Numerous random crashes...any advice?

[breakinghbts 50]

So, I'm about ready to throw in the towel on 5.1. Since it came out I'm lucky if I can go 3 weeks without any issues. Currently I'm into my 3rd month or so, of having sporadic successful flights. Several flights I had to do 5 or more times before I could complete it without a CTD. Now in event viewer, the cause of the CTD keeps changing. If you look at the CTD guide, just about every DLL listed has caused a crash. I've tried so many different things. Back in FEB it was running smooth. Then I updated some AI flight plans with AIG, and ran the FSDT update tool. Since then, its been a struggle.

First it appeared to be a QW787 lights issue (even tho I did not have an issue prior), so I installed the 717 to get the latest Realight/true glass. Problem solved.

Then it appeared maybe it was the Displayport to HDMI cable I was using. replaced that. Problem solved.

Then, terrain.dll errors...so I tried lowering my settings. Problem solved.

Then that d3d....dll issue. This caused my computer to reboot during one of the crashes. Verified drivers, and reinstalled video drivers. Problem solved.

I thought it could be because of EA, but nope turning that off didn't help.

So now its this api.dll....

I'm at a loss, it seems everyone with these issues, ONLY has the one DLL that causes a crash. I keep getting different ones. I have reinstalled v5 at least 3x since its release (When I reinstall I do a full system wipe and refresh), was finally hoping to get it to work, in fact I had about 1 month of successful flights. I'm seriously considering going back to 4.5. Flying the older sim is better than not flying at all.

Has anyone experienced this? Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

 

-Tony@PVD

[wyman_hd 232]

Terrain.dll is unsurprisingly, a library for the terrain like ocean height, water bump layers, grabbing seasons, etc.

d3d.dll is a DirectX library file used in all games that use the DirectX rendering engine. 

api.dll is a library that does numerous functions, namely, activation of P3D, multiplayer functions, OpenSSL cryptology (for the multiplayer network), and handling of general requests like xml parsing etc.

Assuming you don't have issues with activation and multiplayer, it's most likely add-on related. Since the api.dll does some xml parsing, something could be wrong within your dll.xml or an addon module loading through that dll.xml. 

Try doing a flight with a new dll.xml (generated by the sim on startup; backup your old one) and see if you get any crashes during preflight, during flight, and post-flight. 

If P3D crashes even on a vanilla install, it could be something greater than the api.dll.

[breakinghbts 50]

26 minutes ago, arwasairl said:

Try doing a flight with a new dll.xml (generated by the sim on startup; backup your old one) and see if you get any crashes during preflight, during flight, and post-flight. 

That is something I have not tried yet. Thanks for that suggestion. I am going to give it a whirl, and report back. 

 

-Tony@PVD

[jozeff 93]

Don't want to be rude nor funny but p3dv5 kept crashing so many times that I switched to xplane completely. I've had so many crashes since my fsx days and all versions of p3d. It just never felt like stable products tbh. especially when changing graphic settings or menu stuff. When I switched to vr 4 years ago things got even worse and I moved to xplane for those reasons.

Again, I don't want to be rude. I wish you all the best and I hope you will be flying stable and have fun with p3d.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Have a nice day!

Cheers

 

Jozeff

[neilhewitt 493]

The instability in P3Dv5 seems to be almost all related to the move to DX12. It shows itself in all kinds of crash events but the root appears to be this new code. DX12 is much less managed than DX11 was and the responsibility is shifted heavily back on the developers. 

I would like to see LM releasing true hotfixes - 1 HF fixes one problem, and is applied directly to the installed files - and making the current 'hotfixes' minor point releases. But I don't think their dev process allows for this. 

FWIW, I solved a lot of crashes by regularly clearing the DX12 system cache (you can delete this from the Disk Clean-Up tool), sometimes even on every restart. Painful, but it did fix a lot of crashes for me.

[breakinghbts 50]

10 hours ago, arwasairl said:

see if you get any crashes during preflight, during flight, and post-flight. 

I was able to finally complete my flight from KBOS-EIDW, however I'm not convinced yet. This was my fourth attempt at this flight, and each time i got closer and closer to completing the flight. I am currently attempting another flight. It has been months since I've had 2 successful fights in a row.

