Memory cannot be referenced

[cianpars 1,165]

After 3 or 4 hours of flying, I am still finding msfs crashing with the above warning.  After 2 years and countless fixes and updates why has this issue, which I am assuming is a memory leak not been fixed?

It's not as if it hasn't been mentioned hundreds of times now.  Has the sim update beta addressed it?

[abrams_tank 7,412]

6 minutes ago, cianpars said:

After 3 or 4 hours of flying, I am still finding msfs crashing with the above warning.  After 2 years and countless fixes and updates why has this issue, which I am assuming is a memory leak not been fixed?

It's not as if it hasn't been mentioned hundreds of times now.  Has the sim update beta addressed it?

I had CTDs related to memory problems with MSFS. I ran MemTest overnight and MemTest showed failures in the test.  In the end, the fault was a combination of my memory and my CPU - my CPU, the  i5-12400, could not support the frequency stated on the box of my memory (3600 Mhz), with the motherboard that I had purchased.  I had to turn down my memory's frequency and since then, MSFS has been stable for me.  You can read my full report with all the details here: 

If you read my report in the link above, you will see that MSFS magnified the CTDs for me (probably because it stresses out your entire system more so than other games).

Suggest you run MemTest overnight to check your system, if you haven't yet (if you have run MemTest and your system didn't show any memory errors in the overnight test, then it's probably another issue).

Edited August 19, 2022 by abrams_tank

[cianpars 1,165]

Thanks Abrams_tank, that's both interesting and helpful.  My CPU, CPU and RAM are all running at stock speeds, but I will run memtest for a few hours and see if anything crops up.

Apart from a memory leak, I suppose my system might not like the LOD at 400 for longer periods, though since I was flying over the Atlantic Ocean, I don't suppose too much graphics rendering was going on.

For info, I'm running a 5600X, RTX3080 and 32 GB RAM at a rez of 1440 (2k).

[abrams_tank 7,412]

9 minutes ago, cianpars said:

Thanks Abrams_tank, that's both interesting and helpful.  My CPU, CPU and RAM are all running at stock speeds, but I will run memtest for a few hours and see if anything crops up.

Apart from a memory leak, I suppose my system might not like the LOD at 400 for longer periods, though since I was flying over the Atlantic Ocean, I don't suppose too much graphics rendering was going on.

For info, I'm running a 5600X, RTX3080 and 32 GB RAM at a rez of 1440 (2k).

Yeah, the MemTest should help.  All I can say about MSFS is, it will take the smallest instability with your system, and then pry it open with a wrecking ball.  My system was perfectly stable if I wasn't playing games.  And even for the games I played, the only other game that gave me a memory error was Age of Empires 4 and that was like 1 game out of 10 games, it didn't even happen often for Age of Empires 4.  But I suppose MSFS stresses your system much more, so the slightest instability will cause a CTD.

BTW, even when I did the MemTest, it took about 10 to 15 minutes before the MemTest failed. I think the first 5 to 6 tests run by MemTest all passed. It was something like the 7th or 8th test that finally failed.

[MattNischan 3,778]

3 hours ago, cianpars said:

After 2 years and countless fixes and updates why has this issue, which I am assuming is a memory leak not been fixed?

I think folks commonly have a misconception about what this bug is, and assume that it can be fixed atomically by finding a single root cause.

The reality is, the "memory cannot be referenced" error means that the program tried to access some variable in its code and found the variable was missing or overwritten. This can literally be _any_ variable in _any_ part of the code. Amongst literal millions of lines of code, you could be chasing down thousands of these that may happen almost never, or almost all the time, and they all depend on the conditions of the surrounding code and data. They may also be entirely out of your code, when something downstream in some driver brings bad wrong or bad data into a variable, and then your code tries to access it.

It's a super common and often crazy complex issue to diagnose and debug in modern size codebases, the proverbial needle in a haystack, except the needle moves when you start searching through the haystack, and may remove or add other needles as you go, some or all or none of which may be the needle you're actually looking for.

-Matt

[Virtual-Chris 682]

In my case, this error was due to a bad overlock on my GPU.  The overclock was perfectly stable in a few other games I play, but not MSFS.  Turning off the overclock immediately solved my problem.  I've since dialled it back and seem to be running stable again with a bit of an OC.

If you've been around awhile, you may recall back in the 80s, there were a lot of clone PCs flooding the market and it was a common test then to determine if any given clone was truly PC compatible... Could it run Microsoft Flight Simulator? LOL.

To this day, it still seems like MSFS stresses hardware in many ways other games and applications don't.

[ryanbatc 12,851]

4 hours ago, cianpars said:

After 3 or 4 hours of flying, I am still finding msfs crashing with the above warning.  After 2 years and countless fixes and updates why has this issue, which I am assuming is a memory leak not been fixed?

It's not as if it hasn't been mentioned hundreds of times now.  Has the sim update beta addressed it?

I literally just had this this morning.  I hope it was random.  Maybe it is a server issue?

Or maybe it's my vram or ram dying already.

[Car147 2,278]

I got it occasionally before SU10 Beta, but have not seen it since.And in my case it only started after SU9. I had never seen it before.

[Virtual-Chris 682]

5 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

I literally just had this this morning.  I hope it was random.  Maybe it is a server issue?

Or maybe it's my vram or ram dying already.

If this is your first time and it doesn't happen again, maybe not worth worrying about. It could be a waste of time trying to track it down.  If it pops up again or consistently, and you've got latest drivers, re-installed the sim lately, etc. then you could start looking at hardware.  Your GPU IS getting a bit long in the tooth. 

[icewater5 181]

8 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

If this is your first time and it doesn't happen again, maybe not worth worrying about. It could be a waste of time trying to track it down.

Some good advice there