Hi David OC,
Thanks for the advice here, but a black box solution was not what I needed to understand the possible root cause. The approach I took was what many skilled developers/testers might follow to execute a rigorous and disciplined approach to establish when do things start to break down. To do this one must start with a clean slate. One of the primary goals of a rigorous approach such as this is to establish behavioural patterns in the hope that this might assist in the narrowing down of a problem domain and/or discount possible interpretations of a problem that could be nothing more than misdirection.
For example.
This text is an example of the behaviour of the crashes experienced when starting a mission on any map. The only thing that changes in all of the logged events is the timestamp.
Faulting application name: DCS.exe, version: 2.5.2.17559, time stamp: 0x5b040a6c
Faulting module name: ucrtbase.dll, version: 10.0.16299.248, time stamp: 0xe71e5dfe
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x000000000006b79e
Faulting process ID: 0xa878
Faulting application start time: 0x01d3f2ecff255085
Faulting application path: F:\Games\DCS World OpenBeta\bin\DCS.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\ucrtbase.dll
Report ID: 4d3fa40c-832c-4fd8-961e-ed7a9353e83c
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
Of special interest here is that in each case, no exception handler intercept occurred. This thus meant that no log files etcetera could be generated for later examination by relevant personnel.
Contrast this error message with the one received when exiting a mission.
Faulting application name: DCS.exe, version: 2.5.2.17559, time stamp: 0x5b040a6c
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000000000
Faulting process ID: 0x4828
Faulting application start time: 0x01d3f39d3f705476
Faulting application path: F:\Games\DCS World OpenBeta\bin\DCS.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report ID: 4b7f2a16-3bf4-4f13-90dd-5f0f01e4be03
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
In this case an exception handler trapped the event and was able to generate all relevant details and packaged them in the dcs-log*.zip file ready for onward transmission.
In the first case it is a reasonable inference that a try/catch clause or piece of necessary defensive code is missing. It is also reasonable to infer that the problem is not related to use of a specific map but seems to be a more generalised problem. This is supported by other postings that assert mission start failures regardless of map choice.
In the second case there could be any number of reasons that could lead to this problem. There is little point in an outsider issuing an opinion on probable causes. The source code and map file will need to referenced to point the way here.
Now that I may well have established the root cause for problem one, (I could be off target of course), there is no reason for me to assume that my thoughts are going to be accepted.
This is because I have no credibility here in the forum (given my low posting count) nor is my technical knowledge known. Since everybody has an opinion on every topic under the sun, be it correct or otherwise the best I can do is provide the kind of report I did initially.
I can then expect, iff (if and only if) somebody actually looks into the logs etcetera that I have supplied, is to use the remarks made to follow what is reported in the log and at least provide a basic explanation of the changes they will observe.
So I guess to answer your observation, the decision to reinstall DCS depends on your goal. :thumbup:
