information on what is causing the crash, but like users have already posted, with examples in this thread, this is not the way Windows / Games / Programs work.
There are cases that can be resolved with common troubleshooting and then there are the cases that no matter how many reports are created, they wouldnât give us the clue to fix the issue, for example:
Users see exception code 0xc0000005 (this is the most common case we see on the reports) crash on Windows Event Viewer
1st case: After going through all possible troubleshooting, the issue was with memory XMP profile, it was set to 4000Mhz and caused the crash, when memory was dialed back to 3900Mhz, the issue was fixed. And this was found only after running a memory stress test for +25 minutes.
2nd case: User wasnât able to finish installation on Steam, it got stuck in various files and no matter what we did, the issue wasnât resolved. Eventually we figured out that the user had Samsung EVO 970 Pro SSD. This drive had some firmware level issues and after updating the firmware on this drive, the installation was successful.
Good guide on how to diagnose crashing and other issues:
1st: Did something change when crashing or other issue started:
Did you update your Windows?
Did you update your GPU drivers?
Did you install a new 3rd party add-on?
Did you install new peripherals (yoke, throttles, eye-tracker etc.)?
Did you install new software on Windows (MSI afterburner, Corsair iCue etc.)?
Did you install new hardware on your computer (CPU, GPU, Memory etc.)?
âŠand so on
If the crashing still continues, you can create crash reports to diagnose the issue further.
We have a lot of guides on Zendesk how to diagnose CTDâs and other issues. It is recommended to go through those troubleshooting steps before submitting a ticket. If you are not able to resolve the issue, and you need to submit a ticket, remember to include all the steps you have already tried, so we can start the diagnosis correctly and will not ask you to do those steps again.
Iâm sure you are aware of the report that X-Plane generates when it exits, even if it doesnât crash. The âlog.txtâ file has a lot of useful information in it, including any addons thtat are loaded at the time, and really helps work out what was the last thing to execute before it crashed.
We can see this information with the MSFS State report:
It shows all loaded content (everything installed in the Official and Community folders)
It also shows all Simconnect connections, this is useful with diagnosing if you have programs that connect with the Sim, even when the Community/Official folders are empty.
The useful thing about the XP one is that you could look down the list, right to the point where the sim crashed, and therefore could not continue writing to the log. 9 times out of 10 the thing immediately before that was the issue. Not always, but usually.
Iâll take a look at the MSFS equivalent. I assume you can get it to spit one of those out on demand, even if the sim doesnât crash?
Hi,
What I liked about the XP log.txt was that any offending addon would be highlighted in some kind of a box.
Mostly my problems were caused by some incompatible addons. Either removing them entirely or replacing them with an updated version would usually solve the problem.
This is the best advice for those having constant CTD.
stop - eliminate all external and internal addons
Clear the cache, empty the community folder, return MSFS to default settings (even if you have the all star bleeding edge PC) and if you have a lot of peripheral controllers connected create in the MSFS controller setup and delete all but your joystick - just create a separate profile for the J/S only. (I think there is a percentage of folks who leave multiple control inputs for the same function active and overlapped) then run MSFS as bare bones as possible.
One thing I forgot to add is remove any factory overclocks from GPUâs. If the reference card from Nvidia states 3670Mhz, and you are clocked at 3770Mhz, and getting crashes, try notching that down with your tool of choice.
Easy to do, set it to run overnight while you sleep, and take a look at the results the next morning.
This is a reasonable definitive test â PASS or FAIL.
If it fails, there is really no point in perusing any other more complex diagnosis, till you get the Memory stress test running 100% reliably.
And just because it passed last month, does not mean it will pass today⊠that the nature of Memory FAILURES â they happen .
Also note, memtest86 does NOT run under Windows, so it is purely a memory test, not affected by any Windows OS issues â so if Memtest86 fails, it does not imply that you need to re-install windows ⊠something that nobody want to do unless 100% necessary !
Unreliable RAM can cause a multitude of problems. Corrupted data, crashes and unexplained behaviour.
Bad RAM is one of the most frustrating computer problems to have as symptoms are often random and hard to pin down. MemTest86 can help diagnose faulty RAM (or rule it out as a cause of system instability). As such it is often used by system builders, PC repair stores, overclockers & PC manufacturers.
