So after Jan 2nd I made the decision to leave FSX behind and switch to P3d 4.1 to take advantage of 64bit and not worry about OOMS even though I had managed them pretty good and avoided them.  The big reason was that developers are leaving it behind.  I had a rock solid FSX install which I never experienced CTD.

In summary I've spent the last 3 months struggling to have a stable P3D install that doesn't continually CTD.  I focus on the big recommendations (ntdll.dll is the faulting module).  The big 3 being, overclock, faulting scenary or too high settings.  My specs are 4790K originally overclocked to 4.7 with 1.265v with two Nvidia 980s.  I rolled back my overclock to 4.6 but left the voltage at 1.265 but still experiencing CTD.  after installing sceneries to a certain point P3D starting freezing and crashing on view switch from external to cockpit using S key or I'd see corrupt texture in the cockpit in FSlabs A320 like seeing ground texture in the cockpit displays.  By this point 4.2 was released in Feb so I decided to scrap the entire install and restart from scratch with 4.2.  I should mention in Jan when I did this switch I bought a 1TB SSD, and switched to windows 10 as well from windows 7.  it's a dual boot in bios as I have untouched my original win 7 and FSX that I can go back to.  

Ok so now I have a fresh install of 4.2 and did as a base Orbx sceneries and GSX and then have been slowly adding sceneries. I have been able to do long overnight 12+ hours flights at the beginning but then it seems to I get to having 7 or 8 additional airports added and I start getting (P3D has stopped working after about 3-4 hours).  It doesn't seem to be a particular scenery.  In my old 4.1 install I had removed all the xml folders in the addon files in my document folder and then it would work. Then I'd add one back at a time to see if it was a particular scenery.  At first I thought it was FSDT KLAS but I think it was just the last scenery that I added that pushed it over the edge to started CTD.  It almost seems like when I reach a certain amount of sceneries regardless which ones I started getting CTD.  During my original 4.1 install I deleted the scenery.cfg file deleted shaders folder but it seems to persist. The last two flights I did ended in CTD. Last weekend it was a PMDG 747 flight from paris to toronto and it CTD around where everybody suspects maybe a timezone issue on the coast of Canada. Now last night my overnight ZSPD to CYYZ crashed about 3 hours into the flight using the PMDG 777.  I just don't know where to turn to anymore, I'm three months into this process and feel like I'll never nail down the cause.  I've updated the video drivers to the latest ones available.  I don't know if I should drop my overclock more and drop the voltage.  It's a shame because the overclock has been rock solid at 4.7 for over 4 years.  I don't have the P3d internal settings high, I've only changed the terrain mesh and details and the cloud density for ASP4.  I tried with HDR disabled and water detail to low but no luck either. I've read forums all over the place.  I thought I saw something about addon.xml have a limit and a bug but that seems to be a CTD as soon as you try to run P3d and that is not the case here, I get a ways into a flight before it happens.  This is my first time posting help on this issue after three months as I don't know what else to do.

Regards,

Norm.  

Edited March 17, 20188 yr by Beener

With P3Dv4.2, you should be able to turn your settings to max and not have a crash.  You only have to watch the FPS and turn them down so you do not have any issues like stuttering, pauses, or fps going into the single digits making P3D look like a slide show.  So far I have not seen that with my current system (see my specs in my signature).  You should have an issue either.  So, it is something else that is causing your crash(es).  The overclock is suspect.  You can run your system overclock on any benchmark to test for stability like Prime95, IntelBurnTest, etc., etc., and have total stability and 15 hours or even 24 hours of testing only to run P3D (or FSX) and it crashes and the cause of the crash for certain was a bad overclock (too high/too low CPU voltage).  I know because it has happened to me.  Perhaps it is the programming within P3D or FSX or a corrupted texture or AI and it takes your system out.  I've never heard of anyone successful with a high overclock like yours.  I cannot even be successful with a 4.7GHz with my i7 7700K!!  Certainly it will overclock and I have had it at 5.0GHz, and the overclock will be stable for many flights, then it crashes.  Go to Optimal Defaults in the BIOS and never see a crash.  So, it is important to see what the faulting module was when it crashed.  If it was the ntdll, then you have a bad overclock (for FSX/P3D only). 

