Having thought about how best to identify and fix this problem I decided to update my graphics drivers. I then flew EGSS-EHAM choosing 27 so I flew the same approach as yesterday.

This time the approach and landing was fine. There were a couple of pauses around the Clacton VOR but they passed without incident.

I also started ProcMon as I crossed the Dutch coast. Had there been a long freeze I was going to send the log to Chillblast for analysis. First successful attempt in three tries for a landing there.

I'm assuming you clear the scenery cache when changing video drivers...if not, you should.

One thing I've experienced a few times in the past is pauses/crashes which I believe were related to having multiple audio devices active. 

As a general rule, I disable the nVidia GPU's HD audio in the device manager.

2 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

I'm assuming you clear the scenery cache when changing video drivers...if not, you should.

One thing I've experienced a few times in the past is pauses/crashes which I believe were related to having multiple audio devices active. 

As a general rule, I disable the nVidia GPU's HD audio in the device manager.

I forgot! I shall do that tomorrow morning. I just go with the default selection of Speakers using the Realtek drivers. The other option is the digital one which doesn’t produce any sound at all. Disabling the Nvidia driver will be done tomorrow too, thanks Bob.

What I do do is use DDU in safe mode to uninstall then run NVCleanstall to install just the graphics driver.

I was chatting to other simmers at our monthly meeting today and others have had stability problems with W11 too. I’m not alone.

I also checked the Windows Defender log and no instances of blocking occurring.

5 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I forgot! I shall do that tomorrow morning. I just go with the default selection of Speakers using the Realtek drivers. The other option is the digital one which doesn’t produce any sound at all. Disabling the Nvidia driver will be done tomorrow too, thanks Bob.

What I do do is use DDU in safe mode to uninstall then run NVCleanstall to install just the graphics driver.

I was chatting to other simmers at our monthly meeting today and others have had stability problems with W11 too. I’m not alone.

I also checked the Windows Defender log and no instances of blocking occurring.

I never use DDU UNLESS I'm going to a former driver; otherwise, I use NVidia's normal upgrade.  This has worked well for me over the years.  I also never download the audio drivers that come up when I am installing new drivers. I have no experience with NV Cleaninstall, and will not use it because it doesn't seem to be necessary in my situation.

Perfect flight today from Gerald Ford (KGRR), Michigan, to Orlando (KMCO), Florida, with absolutely no pauses or stutters. Using the brand new Nvida drivers just released, and turned off Defender.

Stan

 

Stan, I was still getting DXGI Hung issues even with the Registry fixes with drivers installed in the conventional way with the Nvidia package.

After using DDU / NVCleanstall on 1 January I never had another one until that PC was decommissioned in early October. It certainly worked for me.

13 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Stan, I was still getting DXGI Hung issues even with the Registry fixes with drivers installed in the conventional way with the Nvidia package.

After using DDU / NVCleanstall on 1 January I never had another one until that PC was decommissioned in early October. It certainly worked for me.

Exactly...all of our systems are different in hundreds of ways.  No 2 computers will run P3d or ANYTHING else exactly like the other.  You must do what works for you.  But for me, your tip on shutting Defender before a flight has been nothing short of miraculous.

ps.  ALSO, I would turn off AUTOSAVE in FSUIPC.  When I did that years ago, my smoothness factor went up exponentially.

Edited December 16, 20232 yr by spilok

9 hours ago, spilok said:

But for me, your tip on shutting Defender before a flight has been nothing short of miraculous.

ps.  ALSO, I would turn off AUTOSAVE in FSUIPC.  When I did that years ago, my smoothness factor went up exponentially.

I’m going to turn off Virus protection today as I want to see if the few minor stutters / pauses are down to it running. There are entries in the log during a flight.

I seem to have cured autosave stutters by adding to the exclusion list.

After three successful flights today - 2 in the 737 and one in the XP Lear 25 I’m cautiously optimistic updated drivers have done the trick.

I never used to bother much with updating drivers because P3Dv5 was a well-established sim. But it’s probably needed because the drivers for the 4090 are still being refined.

