Hard PC crashes

[ShawnG 1,823]

I had taken about a half year off from flying my flight sims to pursue my other hobbies, as I am wont to do, and decided a week ago to fire up the flight sim again, and see what is new.  in the past six months I would update my sim when large patches dropped, and do a few small circuits, but nothing hardcore.  on Sunday, I attempted to update the sim, and in the process of doing that update, my PC did an abrupt and total hard crash and power down, such that I had to completely power cycle the PC in order to get it to start again.  obviously this corrupted the update, so I deleted my MSFS installation and installed as new.  The program stayed stable enough to do the full reinstall of the base and deluxe content, but as I was using the content manager to restore my in-sim store purchases, it crashed again.  and did so again while installing the Carenado Mooney.  since then I have just been running some testing on it, and for whatever reason, if MSFS is running, at some random point, my PC will Hard Crash, (i.e. not a CTD, and not a BSOD)  I haven't even attempted a flight yet since the reinstall.  but if I start up the program and leave the main menu running, at some point the PC will hard crash.  I have played a number of other games and other demanding software with no issues.

Now, this isn't something I see a lot of people complaining about, so It seems to be a "just me" issue, and I'm pretty sure it isn't due to SU5, since it crashed before that was even fully installed on sunday.    was just wondering if anyone else has had this particular problem.  I am right now doing a bunch of things to try to troubleshoot.  I did do some significant work a few months ago to correct a DPC latency issue I was having on my PC, so it's possible I did something to my system then that had an effect.  but before I do a lot of random changes, I wanted to know if anyone else has had the same trouble with hard PC crashes?

[Republic3D 1,232]

So your PC hard crashes and needs to power cycle to get it running again because of MSFS?

I think maybe there's a chance it's your GPU. There seems to be an issue where people are saying their GPU usage is spiking higher than normal (happens as soon as you enter the main screens), basically it's got unlimited FPS and the GPU runs hot. 

You could try Nvidia Control Panel and set a frame rate limit for MSFS there. That way your GPU won't heat up until your computer crashes. 

What kind of hardware are you running? Maybe your GPU or CPU needs some new thermal paste?

[ShawnG 1,823]

I haven’t even started a flight in it yet since reinstall, I’ve been monitoring temps, and neither cpu or gpu is spiking temps.  I have used a few other demanding games where the gpu temp has been higher, and no crashes there.  Tonight I ran a windows system file check, and it said a few of my system files were corrupted,  so I fixed that.  I have msfs running on the menu screen now, let’s see if it’s still going when I wake up.

[JimBrown 596]

A hard shut down like that would prompt me to take a hard look at the power supply. Is it sufficient? Is it old? Is it failing?

...jim

 

[Bobsk8 12,703]

Yes, I also vote for PSU problem.

[ShawnG 1,823]

That’s what I was thinking as well, other than the fact that the system is stable other than msfs,  I have one on order now anyway, as I will need a new one once the graphics cards get back into reasonable price range anyway.  Still working on some other stuff.

[pwfsav 13]

I had a similar issue. It seemed to occur intermittently on MSFS and some other quite demanding games.
Does the Windows event log give any clues? In mine it was saying that it was a Processor issue but didn't give me (a non Windows expert debugger)
any real clues.... apart from saying it was a processor related fault.

[CFIJose 5,485]

23 hours ago, JimBrown said:

A hard shut down like that would prompt me to take a hard look at the power supply. Is it sufficient? Is it old? Is it failing?

...jim

 

It sound like the power supply is dying. It just has not completely died yet.

When the power supply is about to die, you get all kinds of issues, and the challenging part is that most of the time we have no idea that it's the power supply and not the ram or the GPU.

[bobcat999 8,477]

Well, I never had this before SU5, but I am now not at any overclock and have even set my RAM back to standard from XMP, but I have had hard hangs with MSFS lately, not just the CTD's.  This is where I have had to ctrl-alt-del out of the program. 

On one occasion it was fully hung and I had to hold the power button in for seven seconds for a hard reset - no other way.  Windows did a scan and a quick 'repair' on the way back in, and luckily no damage.

I play other stuff, RDR2, COH etc. but I have had nothing like this before.  I don't know why I am messing around with my PC so much for MSFS.  I don't do it for anything else, and whatever I do I still get CTD's.  Just to say I could fly for hours and perfectly stable before SU5.  So my PC was fine then.

