Disconnecting / reconnecting USB peripherals causes MSFS2020 to freeze then CTD.
Tested in flight, multiple aircraft. USB numeric keypad. - physical disconnection of device. Freeze then CTD occur upon reconnection.
For those of you experiencing repeated and unexplainable CTD you may wish to check Windows events log to see whether you are seeing USB drop-outs as these could be the cause of your CTD.
Whilst you would hope to be able to plug/unplug a USB device without the software crashing, is there any need to do that?
Can’t you just plug in all the peripherals you need before you start the sim?
I think I could cause a CTD with quite a few programmes on my PC if I messed about with my USB ports enough
I have a PowerA brand XBox Controller I use to control the Drone when taking screenshots. It powers down after a few minutes of connection, and it’s on the same USB hub as my throttle, stick and Trim Wheel which all stay powered. I disconnect it in the middle of every flight and reconnect it in order to get it powered up. Hasn’t crashed the sim, but there are use cases where peripherals will not stay awake that you might need in-sim.
You shouldn’t have to remember to do things in a certain order to prevent CTDs. That’s simply an unstable program that needs to be fixed. No two ways about it.
Besides, the problem also affects wireless devices. I use a wireless XBox controller to control the external camera. And yeah, I lost my progress on a long flight, because I didn’t use the external camera for 15 minutes and the controller went into standby mode, disconnecting from the sim, causing a CTD.
Note to all.
This particular issue has been reported before.
I discovered that it was still an issue while I was messing around with cable management with the sim running, not something I usually do but having noted it I decided to test further - with several scenario’s.
I really only posted this because there are many threads of folks trying to diagnose CTD’s.
Not all CTD’s will be caused by intermittent USB peripheral disconnection, but if this helps a few then that is a few less CTD threads, a few less tickets and a few more happy fliers.
Just had that problem this weekend with my USB wireless stick. Replaced it with a PCI wireless card with a better antenna and more then doubled my internet speed. So I am kinda glad it happened. I do not get many CTD’s but every time it has been hardware related.
Similar issue here since day one. I have a USB KVM switch with wired keyboard/mouse connected to my gaming PC and my work laptop. I switch between the two systems frequently during the day while I’m ummm “working”.
Switching away from from the gaming PC while MSFS is running (thereby disconnecting KB/Mouse) results in a freeze of the flightsimulator.exe process for 30-45 seconds (not responding in task manager). During that time 3D rendering is stopped. After that it recovers on its own.
Then switching back to gaming PC (reconnecting KB/Mouse), same thing happens again, task not responding for 30-45 seconds, 3D rendering stopped, recovers on its own.
Doesn’t matter if in flight or just sitting at the menu, behavior is the same.
Sometimes it does CTD during that sequence but I haven’t been able to reproduce it consistently, not sure what triggers the CTD instead of it just hanging temporarily.
Well this is now half-fixed following the patch for SU5 released on 07/30.
Before this patch disconnecting / reconnecting USB keyboard + mouse resulted in MSFS freezing completely for a good minute. Now after the patch it doesn’t freeze at all when disconnecting but still freezes for a minute when reconnecting
So well done Asobo I guess 
This has been happening on PC for a while.
For it to be suddenly addressed in a hotfix so soon after Su5/Xbox release must indicate it was at the core of some of the Xbox ctd’s
Why would you point this out apart from trying to defend buggy software.
USB devices are meant to be plugged/unplugged on the fly. It shouldn’t crash/lock/hang any software. Ever.
Ya this issue has definitely not been fixed. Still getting CTDs when my inputs disconnect or reconnect.
Anybody found a fix to this issue? Im on SU9 and everytime a usb peripheral disconnects msfs freezes. It was never fixed.
Hello All, after some troubleshooting I found out the issue. I have a Corsair Mouse Dark Core RGB and for some reason everytime it goes to sleep or looses connection or runs out of batteries the sim crashes. I swapped my mouse and connected it, then disconnected the new mouse to see what would happen and nothing the sim never crashes. I put the Corsair mouse back to see what will happen and disconnected the mouse and the sim crashes everytime. Swapping my mouse weirdly fixed the issue. Its very stable now. Not sure what the issue is with the corsair dark core. Anyways if changing all the usb power management options hasn’t worked then go ahead and try to disconnect each usb peripheral one by one. And if you have the Corsair dark core mouse start with that one. I hope this helps someone.