Screen Freeze

[Tigerhawk 3]

I have been having an intermittent problem, where FSX-SE freezes its graphics completely yet the sound carries on playing (engines, environment etc).  It is not the 8 min 15 freeze as it doesn't unfreeze and the only way to close FS is via Task manager.
I run FSX-SE in windowed mode and the mouse curser does not show over the FS window, only over the desktop part of the screen and the windows taskbar.
I have Orbx Global, Vector, Europe LC and England installed. Using W10. I also use ASN, Rex Direct + Soft Clouds, Radar Contact, AI Smooth and AISeperation, and also AirTraffic Manager to limit AI to 100 aircraft. There is no problem with OOM as I had more than 1GB free when it happened today, and a similar amount on the other occasions.
It has happened with ConcordeX (twice), the Wilco Airbus and also the Wilco E-Jet 190.
When it happened with Concorde it seemed to be almost in the same place on both occasions, somewhere just after the decel point over the Bristol Channel which made me think it may have been something to do with scenery loading.  However it happened again using the Airbus on taxi out at UK2000 Heathrow.  I googled possible causes and read about a possible problem with FS Realtime, so I stopped using that after that lock up.
After that I had done about 18 flights with no problems (varying from sub 1 hour flights up to 4+ hours) until today, when it froze again just as I was reaching cruising altitude of FL360 over the English Channel en route to Malaga from Stansted, which leads me to think it possibly isn't a scenery problem either.
There is no entry for FSX-SE in the Event Viewer, only application hangs for AISmooth and RC, and in Task manager the Processes Tab shows FS as normal with slight variations in CPU and memory usage as if the program was running as normal.  However, the details tab showed FSX as Not Responding.

 

I have a 1 year old PC - i5-4690 quad core 3.5Mhz, GTX750 Ti (2GB), 8GB RAM, runs FS at 30 FPS (locked) no problem away from UK2000 EGLL/EGKK where it can drop to about 15-20.

 

Anyone got any ideas/suggestions?

 

 

[charliearon 3,017]

Could be as simple as an AI aircraft that has problems when it's used.  Do some simple things first like turning

 

AI aircraft slider to zero and run some test flights.  If it still happens, then turn the AI back up and maybe don't

 

use AI Smooth/AISeparation and see if that helps.  It will have to be a process of elimination, with so much

 

going on.

[Tigerhawk 3]

Thanks Charlie, though the problem happens so randomly i fear it will be impossible to track down the cause.  I repeated the flight today and it all went without a hitch.

[ALF1 15]

Jim is good at diagnostics. But he needs you to post as I did on the thread above the diagnostics so he can direct you to the problem.

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

I have been having an intermittent problem, where FSX-SE freezes its graphics completely yet the sound carries on playing (engines, environment etc). It is not the 8 min 15 freeze as it doesn't unfreeze and the only way to close FS is via Task manager.

 

This is a known bug.  Only way to stop it is to use the task manager.  In the future go to Windowed mode by clicking on Alt - Enter.  Do not ever use Alt-Tab.  Okay, you didn't do that?  Hit Alt-Tab?

 

 

 

I run FSX-SE in windowed mode and the mouse curser does not show over the FS window, only over the desktop part of the screen and the windows taskbar.

 

This means your flight simulator is not in focus.  Check your Mouse settings to make sure it detects games.  If that is enabled, then disable and check.  I have never heard of an application open on the desktop where the Mouse pointers do not show up on the game that is open.  You could have something scheduled running in the background.  Maybe your anti-virus program or anti-malware program is scanning your system at a scheduled time.  Maybe something is being downloaded for Windows Update or your anti-virus/anti-malware programs.   You should check out the processes in task manager and see if anything that shouldn't be running is running.

 

I know you can have a freeze during a flight over the water (water uses a lot of resources for waves, etc.).  Make sure the water setting is not set to max.

 

Freezes also occur when resources get low on your computer system (not the FSX-SE application).  So, you could be showing 4GB's of VAS for FSX-SE and it could still crash if there's something running in the background taking up resources for your whole computer system.  If you are running a browser in the background, that can sometimes be a killer depending on what's running and how many tabs are open. 

 

Another major resource killer is a wrong config of your virtual memory.  I recommend "System Managed Size" but many think they have tons and tons of memory and try to set up their own and they mostly fail because FSX and most of the add-ons are resource hungry and they eat up any fixed settings fast. Click on your Windows search button and type in virtual memory, look up in the menu and click on how to change virtual memory settings or something like that.

 

The strangest part of your problem is the fact the cursor is showing on the desktop but not in the application.  That is certainly strange.  This means that FSX-SE is not being seen for some reason by Windows.

 

 

 

There is no entry for FSX-SE in the Event Viewer, only application hangs for AISmooth and RC

 

So, there you go!  AI Smooth and RC are causing the freezes.  I hope you are also looking in the right place in the Event Viewer as described in the AVSIM CTD Guide.

