I remember a few years ago some people reported problems in games that related to their SSD drive.
The problems where similar to yours (stutters after a while, repeated). So have you checked if their maybe is a new firmware for your drive?

Also installing a latency monitor for DCP (Deferred procedure calls) might give you more information ...

1 hour ago, Mace said:

That's why ProcMon is superior to trying to view something in Task Manager.

With ProcMon you can have it halt the display of activity (by default it constantly scrolls...) and in so doing pinpoint the exact file being accessed and the exact time stamp.

Thanks Mace.  I was just about to install it but I'm not sure which one.  The Zip file contains ProcMon, ProcMon 64, and ProcMon64A.

Thanks.

53 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

Pauses tend to be more CPU related rather than GPU, and MSFS uses far more threads than Skyrim would, so I think it is more related to a process pinching a main thread that MSFS is also running on, as you suspect also.

In any case, it sounds like you are on to it and will find the problem with the method you are going to use.  It will be interesting to see what it is.

I really hope you find it Jack!

Thanks Bobcat!  I'm not too good at this stuff, most people here are far better at it than I am so it will be a challenge for me.

52 minutes ago, teletom said:

I remember a few years ago some people reported problems in games that related to their SSD drive.
The problems where similar to yours (stutters after a while, repeated). So have you checked if their maybe is a new firmware for your drive?

Also installing a latency monitor for DCP (Deferred procedure calls) might give you more information ...

Last summer I unplugged all SSD's all peripherals, WiFi, Ethernet, you name it. It wasn't the SSD.  I say this because it stopped and was fine since last summer till yesterday.

What is a latency monitor?  What is eve latency?  I can fix real jets all day, avionics to engines to sheet metal but PC's are a nuisance to me, I actually spend all my time using a Mac and the PC is only for one thing, MSFS.  I don't email with it, surf with it, nothing.  There's no other applications on it, just Windows 10 and MSFS.

Might want to type "services" into the search bar and see what is running and what auto-starts/trigger-starts, etc.  You can sort it by active services then google each one online and see if it is something you need running.  Task Scheduler and Startup Apps is also a good place to look and see if something you don't want running, actually is.

Don't want to side track the thread, please continue.  However, I recall there was a guy about (5?) years ago who would connect to your PC and via voice/video review your system and make adjustments and recommendations for fixes for you.  Yes, it was a pay service, pretty inexpensive and I think he got very good reviews.  I always thought this was an interesting thing to have available to our community.  I actually never needed the service but still a cool idea.  Now, I would love to have a knowledgeable person that I could rely on to help me make a new PC purchase, there is just so much contradictory into out there I am kind of giving up.  I have the money ($2,500 US) ready to go for 6 months, but just cant push through.  Anyways, good luck with you resolution on this, wish you well.

17 minutes ago, Chunk said:

Might want to type "services" into the search bar and see what is running and what auto-starts/trigger-starts, etc.  You can sort it by active services then google each one online and see if it is something you need running.  Task Scheduler and Startup Apps is also a good place to look and see if something you don't want running, actually is.

Thanks Chunk.  I ran ProcMon and man is this over my head, I mean like light years over my head.  I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking or how to use this program.  I think I'm getting close to despair because last summer I lost the pauses with simply stopping the steamoverlay thing from running and was so freaking happy with it.  Now, I dunno.  I don't know what I'm even looking for.  This is why I said I'd pay someone substantial cash to help me solve it.

2 minutes ago, Mike S KPDX said:

Don't want to side track the thread, please continue.  However, I recall there was a guy about (5?) years ago who would connect to your PC and via voice/video review your system and make adjustments and recommendations for fixes for you.  Yes, it was a pay service, pretty inexpensive and I think he got very good reviews.  I always thought this was an interesting thing to have available to our community.  I actually never needed the service but still a cool idea.  Now, I would love to have a knowledgeable person that I could rely on to help me make a new PC purchase, there is just so much contradictory into out there I am kind of giving up.  I have the money ($2,500 US) ready to go for 6 months, but just cant push through.  Anyways, good luck with you resolution on this, wish you well.