Such strange freezes. I never thought it might be graphics drivers but once Virus protection could be ruled out the number of possible causes went down.

I think I will put off moving to Win 11 on my FS PC until I absolutely have to.  Another reason to not be in a hurry to upgrade my gen 9 CPU/MB (which aren't eligible for a Win 11 upgrade) to go with my 4090 - I do have Win 11 on my laptop and I must say I am not a fan.

Bruce

Edited December 18, 20232 yr by brucewtb
typo

@brucewtb, my problems (hopefully) have not been down to W11. Just new graphics drivers. With multiple excludes in virus protection I don’t have any pauses with FSUIPC autosave either.

After another flight in the PMDG, another in the XP Lear 25 and finally a partially completed flight in Concorde all without any freezes I’m as sure as I can be the updated Nvidia drivers have fixed the problem.

I can now enjoy my flights instead of worrying about how to fix the problem. Thanks to all who suggested solutions.

I spoke too soon..... again! But after 4 days with no problems I'm mystified why I got a lockup 3 miles out of FlyTampa Sydney after a trouble-free flight in the morning to Canberra and then almost completing the return this afternoon.

It must have frozen for over 4 minutes but I remained patient. I was able to view Task Manager - Performance and saw all but 3 LPs running at 100%. The only ones that weren't were the three assigned in prepar3d.cfg AM settings. Weird.

I was also running HWInfo for monitoring temps and as soon as I clicked on the interface P3D unfroze and I landed okay. The monitoring starts when I start the take-off roll.

I did notice in the HWInfo interface the CPU temp was 100C. That matches the results of the monitoring shown on this screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet. Note that the temp only briefly high high temps before returning to normal. As soon as P3D unfroze the temp dropped.

I've exhausted the suspects. Virus protection is okay and I'm sure it would not produce results like this. I've sent the spreadsheet to Chillblast today. Nvidia drivers were updated and seemed to fix the problem.

I have one question. Is the freeze / lockup causing the temps to max out or is it the excessive heat causing P3D to lockup. Chicken and egg scenario. But what is causing the excessive heat because throughout the flight the temps are fine.

I feel it's a hardware issue because in all the years I had P3D v5 on my old Chillblast it never froze like this and I was overclocking whereas I'm not with this CPU. The GPU just ticks over and never gets hot.

I'm hoping if a phone chat with Chillblast doesn't resolve the issue they'll send an engineer to analyse the computer and run some tests that will stress the CPU. If it causes the PC to freeze that would at least prove P3D is the victim, not the cause.

All this won't happen until next year. I can wait but I do need a solution.

56 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I have one question. Is the freeze / lockup causing the temps to max out or is it the excessive heat causing P3D to lockup. Chicken and egg scenario. But what is causing the excessive heat because throughout the flight the temps are fine.

My guess is that P3D is locking up, all the cores are at 100% and unless you have PL1 and PL2 set on that K-class CPU you will consume as much power as the motherboard can provide, exceeding the capacity of the cooler. I'd ask Chillblast what those two power limits are set to.

To confirm, when you have this situation, P3D is consuming the CPU, not some other process?

Cheers

@Luke, many thanks for your diagnosis.  But this is software I’ve had for ages and never caused a problem before. But there are some differences…

1) New computer obviously but running W11, not 10.

2) EA mode enabled. Previous computer it was off. The 1080Ti couldn’t handle it.

3) P3D v5.4 versus v5.3HF2.

And that’s it.

I will ask them once Christmas / New Year is over. As far as I can tell from Defender logs a scan was not running and no other process in task manager was hogging resources. Interesting that as soon as I made HWInfo active by displaying it P3D unlocked. Coincidence?

One other question. Why were cores 0, 2 and 4 not at 100% when P3D prioritises them?

13 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Interesting that as soon as I made HWInfo active by displaying it P3D unlocked. Coincidence?

Maybe. Will it do the same thing the next time a freeze happens? 😉

I missed the part about three CPUs not being at 100% - those are the 3 you've defined in your JobScheduler section for the main P3D threads?

Cheers