What does a 4.7GHz overclock give you in regards to performance vs a 4.2 or 4.4GHz overclock?  Not much difference.  In fact, you can go to the Optimal Default of 4.4GHz for your CPU and I would be shocked if the performance was any better.  At the Optimal Default setting of 4.4GHz, you will not see an ntdll error even with max settings in P3Dv4.2.  So, my recommendation is to go back to the Optimal Defaults.  If you have any tweaks in your P3D.cfg, comment them out (edit the config and place two slashes // in front of the parameter).  I hate the Affinity Mask tweak because, for one, it is not needed, and two, it causes ntdll errors if not properly employed.  Tweaks with modern systems are not work the agony you will get if it is not working the way people told you it would work.  In Windows 10, P3D/FSX uses all cores of your CPU equally at 100%.  What could be better than that???  Back in the duocore days, maybe a good tweak.  Today, not.

The scenery.cfg will rarely cause a crash and MyTrafficX, with mytrafficmil.bgl enabled, is the only known cause of the ntdll.dll error.  That's corrupted textures on some older AI not compatible with P3D and I have heard it will cause an ntdll error if there is an AI and no flight plan or a flightplan but no AI so the system is trying to call it and cannot.

The fsuipc will cause stutters, pauses, and crashes if not the latest version (if installed).

In P3DV4, you will get a lot of crashes if the Add-on.xml's are corrupted or the encoding for the p3d.cfg, the dll.xml's (both of them), or scenery.cfg are encoded improperly.  That can happen when you open them up in Notepad (not a good idea!!).  You want to open them in Notepad+++.  You can check the encoding using the Lorby_Si Addon_Organizer.  If it shows anything not properly encoded when you click on the button in the upper right corner of the utility, you can immediately fix it by clicking on Save under the Scenery tab (or at least this has done it for me!!).  Trying to edit and save the config or xml in Notepad+++ is precarious.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

Jim

 

 

Thanks a lot Jim you gave me some ideas to check.  I've been reluctant to roll back my overclock anymore but I should check that at it appears to be a bit random and with the ntdll module faulting it seems like it's the last thing I haven't done and that is to bring it back to base clock and see if any CTD occurs.  I'm in a flight now but I will do this check next and see the impact on FPS and if any CTD occur.  I do not have any tweaks in the p3d.cfg file.  I only change settings within P3d. I will also get Lorby_Si Addon to check my files as I just stumbled across a thread talking about his software as well this morning and it seems pretty handy from what I read. Does this open all of the 4 files you mention or just the scenery.cfg?

Thanks,

Norm.

21 hours ago, Beener said:

Does this open all of the 4 files you mention or just the scenery.cfg?

Just the scenery.cfg as the .xml's will soon replace the scenery.cfg.  But it checks the encoding of all related .cfg's.

Tip:  What I do is go to the folders that have my dll.xml's (default is in the same folder as the scenery.cfg and the old default, which should not be removed, is in the same folder as the p3d.cfg).  I right click the dll.xml and send a shortcut to my desktop (called P3D dll.xml 01 (for the default) and P3D dll.xml 02 (for the former default).  I do this for the p3d.cfg and scenery.cfg too.   I have a folder called "FlightSim" and I move all of these shortcuts into that folder. Then, when I want quick access, to those hidden folders, I just go the FlightSim folder.

Your CPU automatically overclocks to 4.4GHz when placed in Optimal Default mode.  Plenty fast for any flight simulation as I seriously doubt P3D takes advantage of any serious overclock like the modern games on the Internet.  And, if it does, it is minimal.

If your system is running FSX OK, but not P3D, the place I'd be looking is the video subsystem, as P3D stresses the GPUs more and in different ways under DX11 than FSX does with its legacy DX9 rendering system.

Are your video cards overclocked...either by you or at the factory?  I had a pair of 980Ti video cards in my last build (also with a 4790K that ran stable all day long at 4.8 GHz), and they were causing crashes at the stock factory overclock...reducing the GPU clocks back down closer to the nVidia stock settings for the 980Ti resolved that issue.  Have you also tried disabling SLI and running on just one GPU?