 

8 hours ago, jozeff said:

When I switched to vr 4 years ago things got even worse and I moved to xplane for those reasons.

VR just isn't my thing. But I don't know if I have it in me to go to the 'darkside'. They even have a nice representation of my local airport, and I still haven't switched.

 

1 hour ago, neilhewitt said:

FWIW, I solved a lot of crashes by regularly clearing the DX12 system cache (you can delete this from the Disk Clean-Up tool), sometimes even on every restart. Painful, but it did fix a lot of crashes for me.

I will definitely keep this in mind. Hopefully DX12 matures a bit.

 

Thanks for the help guys. Will update tonight after I land in KMIA (Hopefully).

 

-Tony@PVD 

[W2DR 1,859]

Unfortunately, I've had to give up on P3Dv5. Just too many random and unexplained CTD's. I've gone back to v4 and I'm a happy flyer again. Hopefully LM will soon find (and fix) whatever the problems are.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

@breakinghbts, I bought v5 two months ago and apart from a few DXGI Access Denied messages it's been problem free. Knowing your hardware would help. Maybe put it in your signature?

The DXGI Access Denied message was caused by switching vehicles with RTSS display enabled. Disable it whilst switching to another vehicle (aircraft) and problem solved. I've reported this to LM.

I have plenty of addons including Orbx FTX Global, UTX Europe, USA and Caribbean. I fly the Vertx DA62, Xtreme Prototypes Lear 25 and PMDG 737NGXu. Lots of 3rd party airports and Active Sky. I do not have Enhanced Atmospherics enabled and I don't fly in VR.

Maybe if you could post your v5 settings plus your kit we could help.

[breakinghbts 50]

I think the dll.xml trick worked. I successfully completed 2 flights in a row. I did have a CTD in KMIA while trying to prepare for a third flight. But I'm going to chaulk that one up to latinvfr and their high vram usage. 

If I continue to have the random crashes in the future. I will list all my settings etc. Thanks for all your help guys. Sometimes it seems we spend as much or more time troubleshooting as actually flying.

 

-Tony@PVD

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

3 minutes ago, breakinghbts said:

I think the dll.xml trick worked. I successfully completed 2 flights in a row

If you've renamed the original DLL.XML and let P3D generate a new one then paste the contents of both and the problem might be identified. Renaming a DLL.XML is not standard practice so whilst you may have resolved the problem you don't know what fixed it.

[simfan1983 185]

I haven't moved to v5.1 yet, am still on 4.5 HF3 which is pretty stable (but not perfect). These are a few of things I've picked up over the years to help with stability:

- backup your whole system drive regularly so that you can do a restore if things go wrong (I take a system image using Windows Backup)

- when you close P3D wait for a minute or two and make sure it has fully closed before restarting or shutting down the pc

- empty the shaders cache and clear out your appdata/local/temp folder after any changes to the setup

- don't update graphics drivers when new versions get released - wait to see if they are stable first using comments in this forum

- Use Lorby addon organiser to check the integrity of your scenery config

- don't switch USB ports for your HOTAS / flight controls - always use the same ports

- reboot the pc if you have an issue

- don't use the auto start function in Chaseplane - it causes issues for me - start it manually

- if you have Orbx scenery use the Orbx utility to rebuild the scenery config after you install 3rd party scenery so that the priorities are reset

Hopefully most of these suggestions will help with 5.1 as well.

 

 

 

[wyman_hd 232]

1 hour ago, breakinghbts said:

I think the dll.xml trick worked. I successfully completed 2 flights in a row. I did have a CTD in KMIA while trying to prepare for a third flight. But I'm going to chaulk that one up to latinvfr and their high vram usage. 

As @Ray Proudfoot had said, now that you know it was an external .dll you need to find out which .dll it's calling that's making you crash frequently. Try to copy and paste each .dll module into the new dll.xml and see which one will make the sim crash. 

[breakinghbts 50]

2 hours ago, arwasairl said:

As @Ray Proudfoot had said, now that you know it was an external .dll you need to find out which .dll it's calling that's making you crash frequently. Try to copy and paste each .dll module into the new dll.xml and see which one will make the sim crash. 

I won't have time for a few days to look into this. But it makes sense to figure exactly what was causing the issue. I will update on mon what I find. Thanks for the help.

 

-Tony@PVD