Suddenly MSFS (and other games)will not run over a few FPS..

[Flic1 1,000]

Hi all - A strange issue just cropped up tonight and I am at a loss.  I tried starting MSFS and it took 20 minutes to load which was unusual and then once on the home screen it was so laggy I couldn't even get into the main menus. My steam FPS counter was showing 3 fps!  Even when you get the very first screen with the Asobo logo the FPS is only 4 and the animation is stuttery.  This is with SU6 but I was able to open it a few times yesterday with no issues.  I also had an empty Community folder.   I did all the usual restarts, driver reinstall, etc.  I even ran a test on my GPU (1080ti) with FurMark to make sure it was working and it was running fine.  The odd thing is this is not strictly MSFS related as I tried to run American Truck Sim (also EuroTruck Sim) and the same thing happens.  Once you load into the game I have single digit FPS and it is unplayable.  I tried to load Forza Horizon and that seemed fine locked at 60fps.  I started to think this was a Steam issue since Forza was OK but I loaded one of my daughters games on Steam as well as TrainSim and both were locked at 60 and were fine.  SO it appears ATS, ETS2 and MSFS all have this issue for me.  I have searched for answers but cannot find anything to help remedy this.  My PC seems fine otherwise.  Figured I would try here to see if anyone knows what could cause this.  I did see a very small Windows 10 update come through yesterday so that is the only thing that has changed that I know of. It is almost like the programs are not utilizing the GPU? Or CPU?  Thanks for any help!!

Edited October 22, 2021 by Flic1

[somiller 694]

Did you try uninstalling the win10 update and see if that fixes the problem?

You may want to DL GPUZ and take a look at what's happening with GPU utilization while you are encountering the low fps problem.

[Flic1 1,000]

57 minutes ago, somiller said:

Did you try uninstalling the win10 update and see if that fixes the problem?

You may want to DL GPUZ and take a look at what's happening with GPU utilization while you are encountering the low fps problem.

Hi - I did uninstall the Windows update from 10/19 but that did not solve the issue unfortunately.  I am still sitting at 1 fps on the main menu and cannot really click to get in any of them since it is so laggy.  I opened Task Manger and noticed that the CPU is at 15% and GPU is at only 2%.  There is just no utilization of anything it seems.  I have to 'End Process' in Task Manager to get it to shut down. This is so bizarre....

Edited October 22, 2021 by Flic1

[somiller 694]

WOW that has to be terribly frustrating!

First thing I would try is go to Start:Settings:Apps and click Microsoft Flight Simulator, then click Advanced Options then Repair. WARNING - DO NOT CLICK RESET or all your settings get wiped out and I think it deletes everything in the Community folder.

Another thing to try is rename "UserCfg.opt" which if you have the store version is in: C:\WpSystem\S-1-5-21-2798140993-778685438-1837869802-1001\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache

Launch MSFS and it will create a new cfg.

You could also try renaming "Content.xml" and the folder "SimObjects" and empty your Community folder and any 3rd party content from the Official folder then try launching MSFS.

If all else fails, clearly you don't need that 1080ti anymore so you might as well send it to me and I can test it for you. I'll be really generous and send you my 1070.

[martin-w 3,258]

13 hours ago, Flic1 said:

Hi all - A strange issue just cropped up tonight and I am at a loss.  I tried starting MSFS and it took 20 minutes to load which was unusual and then once on the home screen it was so laggy I couldn't even get into the main menus. My steam FPS counter was showing 3 fps!  Even when you get the very first screen with the Asobo logo the FPS is only 4 and the animation is stuttery.  This is with SU6 but I was able to open it a few times yesterday with no issues.  I also had an empty Community folder.   I did all the usual restarts, driver reinstall, etc.  I even ran a test on my GPU (1080ti) with FurMark to make sure it was working and it was running fine.  The odd thing is this is not strictly MSFS related as I tried to run American Truck Sim (also EuroTruck Sim) and the same thing happens.  Once you load into the game I have single digit FPS and it is unplayable.  I tried to load Forza Horizon and that seemed fine locked at 60fps.  I started to think this was a Steam issue since Forza was OK but I loaded one of my daughters games on Steam as well as TrainSim and both were locked at 60 and were fine.  SO it appears ATS, ETS2 and MSFS all have this issue for me.  I have searched for answers but cannot find anything to help remedy this.  My PC seems fine otherwise.  Figured I would try here to see if anyone knows what could cause this.  I did see a very small Windows 10 update come through yesterday so that is the only thing that has changed that I know of. It is almost like the programs are not utilizing the GPU? Or CPU?  Thanks for any help!!

