Hi Aviators, 

my thought is, it´ll be helpfull to others to share experiences with this CTD issue. I know that there are many topics already in the forum but from time to time it´s good to start again.

My SIM was running for years without any CTD and i´am using a very complex setup for a homecockpit wich is driven by Jeehell FMGS via networked clients. On top of that i have all those other add-ons which injecting data and parameter into P3D, some vie FSUIPC some using SIMConnect, like AS16, PF3, MCE, UTLive, EFB v2, AOC server, GSX, etc. So many potential possibilities of faulting the SIM engine. Then, mid of January suddenly my SIM stopped with the famous ntdll CTD because. Then on the next flight it happened again and again on the next. The annoying thing is that it happened always on final approach and it takes a lot of time to setup the leg with all this cockpit, atc, pflightplan-stuff etc.

I went into many threads about this issue and also read the AVSIM CTD guide and became more and more confused about all those hundreds of possible causes. So i startet to investigate. My first suspect was Jeehell FMGS that there is maybe something messed up. I made a fresh install of the FMGS-server which implements the dll,´s and xml´s for it into P3D, started a leg from EDDH to EDDF and after landing while taxi to gate: CTD.

Then i noticed on another leg from EDDH, that there where black squares on the Orbx texturing of GEN. It came into my mind that i´ve read something that missing textures can cause a ntdll CTD. So i verified all Orbx packages i have via the Orbx central which re-installs the textures. After that i started again from EDDH to EDDF and the scenery was ok now and the CTD was gone. After tournaround in EDDF back to EDDH after 30 min, bam, CTD. Next idea was, that i remembered a strange issue i´ve had in GSX stopping services etc. because of a corrupted lua script. Maybe this has corrupted something else and though i re-installed GSX and all the MS db-libraries. Next leg CTD while i was at the takeoff run. (i have to admit that i asked myself "why are you doing all this weird stuff? If you have no problems you create your own..") I´ve tried several other causes as well but nothing helped and that was driving me nuts. I´ve also ran "Process monitor" and searched the logs for the culprit. The issue with this is, that the log don´t give you a clear "this process failed and therefor P3D was terminated". All you can do us just scroll thru all the processes and see what was the last "action" in P3D something by 2-3 seconds before the CTD and this can give you an idea of the possible culprit. 

Then more accidently i stumbled over a thread about FLAI and UTL where someone talked about some ntdll CTD. At that point it came into my mind, that the process monitor log showed something about an effect file of the FLAI package that seems not could be found for loading properly. I restored the original traffic.xml from UTL and…no CTD. I created a new FLAI injection into UTL and made a leg from EDDH to EDDM, no CTD then from EDDM to LFMN…no CTD but at LFMN another CTD at the gate (with FLAI injected) so I disabled FLAI again and flew from LFMN back to EDDH and no CTD. So it seems i found the culprit at least and i would never thought that it could be just a little effect of a AI strobe light that causes an ntdll CTD. In my opinion it should be possible to avoid those kind of hypersensitive behavior of an application today. Imagine you are one of the first astronauts send to mars and the whole mission fails because the flightcomputer had a ntdll CTD and no one can find the reason. 

It is very time consuming and frustrating too, to track down the cause of this annoying CTD, but you can learn a lot as well about all the dependencies of the add-ons and files and how this is handled. But at least what my biggest wish from MSFS 2020 beside all this eyecandy is to have it really well coded and stable. Even if something is not perfect set in an add on and produces faults in the application it must not react too hypersensitve.

Cheers

Yes, and due to a minor glitch in just one application causes a crash of the whole system, something to absolutely avoid looking into the future.

Cheers, Ed

The flai injection crashes seem to happen in Europe mostly. We’re you able to isolate the problem to a specific effect file?

1 hour ago, JasonPC said:

The flai injection crashes seem to happen in Europe mostly. We’re you able to isolate the problem to a specific effect file?

Well next step is to go deeper into this particular issue to get rid of it (because i like the FLAI models). It seems it is a file called "strobe_FLA_A320s.fx" or something. It appears on hundred of process lines in process monitor where the result is "name not found" and "file could not be opened". My guess is that this one is somehow corrupted or just not compatible with P3D because it is actually existing in the effects folder. I´am not sure if i can figure out to which ai aircraft this file is related to. Well, must be an A320 i guess. 

5 hours ago, JasonPC said:

The flai injection crashes seem to happen in Europe mostly. We’re you able to isolate the problem to a specific effect file?

Many more variety in airlines in Europe which would then use more of installed liveries in FLAI.

4 hours ago, BerndB said:

Well next step is to go deeper into this particular issue to get rid of it (because i like the FLAI models). It seems it is a file called "strobe_FLA_A320s.fx" or something. It appears on hundred of process lines in process monitor where the result is "name not found" and "file could not be opened". My guess is that this one is somehow corrupted or just not compatible with P3D because it is actually existing in the effects folder. I´am not sure if i can figure out to which ai aircraft this file is related to. Well, must be an A320 i guess. 