 

Another possibility for the freezes/OOM's is tweaks.  Tweaks do not work if not properly employed and most systems are not tweaked correctly.  The Bufferpools tweak brings down a lot of systems as well as the AffinityMask tweak.  If you have them, just comment them out in your fsx.cfg and try the flights again.

 

Lastly, the add-ons you are running are know resource hogs.  Lots of eye-candy.  When on long flights and landing at a resource intensive area such as UK2000, the demand on resources is massive.  I have the same situation here when flying from FSDT Chicago to FlightBeam's Wash Dulles.  If I am flying a resource intense aircraft like PMDG's 777 and using ASN and then maybe turning on photoscenery for the area around Wash DC, I pretty much always have anomalies like freezes or an OOM or the sim slows to a slide show.  I do not know of any solution other than to turn off the weather and disable the photoscenery.  Otherwise I have to have my fingers crossed on landing that I can land and be able to taxi to a gate.  In my case I'm going to see if I can disable some of the massive eye-candy in FlightBeam's KIAD or move up to a Haswell E system with a Nvidia 1080 video card.

 

The AVSIM CTD Guide has many more suggestions on fixing problems like yours.  Look at the back section on fixing freezes during flights.  If you bring your FSX-SE back to the default by moving your fsx.cfg, dll.xml, exe.xml, and scenery.cfg to a temporary folder.  This will mostly bring fsx back to the default.  Run the flights again (if there are entries in the dll.xml for the Concorde or the Airbus or the Wilco E-Jet or the aircraft you want to use, you should then just disable everything else in the dll.xml instead of moving it so you can use the aircraft).  Run the flight again and see if this fixes the problem.  If so, it is one of the many add-ons loaded in the dll.xml or exe.xml or the scenery.cfg.

 

Hope you find a solution!

[Tigerhawk 3]

Thanks Jim for your excellent support, as I said earlier I fear this is going to be tough one to figure out, mainly because it happens so randomly.  I'll have a read of the CTD guide again and get back to you with any observations.

[DavidV935 6]

Jim,

I've experienced the same things as Tigerhawk (Dave), and when FSX freezes during flight and sound continues running, the mouse works for open non-FSX windows, but not any FSX window. I have read your CTD guide and incorporated many of the suggestions in my pursuit of a smoother working FSX. Lately, I have been experiencing a phenomena that I haven't seen mentioned in these threads - If it doesn't freeze, FSX periodically, randomly, and without any input of any kind goes to PAUSE. That's better than a freeze or CTD, but it certainly makes me wonder what that heck caused that?

 

In pursuit of better frame rates, I upgraded system RAM to 16GB; bought an AMD Radeon R7 360 video card with 2GB video RAM (yeah, I know, it's not a high end card, but it was better than the integrated video on the motherboard); and upgraded my power supply to 600W. I bought the AMD video card because my HP computer has an AMD chipset that is supposedly comparable to the i5 Intel processor. Thinking that would all help enable a better FSX experience, I then bought and installed FSGenesis North America and World, GEX North America and Europe, and REX Essential Plus Overdrive.

 

Your comments about going to KIAD are similar to what I experience when going into my home airport of KSTL with freeware addon scenery installed. During descent to STL, my framerates drop from mid-20s down to 4-5 when I get within 15 miles and descending down to around 3,000 ft. It doesn't freeze, it just stutters badly.

 

Your CTD guide was quite useful along with your basic settings guide. Thanks for writing those! I'm coming to the conclusion that no amount of money spent on my PC for FSX will get me to the kind of game performance my kids get on their PS4. I need to start lowering my expectations and become happy with that.

 

Cheers

Dave

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

Your CTD guide was quite useful along with your basic settings guide. Thanks for writing those! I'm coming to the conclusion that no amount of money spent on my PC for FSX will get me to the kind of game performance my kids get on their PS4. I need to start lowering my expectations and become happy with that.

 

Thanks Dave for those kind comments.  As I have stated many times, FSX/P3D run great with the default setup and no addons.  Heck, you can even turn up your settings higher and it will work well.  Then you start adding add-ons like weather, eye-candy airports and aircraft, and fancy eye-candy ground textures and things go downhill fast.  Of course each addon developer is not going to give in to making his product work as well as the default.  Well, the default is, the default and they are replace it with huge amounts of eye-candy as eye-candy sells.  This is why sim config settings, including the display driver have to be turned down somewhat depending on what you are running during a specific flight plan.  People don't like that.  They didn't have to have the settings turned down when just the default stuff was installed, why turn it down now? 

 

I like KSTL too and that's one of my top 10 destinations.  I have Taxi2Gate KSTL so a lot of eye-candy.  I have some issues landing there too some time especially in bad AS16 weather and in a PMDG 737 or 777.  I sometimes fly from there to Wash Dulles and that's a chore when landing as my VAS counter shows I'm nearly out.  It's all very upsetting especially if you have just spent two hours or so getting to the destination only to see an OOM or major stuttering.

 

In P3D I have turned off ground shadows and that has helped a lot. 

 

Best regards,

Jim