I will now give it a rest until the WU6 and CTD fixes that are due.  Sometimes I wait 5 minutes for it to load to get a 1 minute flight out of it before CTD.  Last time it was in the default C152, and I had pressed escape to go to settings to check something, then escaping back into the sim, it crashed immediately.  The time before that I left it on pause but it was gone when I got back after a few minutes LOL!

So I just hope WU6 can solve a few issues for me, as I am at a loss for now.  (Just to reiterate, CTD's were very few and far between before SU5 - it was all good before that, I think I had 3 since last August 2020, now I can have 3 day!).  Strange how some people don't, but the randomness of issues like this with MSFS, and it behaving differently for different people, has been here almost from the start.

 

[SteveW 1,792]

I have fixed many PC's with this type of problem by opening the case, and before doing anything else I blow out the dust to start clean. Then I would unplug and reconnect all the power cables and reseat the GPU and other cards and cables. Reinserting cards and plugs will clean the connections and this lowers the contact resistance. Quite often after a few years of use the cable plugs and card slots contact resistance increases quite a lot and this can cause the PSU (power supply unit) to deliver too much power momentarily and this quickly trips the PSU to close down the PC. So with many such problems, before investing in new parts or changing software settings it is wise to be sure all the plugs and cards have resistance-free contacts. Be sure to not pull on cables directly, only hold the plugs to free them, some have tags to push in so as to unhook the plug from the socket. Take care not to touch the contacts on the edge of the slot-in cards or grease from the fingers will spoil the contacts.

[Waldo Pepper 1,952]

You mentioned installing content from the marketplace,  my hangs and crashes were caused by the new WT NXI GPS from the marketplace.  That, and Airworthy Designs TNCM scenery.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Waldo Pepper

[The Moose 1,177]

12 minutes ago, Waldo Pepper said:

  That, and Airworthy Designs TNCM scenery.

Strange.  I've flown around those islands at least 4 times a week since I bought that scenery (months ago) Never had a CTD.

Ahh, just re-read your post.. I presume you bought it on Marketplace?  The encryption Microsoft add to marketplace products has caused so many problems.  Yet another reason i never buy anything there.

[ckyliu 1,749]

Has all the symptoms of a bad overclock. Not saying it is that, but when the processor doesn't get enough voltage, the machine will reboot.

[turbomax 3,285]

On 8/12/2021 at 3:06 PM, SteveW said:

resistance increases quite a lot and this can cause the PSU (power supply unit) to deliver too much power momentarily and this quickly trips the PSU to close down the PC

say captain say what?

increased resistance would lead to a drop in current, but no way to "deliver too much power", I have never heard of any power supply that delivers too much power 😊 There is no such thing as "too much power". the components will only draw whatever they need. There could only be an overvoltage, but only in a truly defective power supply. the only thing that causes problems is too much current drawn from a PSU if it is too weak to support high end pc's (or power supply too old, due to dried capacitors). High performance and overclocked components (GPU, CPU) combined can draw momentarily too much power, which can exceed the normal rated wattage (maximum allowed and certified current) of the PSU. I have observed such otherwise inexplicable shutdowns after SU5 and hotfix2 and after I had upgraded to a RTX 3090. I replaced the PSU with a 1.000 watt unit, and had no such problems ever since. even though a 650 watts PSU may be theoretically perfectly capable to deliver the required total watt power (say 400 watt GPU, 100 watt CPU, 50 watt motherboard incl. RAM, SSD and some components), but it will collapse and shut down via its internal over-current protection electronics, when combined GPU+CPU loads momentarily rise well above normal values. SU5 + hotfix 2 seem to create higher loads on GPU+CPU than before. you can watch higher total CPU loads on all 8 cores combined in task manager.  those ampere current spikes may last for only a few milliseconds and there won't be time for windows to take notes in event manager protocols etc, power supply will shut off long before any rise in temperature of CPU/GPU become visible.

some P3D users seem also affected:

for more details visit the hardware forum.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/604974-pc-shuts-down-during-climbout-p3dv4-thunderstorms/?tab=comments#comment-4596436

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/604278-get-ready-for-a-massive-psu-upgrade/

 

[SteveW 1,792]

20 hours ago, turbomax said:

say captain say what?

Badly worded for an expert, but as you say, if you add more components into your PC like a bigger or second GPU and your PSU cannot supply the power draw you have to fit a more powerful PSU. A weaker PSU will trip out to save damage if the demand is too much for it. Poor connections in some circumstances can cause drops and sudden demands that can trip out the supply in the same way.