Hi Mike, I'm on my third Jetline.  I wouldn't buy from anyone else.  But mine is a 2019 model so it's very old in dog years.

46 minutes ago, Jack_Sawyer said:

I don't know what I'm even looking for.

Hi Jack,

Have you simply watched Task Manager to see what might be happening every 60 sec?

Run MSFS in  windowed mode, just park an airplane at a simple airport.

Start up Task Manager (right click on the bottom Windows bar)  and select the Processes tab.

Click on the %CPU bar at the top which sorts the running processes by CPU usage.

Sit and watch and see what Processes appear and disappear in the top section.

9 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Have you simply watched Task Manager to see what might be happening every 60 sec?

You should be looking at something like this:

1 hour ago, Jack_Sawyer said:

I ran ProcMon and man is this over my head, I mean like light years over my head.  I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking or how to use this program.  

Don't let ProcMon scare you, it monitors way more information than you need.  Run ProcMon and the sim at the same time.  ProcMon will have a bunch of scrolling data on-screen.  With the sim running, let the sim do its 1 minute pause thing, and note the exact system time of the pause (in your taskbar, system tray, click on the clock/time), and I would probably let it do another pause and note that time as well.

Then switch to ProcMon, and in ProcMon's menu's there is an option to stop the auto-scroll.  On the left of the ProcMon window will be a time stamp for each line of data -- find the exact time where your pause occurred...and you'll see all sorts of data on what files were accessed and their paths...hopefully that will shed light on the process(es) that were causing the pause.

Grant you, I'm not in front of my fs rig at the moment, and I may not remember precisely the ProcMon bits, but suffice to say it is a very useful program that can be overwhelming, but you only need it for this one specific thing.  To see what the system is doing at one precise moment.

@Bert Pieke I think he tried looking at Task Manager but that is often an exercise in futility because the offending cpu-hog appears and disappears in a flash, before you can see what it was sometimes.  ProcMon is more of a log utility and gives the exact path of the file being accessed.

@Jack_Sawyer you could also have JetLine take a look at it since they built your rig.  They'd probably charge you a fee, but I think it would be worth it, I know pauses like that can be very aggravating.

1 minute ago, Mace said:

 I think he tried looking at Task Manager but that is often an exercise in futility because the offending cpu-hog appears and disappears in a flash, before you can see what it was sometimes.  ProcMon is more of a log utility and gives the exact path of the file being accessed.

Agree that ProcMon gives you more detail, but if this is indeed repeatable, you might see something happening every 60 sec in the Task Manager... which then gives you something to investigate.

1 hour ago, Jack_Sawyer said:

I lost the pauses with simply stopping the steamoverlay thing from running and was so freaking happy with it.  Now, I dunno.

Did you check whether this overlay thingammy was enabled again, eg after a Steam update? Just a shot in the dark though as I don’t use MSFS on Steam…

Just now, Bert Pieke said:

Agree that ProcMon gives you more detail, but if this is indeed repeatable, you might see something happening every 60 sec in the Task Manager... which then gives you something to investigate.

Yes true.  I didn't mean to discount your good Task Manager advice, that could indeed be a simpler way to find it especially if it's clockwork regular.

ProcMon is more like a cross between a super-duper task manager + windows system logs.

Interestingly, ProcMon helped me find some SSD thrashing activity which were some TrueType fonts and Navdata Pro stuff that an Aerosoft add-on left on my system...i.e. their uninstaller did not clean up these font files and Navdatapro files, and my system was constantly accessing these files.

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

Hi Jack,

Have you simply watched Task Manager to see what might be happening every 60 sec?

Run MSFS in  windowed mode, just park an airplane at a simple airport.

Start up Task Manager (right click on the bottom Windows bar)  and select the Processes tab.

Click on the %CPU bar at the top which sorts the running processes by CPU usage.

Sit and watch and see what Processes appear and disappear in the top section.

Hi Bert and thanks.  Yes but it’s too fast.  It flickers whatever it is.  I have the GoPro set up.  I’m finally able to sit here and see what I can see.  Just turned on the PC.  Will keep ya’ll posted.