3 hours ago, crazydog said:

No luck for me - performed a clean installation of just the driver - rebooted, loaded FS and as usual, upon 75% loading a flight the program froze.

 

Back to the drawing board for me.

Have you tried these? 

System File Checker: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-system-file-checker-in-windows-365e0031-36b1-6031-f804-8fd86e0ef4ca

Repair (MS Store version only) : https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016107019-Microsoft-Store-version-How-to-repair-or-remove-and-do-a-clean-install-of-Microsoft-Flight-Simulator

And does the flight load if you remove everything from the community folder? 

Hope you can get it working soon.. 

 

1 hour ago, crazydog said:

Thank you for your kind words.  Yes I have posted my hardware which is roughly the following:

3+ year old professional build (SCAN UK)

CPU Type    HexaCore Intel Core i7-8700, 4400 MHz (43 x 102)

Motherboard Name    Asus Prime Z370-A  (4 PCI-E x1, 3 PCI-E x16, 2 M.2, 4 DDR4 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN)

Motherboard Chipset    Intel Kaby Point Z370, Intel Coffee Lake-S

System Memory    16320 MB  (DDR4 SDRAM)

BIOS Type    AMI (03/06/2018)

Video Adapter    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB  (3 GB)

Disk Drive    WDC WD4004FZWX-00GBGB0  (4 TB, 7200 RPM, SATA-III) Black - where main part of FS is placed

Windows 10 64bit.

 

I have rolled back drivers, and unplugged all USB devices other than mouse/keyboard.  I've not tried swapping the graphics card, and perhaps I might purchase a newer once I get the cash.  Perhaps it will just magically start working one day:-)

Your system seems pretty good, it surely was fairly high end when you bought it 3+ years ago. 
One thing I would upgrade if I had the cash and availability is the graphics card. The graphics memory on it is a bit on the low side, but I think it should at least run MSFS.
If you could borrow one from a friend or something just to check if MSFS loads correctly, I would do that. 

Also I would get an M.2 NVMe drive, I just checked and your motherboard supports it. These drives are not cheap, but they're not overpriced either. 

Then I would do a clean install of Windows onto that drive (remember to put it in UEFI mode in bios), and also install MSFS on the same drive. You don't need to partition since it's a solid state drive, but you could if you wanted to keep it neat.
Your system would be much snappier and MSFS will load a lot faster as well. Will feel like a new system. The old WD drive could be used as backup or storage of documents, music, etc.

1 hour ago, gb09f said:

Have you tried these? 

System File Checker: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-system-file-checker-in-windows-365e0031-36b1-6031-f804-8fd86e0ef4ca

Repair (MS Store version only) : https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016107019-Microsoft-Store-version-How-to-repair-or-remove-and-do-a-clean-install-of-Microsoft-Flight-Simulator

And does the flight load if you remove everything from the community folder? 

Hope you can get it working soon.. 

 

Thanks gb09f - yes I did try the system file checker last week.  It actually found and corrected 3 errors.  My community folder is empty; I have no add-ons at all.  For the past few weeks I have had zero success loading a flight, whereas before that I had 3 weeks of problem free flying at high quality.

45 minutes ago, Republic3D said:

Your system seems pretty good, it surely was fairly high end when you bought it 3+ years ago. 
One thing I would upgrade if I had the cash and availability is the graphics card. The graphics memory on it is a bit on the low side, but I think it should at least run MSFS.
If you could borrow one from a friend or something just to check if MSFS loads correctly, I would do that. 

Also I would get an M.2 NVMe drive, I just checked and your motherboard supports it. These drives are not cheap, but they're not overpriced either. 

Then I would do a clean install of Windows onto that drive (remember to put it in UEFI mode in bios), and also install MSFS on the same drive. You don't need to partition since it's a solid state drive, but you could if you wanted to keep it neat.
Your system would be much snappier and MSFS will load a lot faster as well. Will feel like a new system. The old WD drive could be used as backup or storage of documents, music, etc.

Thanks Republic3D.

 

I should have mentioned that my Windows is installed on a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 250GB  (250 GB, SATA-III).  Just not big enough for the simulator as well.  You are correct that the graphics card is low spec, but it still did a very good job when I was running MSFS 2020 in September - setting all on High, with reasonable frame rates - no problems flying at all for 3 weeks.

I will keep trying...

46 minutes ago, crazydog said:

Thanks gb09f - yes I did try the system file checker last week.  It actually found and corrected 3 errors.  My community folder is empty; I have no add-ons at all.  For the past few weeks I have had zero success loading a flight, whereas before that I had 3 weeks of problem free flying at high quality.

How about 3rd party antivirus? Did your PC come with Norton or some such garbage installed? If so - try removing it. Windows 10 has good built-in security and 3rd party antivirus software is redundant. 

