Hello folks,

I've come to you in the hopes I could receive some aid regarding my MSFS 2020 as I've encountered a stutter that will not go away no matter what I try. I will outline the issue and what I've tried already, please note this is a consistent stutter that never happened before, it happens regardless of settings or location or aircraft and is remarkably consistent. 

So when I fly, the sim will be buttery smooth and then after 30-40 seconds I will get a group of 2-5 stutters, these are large stutters where the whole sim freezes for a second at least, then a second or so of smoothness then stutter again, repeat. I am certain this is not caused by anything common or my specs as the sim ran perfect in July 24 when I last used. I have a 5800x, 6700xt and 16gb 3600mhz RAM, this was allowing me to play on ultra settings with smooth frames before.

I fully reinstalled msfs and deleted any trace folder I could find, on a completely fresh install now I'm still getting the stutter cluster. This has no relation to what's happening in the sim ie I could be in the default 152, in saudi arabia looking at the sky and after a rough 40 second period I'll get a consistent group of stutters and then go back to buttery smooth. The nature of the problem indicates something external however this is not happening in other games. It happens regardless of sim settings. I have tried all the basic msfs troubleshooting steps that I can find. I'm hoping I can find a kind computer whizz here who could be of assistance. I want to stress I've tried for days to go through all the typical things which I'll outline below. I'm so grateful for any help I receive and may god bless you all indeed folks. 

What have I tried? 

 

-Full MSFS reinstall, testing with pure default

-Tweaked settings every way possible, tried on min settings 720p with a million fps, still stutters at the same interval and rate, it occurs regardless of settings or fps ie with ultra settings and 40 fps it happens, with low and 100 it happens, no change.

-DDU full clean reinstall of chipset and gpu drivers

-Closed every external program possible that I can find aside from MSFS

-Disable full screen opt, run as admin, windows defender off

-Reset BIOS to default

-Checked drive health

-Tried offline (I have 1gb down and this wasn't happening before with slower internet)

-Tested numerous locations and aircraft - the exact same result every time

-AI traffic, photogrammetry etc off

-Checked rescource monitor to see if there's any cpu, RAM or network spikes during stutter - no result here seemed normal

-Many, many more basic fixes, the obvious kind we find on our first google search

-DX11 or 12, no change

 

I'm really out of ideas now, the sim runs perfect for a long time and now upon my return it's like this, if anyone would be so kind as to suggest a fix I would be greatly appreciative however please try to read the nature of the stutter as I've attempted to seek advice elsewhere and am hit with people who seem to think it's slow internet, lack of ram, rolling cache etc. I've tried to outline in the post what I've tried and the nature, remember this happens regardless of settings on a complete default sim and is perfectly consistent, it doesn't increase if I'm in New York vs the salt flats of Bolivia for example. I think that's key. If someone has some ideas about potential external causes I think that may lead us to fruit. Many blessings folks! 

Well if it's happening the same way in offline mode, it's not something external.  Have you installed Procmon yet? that's a much more detailed look at what's going on with your computer than the Task Manager is. What you're describing really sounds like a background program acting up, or a device connected to your computer that's causing issues.

I would start with Procmon to see if I could pinpoint what's going nuts at the time of the pausing, and I would also, just for laughs, unplug every USB device except your keyboard and mouse, and fly with those just to see if the pauses go away. If they do, you know one of your peripherals is causing problems.

Another thought, take off and fly very tight circles around the airport to see if it's a scenery tile load-in issue. If the pauses don't happen until you go somewhere else, you've at least narrowed down the issue to that, though I'm not sure why it would have identical pauses with the relatively low-res offline scenery.

 

 

Edited March 2, 20251 yr by eslader

35 minutes ago, eslader said:

Well if it's happening the same way in offline mode, it's not something external.  Have you installed Procmon yet? that's a much more detailed look at what's going on with your computer than the Task Manager is. What you're describing really sounds like a background program acting up, or a device connected to your computer that's causing issues.

I would start with Procmon to see if I could pinpoint what's going nuts at the time of the pausing, and I would also, just for laughs, unplug every USB device except your keyboard and mouse, and fly with those just to see if the pauses go away. If they do, you know one of your peripherals is causing problems.

Another thought, take off and fly very tight circles around the airport to see if it's a scenery tile load-in issue. If the pauses don't happen until you go somewhere else, you've at least narrowed down the issue to that, though I'm not sure why it would have identical pauses with the relatively low-res offline scenery.

 

 

Thank you very much for the response, I did try and remove every usb device bar my mouse and it still happened. It happens while sitting on the ground just panning the mouse - buttery smooth for ~40 seconds then BAM big cluster of 2-5 stutters, repeat infinitely even if I'm just sitting there. I will grab procmon now and test it, however so far with resource monitor, HWInfo etc I see no spikes in RAM, CPU or Network. When I look at the dev mode graph, upon each stutter a thin big blue spike appears. I believe that indicates CPU related? Also, if I min the settings so I'm GPU limited, upon each stutter it changes from saying GPU limited to something else but only for less then a second, I assume it's saying mainthread. I try procmon now and have a blessed day! 

