Ideas on how to troubleshoot recurrent hard pauses?

[Noel 4,483]

This has been really weird.  A week ago or so I did a total new install of Win 10, then MSFS in total w/ all WUs.  I started new w/ a virgin Community Folder, and installed my few addons (PMDG 738, AS CRJ-700, PACX, A Pilot's Life.  After all was done rebooted etc and a few settings modified, I was restored to pretty much perfect performance, for several days.  Last eve and this morning I'm getting these recurrent hard pauses and I'm not finding a way to ascertain where they come from.  At about the 5 second mark in this short video be watching the DM FPS indicator for the red spike and with it a major pause.  Last night I also installed Steam and two games I play in my fresh Win 10 install, but they have been in the former Win 10/MSFS install and never had any problems for ages n ages.  I find w/ SU10 I actually seem to have slightly worse performance, and I'm using the recent NV GRD post Studio Driver and these areas I haven't touched and had several days of essentially flawless performance in any plane anywhere.

What's a good strategy to try to see what it is that's causing these brief by wretched pauses?  Pretty sad after all the reinstalls and a couple of days of nirvana 😔

And this persists up at altitude when there is very little stress on CPU/GPU.  

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Noel

[Noncon 19]

To eliminate any peripherals causing the pauses, try disconnecting all your usb devices except mouse and keyboard.  

[Mace 1,896]

I assume you aren't running FSUIPC autosave.

You could install ProcMon, it would allow you to possibly see exactly what is active at the very moment of the pause.

[Noel 4,483]

1 hour ago, Mace said:

I assume you aren't running FSUIPC autosave.

You could install ProcMon, it would allow you to possibly see exactly what is active at the very moment of the pause.

Thanks Rhett.  Is it pretty straightforward how to setup ProcMon in this regard?  I did learn today it happens in both the freshly updated PMDG 738 and also the CRJ700.  I remembered I had been fiddling around with trying to get my headphones and speakers to play at the same time and might have muffed up the Realtek driver install, so uninstalled and reinstalled and my one test flight looks hopeful--but you know how that goes nothing could be that easy 🙃   If it rears its head again I will try ProcMon thanks

[Flic1 969]

Are you running any of the default AI traffic or any AI ground vehicles?  The very few times I have used that I noticed similar stutters as it sometimes will pull in your 3rd party aircraft as AI. 

[Noel 4,483]

44 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

Are you running any of the default AI traffic or any AI ground vehicles?  The very few times I have used that I noticed similar stutters as it sometimes will pull in your 3rd party aircraft as AI. 

Very good I will look for that.  But also, I've never had this issue before, so it's something new and may well be from outside the sim.  It's possible the audio driver fixed it won't know til tomorrow when I do another flight.  Thanks

[cianpars 1,158]

I would normally reduce all of my settings to default and see if that fixed it.  If so, I would gradually turn things up until the issue reappeared.  Disconnecting all peripherals except for the essential ones is also a good check.

Often, it could be down to some background process such as anti virus or malware scanner, so worth trying with those turned off.

Running without any addons is worth a try to see if it is something in your community folder.

Turn off Nvidia experience and any system monitoring programs you are using such as afterburner or frame rate displays along with any programs running like air traffic, little navmap, etc.

Troubleshooting can be a real pain in the a**e but sometimes this has to be done.  I have tried all the above steps at the same time and fixed an issue, but it can be a slow process putting rverything back on until the problem recurs and you can isolate the issue.

 

[Vel 293]

I had a very similar issue this week. After much head scratching I discovered that somethig had re-enabled HAGS. I disabled it and the issue vanished.

[Jack_Sawyer 4,600]

32 minutes ago, Vel said:

I had a very similar issue this week. After much head scratching I discovered that somethig had re-enabled HAGS. I disabled it and the issue vanished.

Same problem here.  I’m getting a maybe 1/3 second pause precisely every 60 seconds.

What is HAGS?

 Thanks, Jack.

[Vel 293]

25 minutes ago, Jack_Sawyer said:

Same problem here.  I’m getting a maybe 1/3 second pause precisely every 60 seconds.

What is HAGS?

 Thanks, Jack.

Hi Jack

HAGS is Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling. In FS2020 my system performs better with it turned off. The latest NVIDIA driver also seems to cause 100% GPU usage while sitting at the desktop (doing nothing!) if HAGS is enabled.

 

I dont know if you are on Windows 10 or 11 but the process to switch it on or off is very similar.

This article tells you how to do it in Settings.

https://appuals.com/disable-accelerated-gpu-scheduling-windows-11/

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Vel

[Jack_Sawyer 4,600]

1 minute ago, Vel said:

Hi Jack

HAGS is Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling. In FS2020 my system performs better with it turned off. The latest NVIDIA driver also seems to cause 100% GPU usage while sitting at the desktop (doing nothing!) if HAGS is enabled.

 

I dont know if you are on Windows 10 or 11 but the process to switch it on or off is very similar.

This article tells you how to do it in Settings.

https://appuals.com/disable-accelerated-gpu-scheduling-windows-11/

 

Thanks Vel.  Yes sir, I tried this last night on Win 10.  No help, I still get those exact and very precise 1/3 of a second or less pauses precisely every 60 seconds.  One thing I did notice however was with GPU scheduling on the TDS GTN 750 app absolutely detests it.  I'll get a pop-up box telling me to shut it off.

I don't have a background wallpaper being changed, I don't even have Cortana running in processes, ever, I went through a heck of a lot of search results and tried many things, documenting what I did and it's still all for naught.

It seems something on my PC is doing something every 60 seconds to cause this.  I have all SSD drives, the latest driver for my 3070, Windows is always updated, just about every background process turned off.

When I first noticed it I went in-sim and set everything I could to the lowest setting, nope, same pause.

It's astonishing to me why this happens and I simply can't figure it out.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Jack

[cianpars 1,158]

Pauses every 60 seconds is typical of a virus checker or anti malware program performing a scan.

[Jack_Sawyer 4,600]

1 minute ago, cianpars said:

Pauses every 60 seconds is typical of a virus checker or anti malware program performing a scan.

Thanks, I have neither.  Just the Windows Defender 

[RJC68 820]

21 minutes ago, Jack_Sawyer said:

Thanks, I have neither.  Just the Windows Defender 

Windows Defender is an Anti Virus program. Have you excluded anything MSFS related from Windows Defender?

[Jack_Sawyer 4,600]

2 minutes ago, RJC68 said:

Windows Defender is an Anti Virus program. Have you excluded anything MSFS related from Windows Defender?

Thanks.  Dang, I don’t even know how to 😞 I’m using Steam.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Jack_Sawyer