Let the dev's know so they can investigate!

Excellent topic! Excellent investigation! Investigating your particular situation is really the only solution.  There are so many possibilities on many different types of computers.  I wish there were just one solution that fits all.  It's a reason why the AVSIM CTD Guide provides some information on how to investigate and narrow down the cause(s).  I have had a lot of ntdll errors over the years and none are ever the same. 

Someone asked me about a CTD once and I advised to try with no AI, to eliminate that side of things. The response? They didn't like to fly without AI!

The fastest way to find any problem is to half the possibilities, eliminate and test. Then half again. A bad AI aircraft or airport can be found quickly that way.

On 2/24/2020 at 2:04 PM, JasonPC said:

The flai injection crashes seem to happen in Europe mostly. We’re you able to isolate the problem to a specific effect file?

One of the old flai mdl files for the TFS saab 340 and saab 2000 was known to cause ctds.   As does the old camsim 787 model. 

The saabs mdls have been updated, but if you have an old mdl file  you'll get ctds. 

1 hour ago, Jim Young said:

Excellent topic! Excellent investigation! Investigating your particular situation is really the only solution.  There are so many possibilities on many different types of computers.  I wish there were just one solution that fits all.  It's a reason why the AVSIM CTD Guide provides some information on how to investigate and narrow down the cause(s).  I have had a lot of ntdll errors over the years and none are ever the same. 

Thank you much for the kind words, Jim. I really appreciate it. And here is an update about the issue. Because the specific effect-files are shown in the process logfile i´ve replaced them by the FS-Reborn lights and injected the FLAI package again into UTL. Sadly again CTD. I´ve checked the aircraft-config of the FLAI planes and the Reborn-lights are pointed correctly in the lights-section. My next guess is that especially for one ac, it seems it´s the FLAI A320, there are some textures missing for a specific repaint. Because now i think that the effects are not the issue, i will run process monitor again to see what it says now about those FLAI stuff. If it points me again to the A320 i would de-activate this model and repaint only to see if the CTD disapear then. I hope i come this way closer and closer to the real culprit, just like Steve said.

Thanks a million Bernd

I am having the same issue and thought it was only happening to me, but you post has given me hope that it may be solved. Whenever I fly in Europe I get a CTD caused by NTDLL.DLL. Initially I thought it was due to some corrupted addon scenery but after removing it and using P3Dv4 default scenery  still got CTDs. Unlike Bernd my CTDs happen sometime after take-off and began to suspect it could have something to do with RealTraffic/FLAI but had no idea how to find out the culprit. When flying in any other part of the world bar Europe no CTDs. I will try and replicate your tests to see if I get a similar result.

I use Real Traffic/FLAI too and was getting the wretched Ntdll.dll crash and had no idea why.This could definitely explain it.My solution has been to change the compatibility mode of P3D to windows 8 and haven't had a ctd since.Not sure its a perfect solution though but I cant see any difference in performance 

On 2/24/2020 at 9:02 PM, B777ER said:

Let the dev's know so they can investigate!

i will, but i hope first i can find what´s the root cause and then let them now what´s the issue exactly.

4 hours ago, BerndB said:

i will, but i hope first i can find what´s the root cause and then let them now what´s the issue exactly.

As mentioned above,  what is the .mdl file called in your s340 and s200 folder called??  Its in the model folder

If it is something like tfs2000fs9.mdl or it's  basically got 'fs9' in the  mdl file name your going to have problems. 

7 hours ago, ideoplastic said:

Thanks a million Bernd

I am having the same issue and thought it was only happening to me, but you post has given me hope that it may be solved. Whenever I fly in Europe I get a CTD caused by NTDLL.DLL. Initially I thought it was due to some corrupted addon scenery but after removing it and using P3Dv4 default scenery  still got CTDs. Unlike Bernd my CTDs happen sometime after take-off and began to suspect it could have something to do with RealTraffic/FLAI but had no idea how to find out the culprit. When flying in any other part of the world bar Europe no CTDs. I will try and replicate your tests to see if I get a similar result

If it was me I'd do a *fs9*. Mdl  search in your all your  flai folders and replace them with updated mdl files from the ai alpha website. 

I've know a few people with this issue of dodgy mdl files and its happening over Europe. 

Edited February 26, 20206 yr by fluffyflops

20 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

One of the old flai mdl files for the TFS saab 340 and saab 2000 was known to cause ctds.   As does the old camsim 787 model. 

The saabs mdls have been updated, but if you have an old mdl file  you'll get ctds. 

I actually removed all old incompatible models and was still getting the ntdll crashes.