Also, if your 980s are 4GB boards, as most are/were, P3D is easily capable of overrunning the VRAM.  I see GPU VRAM usage above 4GB routinely (monitored with eVGA PrecisionX on the LCD display of my Logitech G13 gamepad)...so perhaps some attention to the LOD and other GPU-related settings and how they are affecting GPU memory usage would be in order.

Regards

 

Also, if you're using ActiveSky, there's a reproducible CTD issue in P3D v4.2 as detailed here:  https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=128904

Regards

 

Thanks for the additional ideas.  I believe there is a slight overclock on my 980s from factory.  I’ll have to keep looking because I removed any cpu overclock, did two flights without ctd, now the third one just ctd tonight about 3 hours in.  I’m running out of ideas of where to look.  It was another Ntdll.dll fault.  Getting pretty discouraged after three months of trying to find the issue.  Maybe I’ll try to run withou asp4.

 

Norm.

Edited March 25, 20188 yr by Beener

I also installed FSDT CYVR tonight for my flight and earlier last month I thought maybe this scenery was causing issues.  Does anybody have it installed in P3d4.2 without issue.

 

Norm.

8 hours ago, Beener said:

I also installed FSDT CYVR tonight for my flight and earlier last month I thought maybe this scenery was causing issues.  Does anybody have it installed in P3d4.2 without issue.

 

Norm.

When FSDT CYVR was first released for FSX, it was quite heavy on resources and many members had complaints.  But that was with a 32-bit FSX application where you really had to watch your sliders.  Today, you have the 64 bit P3DV4.2 and the only thing you have to really worry about is the FPS and CYVR is not going to bring your computer to its knees.  There are a lot of things though that cause the ntdll.dll and only you can solve it.  Right now you are grasping at straws looking for answers and always getting the short end.  The AVSIM CTD Guide tells you how starting on page 10.  If none of those suggestions work, then you have a computer system problem where your cpu voltages are too high or too low.   You could also have a bad CPU or RAM.  That's how an ntdll.dll happens.  Microsoft Windows throws it when it sees a problem with your computer system.  Okay, P3DV4 could help trigger the error when you have incompatible software or a product like MyTrafficX has textures of military aircraft that are not compatible the 64 bit version of P3D.  If you did not reset your overclock to the optimal default (which, for your CPU, equals an overclock of 4.4GHz which is more than sufficient to run P3D).  An overclock will not give you better performance until Lockheed optimizes the Microsoft FSX engine.  You could also have one of those stupid tweaks like the Affinity Mask that could be triggering the crashes.  Affinity Mask does not work and, if it does, it is so minimal it is not worth the effort and will only cause you much grief.

8 hours ago, Beener said:

Maybe I’ll try to run withou asp4.

That's part of any investigation into the cause of the crash but if you have the latest version installed of ASP4, that's not the cause unless you messed with the ASP4 default settings (the one's that are known to work). 

2 hours ago, Jim Young said:

If none of those suggestions work, then you have a computer system problem where your cpu voltages are too high or too low.  

Last week I removed any manual overclock changes and it's back to factory at 4.4Ghz since last week.  I have a vanilla cfg file with no tweaks, I do changes to setting inside P3D4.  I don't have any of the graphics settings changed inside P3D4 other than increasing the terrain mesh and the scenery details up so that all the jetways show up.  There rest is at the default install settings I don't touch LOD or autogen sliders.  It appears I'm down to hardware as you say.  I've slowly installed sceneries to see if it was incompatible scenery but I've stayed away from ones that don't have a P3D4 installer so I can't see being scenery related.  I have no traffic program and I have the traffic sliders to 0.  With my system there is no way the display settings are too high and it doesn't appear to be scenery and I don't have an overclock anymore and it triggered a ntdll.dll fault yesterday. I'm running the latest ASP4.

 

Regards,

Norm.

2 hours ago, Jim Young said:

You could also have a bad CPU or RAM

Can a person find out what hardware it is other than replacing the components?  Software test?  My system is 3 years old and I hadn't thought of upgrading at this point but if need be I will that's not an issue. In the past I had upgrade every two years when flightsim software was changing quickly but that has slowed down now. 

Regards,

Norm.

 

Edited March 25, 20188 yr by Beener