 

 

If its with more than one game, then do check your CPU and GPU temps just in case you are overheating and throttling.

Also run at optimised defaults, no overclock.

I would not just reinstall the GPU driver, but run a drive uninstall tool to make absolutely sure all traces of previous drivers are gone. Then install the latest driver. And yes, if you have just had a Windows update, certainly worth uninstalling that to see if its the culprit.

And I know its a pain in the bum, but reinstalling the sim and all add-ons might do the trick. 

Above all else though, do run a stress test to make sure your hardware is stable and no issues with thermals. 

[Flic1 1,000]

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

If its with more than one game, then do check your CPU and GPU temps just in case you are overheating and throttling.

Also run at optimised defaults, no overclock.

I would not just reinstall the GPU driver, but run a drive uninstall tool to make absolutely sure all traces of previous drivers are gone. Then install the latest driver. And yes, if you have just had a Windows update, certainly worth uninstalling that to see if its the culprit.

And I know its a pain in the bum, but reinstalling the sim and all add-ons might do the trick. 

Above all else though, do run a stress test to make sure your hardware is stable and no issues with thermals. 

Hi - It is definitely not temp related as it happens as soon as I enter the game menus.  In fact, it is almost the opposite where temps are low and does not appear to be much load at all.  I did remove my driver with DDU and did a full reinstall of the Nvidia driver with no luck.  It is so strange since it is effecting only certain games (MSFS, American Truck Sim, Euro Truck Sim).  TrainSim and Forza work fine.  I cannot come up with a commonality at all between the 3 games that do not work other than the fact they are all Steam apps but TrainSim is as well and works fine.  I did do a full uninstall/reinstall of ATS to no avail.  I'm hesitant to do anything with MSFS since this appears to be some other kind of an issue effecting several different apps.

[Bob Scott 7,748]

Have you looked to see if another process is running that's hitting any of the CPU cores hard?  AV and malware scan?

 

 

[Flic1 1,000]

OK...I found what the issue was/is.  I have Citrix Workspace on my PC.  I am not sure if there was a recent update or something but it appears these games were trying to use the display driver for Citrix.  Once I completely uninstalled Citrix Workspace everything was working normally again!  Of course this is a bit of a problem since I need Citrix Workspace for my business so will have to maybe set up a separate profile before I install it again.  It only took about 5 hours of troubleshooting but glad I finally got it narrowed down!

[martin-w 3,258]

18 hours ago, Flic1 said:

OK...I found what the issue was/is.  I have Citrix Workspace on my PC.  I am not sure if there was a recent update or something but it appears these games were trying to use the display driver for Citrix.  Once I completely uninstalled Citrix Workspace everything was working normally again!  Of course this is a bit of a problem since I need Citrix Workspace for my business so will have to maybe set up a separate profile before I install it again.  It only took about 5 hours of troubleshooting but glad I finally got it narrowed down!

 

That's interesting to me because my daughter uses my PC for work and has Citrix installed. I'll watch out for the issue. 

[Flic1 1,000]

33 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

That's interesting to me because my daughter uses my PC for work and has Citrix installed. I'll watch out for the issue. 

Hi - The reason I even discovered it was because I opened up the System Information menu in Steam (within the Help menu) and under the Video Card section it showed my driver as 'Citrix Display Adapter'.  It was also showing in my device manager along with my Nvidia driver.  For some odd reason those few games appeared to be using that instead of my Nvidia driver.  After fully uninstalling Citrix I then reinstalled the Citrix App from the Microsoft store and everything is fine.  I do recall doing some kind of update a few days ago with Citrix and I guess that is when it got messed up. Bizarre!

[martin-w 3,258]

Useful info, good find. 👍

 

Have three cat points.  X3 😺

[LesPaul30 4]

Thanks again for this- Same thing happened to me! This was the fix!