MSFS sometimes randomly hangs while loading at times

[captain420 3,099]

I don't use the rolling cache though.

[Nyxx 6,993]

I made a topic about this……….

Its a know bug and will be fixed SU6

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

2 hours ago, captain420 said:

I'm not sure what the cause of this is. I am wondering if anyone else here is experiencing the same issue.

This happened to me yesterday.   Same exact thing...

The start up airport was KLGA and with Orbx New York City active.

Next time, I started in Safe Mode, and after that I could start up OK, although I have not yet tried KLGA again.

Will report if I do.

 

 

[captain420 3,099]

5 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

This happened to me yesterday.   Same exact thing...

The start up airport was KLGA and with Orbx New York City active.

Next time, I started in Safe Mode, and after that I could start up OK, although I have not yet tried KLGA again.

Will report if I do.

Yes, I'm not sure what the exact cause of this is. Even with the same addons enabled, the 1st time you load in, it hangs, 2nd attempt and any attempts after that will work. However, I never choose safe mode, I just choose start up normal on the 2nd attempt, and it doesn't hang anymore.

I really wish there was a way to enable logs in MSFS so we can see what exactly is going on and perhaps see what addons are causing issues, etc.

Edited October 13, 2021 by captain420

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

Will report if I do.

Just tried starting at KLGA with KLGA/Bridges addon active and hung again.  For me, the combination KLGA + Orbx New York seems to be a problem.

Edit... but indeed at the second attempt, it loaded up.

Edited October 13, 2021 by Bert Pieke

[Stoopy 1,571]

5 hours ago, captain420 said:

I am using MSFS Addons Linkers to manage and organize what addons I use, but sometimes I am noticing strange issues when loading into the sim, the blue loading bar at the bottom will sometimes just stop at around 50-75% and just hang. At that point I open up task manager to see what the status of microsoft flight simulator.exe is saying and it shows a red -N which means that the app is hung or in a frozen state. So I manually kill the process and retry again. But every 2nd attempt I try, the sim loads fine. I'm not sure what the cause of this is. I am wondering if anyone else here is experiencing the same issue.

YES!

I first started experiencing this at airports that I frequently fly out of in So Cal like KAVX, KVNY and KBUR.   I ended up doing a LOT of careful testing with removing scenery, deleting my rolling cache file, etc.  I also use the Addon Linker tool (I mean who wouldn't use a great tool like that these days anyway?).  When it occurred, the symptom would be exactly as you describe - right around the 60% mark, the blue bar would hang, and if I went to loom at Task Manager I woudl see that status of FlightSimulator.exe as "Not Responding. 

When this first started happening it was at KAVX most commonly, and deleting the freeware scenery for it seemed to fix the problem for a flight or two, then I reinstalled the scenery, it would come back. So I figured it was an incompatible scenery, bought the Orbx version of KAVX, and a couple of flights later it started happening there too.  Then I moved to KVNY and encountered the same problem, removed the freeware scenery, things were fine for a couple of flights and then I got the same hangs on loading.  Said "Shine it", started flying out of KBUR with no addon scenery, and after a couple of flights.... consistent hang.

Then I looked into the scenery files. Deleted/reset the rolling cache, same story - all good for a flight or two, then consistent hangs.  

I did NOT try turning off all my community folder links because - what's the point.  I want to be able to fly with my addons, not without, and so wanted to focus on a solution to that point. 

After thinking about it some more I decided to try an old trick and downloaded Microsoft's Process Monitor tool aka ProcMon which as the name implies can be used to monitor processes to see their file system and registry access details which can lead you to determining any problematic access privileges, missing files or registry entries, etc.  The "old trick" part of this is that sometimes just debugging a process seems to make it more well behaved.    

So after installing ProcMon from the Windows SysInternals site and setting up a filter for FlightSimulator.exe (Green filter button, select "Process Name" "is" and enter FlightSimulator.exe as the name, then select Add, and OK), I started MSFS, set up a flight, and before hitting the "Fly Now" button, launched ProcMon (ProcMon64.exe to be exact) and pressed OK to start the monitoring process.  No hangup.  I started 3 more flights - no hang.  3 more flight - no hang!