831 MB size for a driver is driving me nuts...

4 hours ago, crazydog said:

Thank you for your kind words.  Yes I have posted my hardware which is roughly the following:

3+ year old professional build (SCAN UK)

CPU Type    HexaCore Intel Core i7-8700, 4400 MHz (43 x 102)

Motherboard Name    Asus Prime Z370-A  (4 PCI-E x1, 3 PCI-E x16, 2 M.2, 4 DDR4 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN)

Motherboard Chipset    Intel Kaby Point Z370, Intel Coffee Lake-S

System Memory    16320 MB  (DDR4 SDRAM)

BIOS Type    AMI (03/06/2018)

Video Adapter    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB  (3 GB)

Disk Drive    WDC WD4004FZWX-00GBGB0  (4 TB, 7200 RPM, SATA-III) Black - where main part of FS is placed

Windows 10 64bit.

I have rolled back drivers, and unplugged all USB devices other than mouse/keyboard.  I've not tried swapping the graphics card, and perhaps I might purchase a newer once I get the cash.  Perhaps it will just magically start working one day:-)

Does that card even meet minimum specs? 

26 minutes ago, Claudius_ said:

831 MB size for a driver is driving me nuts..

Yes, it is getting ridiculous.

Nvidia used to offer both a single language version,  and an international language version of their drivers.  The international version includes numerous international language packs (including english),  and the file size was always hundreds of MB larger.  Now they seem to direct you to the international version whenever they get a chance.   I can't seem to readily locate the single language versions any longer.

The 831mb includes those international language packs,  and installer is supposedly smart enough to only install the languages installed on your system.   Still hate that I can't find the single language version anymore.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, crazydog said:

...

System Memory    16320 MB  (DDR4 SDRAM)
Video Adapter    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB  (3 GB)
...

3Gb memory on the graphics card may be an issue, maybe consider upgrading that? 

What speed internet have you got - have you set the correct internet speed in settings?  I could never get my MSFS to load in the early days because my internet speed in options was set to unlimited.  When I changed that to a lower speed to match my internet speedI had no loading problems.

8 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

So...who's diving in first....?

I am flying, and wish to do so uninterrupted. A foolish GPU driver update in late June cost me two weeks out of the skies.  I was still flying with a 1070 Ti and that driver had nothing in store for me.  But for some unknown reason I jumped.  And crashed!

You go first.  And second.  And third.  And so on...............

6 hours ago, Republic3D said:

I'm still on 472.12 and it seems to be reasonably stable. 

 

I'm still on 457.30, why change something that work flawlessly.

1 minute ago, Ixoye said:

I'm still on 457.30, why change something that work flawlessly.

This is what I'm starting to think (unless another game I have benefits from it). I got burned -- many of us did -- by a bugged NVIDIA driver.

@crazydogI wouldn't have thought your GPU is a problem when it worked fine for the first 3 weeks. Of course, that might have been prior to sim updates, but if anything you should be better off now, with all the optimisation Asobo have done.

Also, low VRAM isn't necessarily an issue. The GPU will share RAM and page file to use as VRAM if it runs too low. One of the things I did in the early days (only because the sim really needed it then) was upgrade to 32GB DDR4 RAM. I also have a large M.2 NVMe drive (agree that they are worth the money), which I have the sim installed on and a page file allocated there. My GTX1070 does share main RAM to use as VRAM, so I don't worry about the GPU's dedicated VRAM size at all, as the operating system takes care of that.

If you look in Task Manager under the relevant tabs, you can see how much RAM is used, and how much the GPU shares, to see if you have any memory issues.

You will also see "committed memory" in the Task Manager, which can seem alarmingly higher than your physical RAM, but it's what the operating system effectively thinks it might need at some point (but probably won't realistically use in a single instance) and takes into account your page file (virtual memory) size too.

I dont get excited about drivers unless to fix something specific.

Cheers

bs

8 hours ago, crazydog said:

Thank you for your kind words.  Yes I have posted my hardware which is roughly the following:

3+ year old professional build (SCAN UK)

CPU Type    HexaCore Intel Core i7-8700, 4400 MHz (43 x 102)

Motherboard Name    Asus Prime Z370-A  (4 PCI-E x1, 3 PCI-E x16, 2 M.2, 4 DDR4 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN)

Motherboard Chipset    Intel Kaby Point Z370, Intel Coffee Lake-S

System Memory    16320 MB  (DDR4 SDRAM)

BIOS Type    AMI (03/06/2018)

Video Adapter    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB  (3 GB)

Disk Drive    WDC WD4004FZWX-00GBGB0  (4 TB, 7200 RPM, SATA-III) Black - where main part of FS is placed

Windows 10 64bit.

 

I have rolled back drivers, and unplugged all USB devices other than mouse/keyboard.  I've not tried swapping the graphics card, and perhaps I might purchase a newer once I get the cash.  Perhaps it will just magically start working one day:-)

Do you have an external drive big enough to hold FS?

Try installing on that and see if at least loads a flight

Edited October 28, 20214 yr by KERNEL32