On 3/31/2025 at 5:31 PM, Fiorentoni said:

UPDATE: So as for the cause and "solution" - it was indeed caused by one of the Win11 updates. It basically only happens when I constantly ALT+TAB in and out. It almost never happens when I use the windows key, and then click on another window.

Hi,

have you found a solution to this? I have the same issue.

23 hours ago, mhron_pilot said:

Hi,

have you found a solution to this? I have the same issue.

As in the post you quoted me, I use the windows key instead of ALT+TAB. It still freezes occasionally (but less than with ALT+TAB), and then I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and open the task manager and then it unfreezes again. It's a bit annoying but at least it's predictable

On 3/16/2025 at 6:49 PM, Fiorentoni said:

So for about two months I have this weird issue: 1 out of 3 flights I get a freeze of the sim - sim completely frozen, sound still playing. But here's the weird stuff:

1) This seems to mostly happen while I am ALT+TABbed out on another window (usually Firefox). I notice it when I want to go back to the MSFS window and it's frozen.

2) When I CTRL+ALT+DEL and then hit cancel, the sim unfreezes and I can continue the flight. This has worked everytime so far except twice (see below). If I don't do this, the sim stays frozen for minutes.
Sometimes I was able to unfreeze the sim also by killing a random MSFS simconnect process. While the simconnect stuff at least somehow makes sense, i have no idea what a CTRL+ALT+DEL and cancel could affect that unfreezes thesim.

3) When the sim unfreezes, simconnect resets (e.g. I can hear vRAAS reconnect and GSX stuff disappears).

4) The freezes can happen at any phase of the flight (at the gate, in the air, on approach etc.) and with any kind of aircraft and scenery, there is no pattern at all. I'm also using AddonLinker so only have the 2 airports I need for every flight, which would rule out scenery addon incompatibility as the cause.

5) Event viewer shows absolutely nothing regularly when the freezes happen.

6) Twice the freeze actually did not get unfrozen inspite of hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL - the sim then crashed after a couple of minutes and event viewer showed the W T F.DLL in the MSFS folder crashing. One of these freezes did not happen while being ALT+TABBED, but while normally in the flight.

7) The freezes almost exclusively happens with MSFS 2020, but I think I've actually had it happen once on MSFS2024 too, but seems much less there (then again I'm also using 2020 more than 2024).

Here's what I've tried so far:

- Windows Defender exclusions to each MSFS process and every external simmconnect tool and also the folders. Here's what's always connected via Simconnect when the freezes happen (in case someone has an idea): GSX (couatl.exe), vRAAS, ActiveSky, FSUIPC, MFConnector (mobiflight), RealTurb, noolaero (VDGS), AutoFPS.
- Driver updates to each and everything, windows updates.
- sfc /scannow and the componentstore cleanup
- removing the default overclocking (Alienware)

Nothing has helped so far and I'm out of ideas. The fact that it appeared out of nowhere 2 months ago and then remained make me think it's a hardware issue, I do have one of those Intel CPUs that was involved in that degradation scandal last year (13th and 14th gen) and it ran about 2 months before the BIOS was updated. However I would have thought that a defective CPU would cause much more instability - the rest of the system is very stable, no crash, no BSOD, nothing. Also it seems weird that a CTRL+ALT+DEL would just help the defective CPU to unfreeze, but then again I'm no expert.
On the other side it seems software related to MSFS because of the simconnect effects of the freeze and the possibility to unfreeze sometimes via killing a simconnect process, but this wouldn't explain why it only appeared two months ago. The only relatively "new" simconnect tool was AutoFPS, but that was already in usage (without problems) for one month prior to the first sim freeze. Could of course be an update to one of the tools that caused this (GSX, vRAAS, FSUIPC, ActiveSky, MFConnector have all been updated regularly).

EDIT:

Additional information requested:

Windows version: Windows 11 H2

PC overclocked: Not anymore and before only the factory overclock

PC overheating: Nope, temps are totally fine (70-80 degrees for CPU, 65 for GPU while running MSFS)

PC age: quite new, 9 months.

GPU: 4070ti
CPU: i7-14700kf
RAM: 32GB

I had this problem in 2024.  It was less likely to happen if I was only running on one screen instead of all three.  Cured by clearing all caches and re-install.  Now I just get CTDs 😞

4 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

As in the post you quoted me, I use the windows key instead of ALT+TAB. It still freezes occasionally (but less than with ALT+TAB), and then I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and open the task manager and then it unfreezes again. It's a bit annoying but at least it's predictable

Thanks for the reply. After all I think I've found a solution that cured it for me - I disabled the hardware acceleration in MS Edge. Since then Alt-tabbing doesn't make my MSFS2024 freeze.

Hey guys I'm bumping this. I get these freezes and by minimizing to windowed mode and/or moving to a different window I manage to unfreeze the sim.

In 2020 I used to suffer from these freezes using DX12 beta. This is the reason I've stayed on DX11.

Now that I've migrated to 2024 I'm suffering much more from these freezes and obviously there is no longer a DX11 option.

Has there been any proven solution to this?

 

Thanks!