It has been almost two weeks now, multiple flights a day on some days, including a very fun 3-day weekend with lots of flights, an no hangs except for half of the times when I forgot to launch ProcMon.   I should also add, ProcMon does not slow down the flight loading process in any perceptible way.  I put ProcMon on my taskbar so it's easy to get to now before starting a flight, and the filter only has to be set up once so it's easy peasy.

I am running on a very solid-performing system with MSFS installed on a Samsung EVO 1TB SSD drive, so I am pretty confident that file system performance isn't a problem. Judging from the maturing state of MSFS I am pretty confident that this is more likely an issue with the sim than my system, 

The only downside to this is that the real intent of using ProcMon is to find the source of the problem, but since i can't duplicate the problem when using ProcMon, the root cause remains a mystery.  But for now I am happy calling this a win and have to think that someone at Asobo must be aware of this and maybe it will be fixed in SU6. Or 7. Or 12.   I should probably submit a problem report to them but wasn't sure until now if I was the only one experiencing this, but had a hunch I wasn't.  

Anyway that's my story and I don't think you need to go messing with your hardware, MSFS install or cache files. 

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by Stoopy

[Adamski_NZ 950]

Great post, Stoopy ...

Another thoght that may be worth throwing into the mix ... after reading comments about posssible scenery addons clashes.

Could it be anything to do with conflicting or duplicate ModelLib.bgl files? It's possible that just that odd combination of areas triggers it (but, infuriatingly, not always!!). Addon Linker has a facility for sorting these out. I tried it once and got myself into a right mess so promised myself I wouldn't do it again, LOL!

Edited October 14, 2021 by Adamski_NZ

[Stoopy 1,571]

9 minutes ago, Adamski_NZ said:

Great post, Stoopy ...

Another thoght that may be worth throwing into the mix ... after reading comments about posssible scenery addons clashes.

Could it be anything to do with conflicting or duplicate ModelLib.bgl files? It's possible that just that odd combination of areas triggers it (but, infuriatingly, not always!!). Addon Linker has a facility for sorting these out. I tried it once and got myself into a right mess so promised myself I wouldn't do it again, LOL!

Thanks and good point, I forgot to mention that I had also used the tools in the Addons Linker program to detect and fix the .BGL conflicts, and although it did find and fix several, it didn't solve the hanging issue.  I didn't have any issues in using the tool however, it seemed pretty straightforward.  

The fact that I experienced problems with areas that I had no addon scenery for also tends to make me think it wasn't a BGL problem but I tried it nonetheless to rule it out.

 

 

[captain420 3,099]

Stoopy thanks for chiming in and confirming my suspicions as well. I have also tried using the Tool to rename any conflicting model and material lib files, and can also confirm that does not fix this random loading issue. The problem remains to be unknown and unresolved. It seems like I'm not the only one who is experiencing this strange behavior. I will wait to see if it still happens in SU6, and if it still exists then I'll submit a zendesk ticket.

[Adamski_NZ 950]

2 hours ago, Nyxx said:

I made a topic about this……….

Its a know bug and will be fixed SU6

Drat - I only just read this post of yours(!). If true, then all our suggested fixes here are useless. Do you still have a link to that topic? I'm keen to read it.

[captain420 3,099]

Interesting that you found another topic about this problem. I would also like a link please.

[Stoopy 1,571]

3 hours ago, Nyxx said:

I made a topic about this……….

Its a know bug and will be fixed SU6

Dang I missed this too. Thanks, great to know.  Until SU6 comes out I'm happy with the workaround that works (for me). 

[SierraDelta 1,341]

5 hours ago, captain420 said:

I would also like a link please.

Here is the topic that David created:

 

[captain420 3,099]

Thanks for the link.

[turnandbank 243]

It's happened to me a two or three times too. But loaded fine on the second attempt after killing with task manager. Hopefully it goes away after the next sim update.