Yeah, that definitely narrows it down to something slamming the CPU when it shouldn't be, if you're seeing CPU spikes in the devmode graph. Some people have connected that to the Windows search service (WSearch in the services tab of the task manager), which indexes drive contents so you get faster results when you type something in the search bar. It's theoretically supposed to do its thing when the system is idle, but that doesn't always happen.

One of the bigger annoyances with modern versions of Windows is that after you shut everything off there are still about eleventy-five processes running in the background and they don't all behave well. For Windows Search, you can either disable it if you don't do much searching for files/etc, or you can try checking the database, which you will need to have hidden files set to visible to find. It's in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows and is called Windows.edb. It should be well under 1gb. Mine is 270 megs. If it's too large it can cause stumbles when the service edits it.

It can also be corrupt. If you do want to retain the fast search functionality, try turning the service off, deleting that file, then turning the service back on to let the service recreate it from scratch.

 

Also, you did not mention if you have V-Sync turned on or off, but it's been known to cause issues in MSFS and many run with it off.

Edited March 2, 20251 yr by eslader

24 minutes ago, eslader said:

Yeah, that definitely narrows it down to something slamming the CPU when it shouldn't be, if you're seeing CPU spikes in the devmode graph. Some people have connected that to the Windows search service (WSearch in the services tab of the task manager), which indexes drive contents so you get faster results when you type something in the search bar. It's theoretically supposed to do its thing when the system is idle, but that doesn't always happen.

One of the bigger annoyances with modern versions of Windows is that after you shut everything off there are still about eleventy-five processes running in the background and they don't all behave well. For Windows Search, you can either disable it if you don't do much searching for files/etc, or you can try checking the database, which you will need to have hidden files set to visible to find. It's in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows and is called Windows.edb. It should be well under 1gb. Mine is 270 megs. If it's too large it can cause stumbles when the service edits it.

It can also be corrupt. If you do want to retain the fast search functionality, try turning the service off, deleting that file, then turning the service back on to let the service recreate it from scratch.

 

Also, you did not mention if you have V-Sync turned on or off, but it's been known to cause issues in MSFS and many run with it off.

Thank you for the response, I'll look into the windows edb and see. V Sync on / off makes no difference to the stutter. What's weird is it hasn't happened in other games. And it happens even if I'm on min settings with TLOD at 10 for example. I can have 100 fps but the stutter remains and it's big like the sim fully pauses for 1-2.5 seconds a few times then continues. I'm just confused why this wouldn't happen on other games. I'm tempted to just reinstall windows at this point

I had a similar issue. It turned out to be an external HDD.

1 hour ago, WesleySnipez064 said:

Thank you for the response, I'll look into the windows edb and see. V Sync on / off makes no difference to the stutter. What's weird is it hasn't happened in other games. And it happens even if I'm on min settings with TLOD at 10 for example. I can have 100 fps but the stutter remains and it's big like the sim fully pauses for 1-2.5 seconds a few times then continues. I'm just confused why this wouldn't happen on other games. I'm tempted to just reinstall windows at this point

Are you using a rolling cache? If you are, disable it and clear the contents of the rolling cache folder and try with it disabled. 

It happened to me about 1 month ago and then it worked again without problems.

Yesterday it happened again suddenly and today everything seems to be working normally. I don't really know why it is.

 

Have anything like FSUIPC AutoSave enabled?

Was getting annoying 5-15 second freezes, it was autosave. 

1 hour ago, Jack_Sawyer said:

I had a similar issue. It turned out to be an external HDD.

Unfortunately I have tried with all usb devices disconnect and it still happens 

22 minutes ago, mspencer said:

Have anything like FSUIPC AutoSave enabled?

Was getting annoying 5-15 second freezes, it was autosave. 

No unfortunately I have this problem with a completely fresh install with no connections 

Important to stress guys that I really have gone through every basic and typical fix possible, I'm completely at my wits end here, the more far out and esoteric solution I think will be the cause, many blessings! 

Antivirus?

Does it happen with any other games /sims? Check windows updates are NOT allowed to use full bandwidth when checking for and downloading regular updates. Or not check at all for a week. 

3d Mark has a great pc /cpu /gpu test suite that has a free trial version. You could install the free test and let it run to see if it runs smooth or pauses like the sim does. 

Windows automatic indexing used to be a real pc hog. It scans your hard drives and files regular which would slow your work down to snails pace if you had older hard drives (disks not solid state). 

It detects file changes and scans them which would cause havoc if it was doing it with temporary cache files. 

Just some random ideas! 

He said it doesn't happen with other games, but that doesn't mean too much - Flight Sim has always had a knack for being more sensitive to system issues than other games.