DCS: freezes and crashes!

[grifo]

Hello everybody!

I need help to fix this problem:

 

DCS freezes and crashes often after a variable amount of time.

 

Those details may be useful for finding the issue:

-The crash is always the same: screen freezing in which time i can't use any input (alt+Tab, Ctrl+Alt+canc, key pressure etc..) but during this time i can communicate via TeamSpeack for a time of 20-30 seconds.. After this time my pc starts to make sound glitches and restart itself.

- I have no problems with other 3D applications or games, just DCS

- having tested for this purpose, CPU and GPU temperatures are always under safe values

-crashes are not going to happen in precise lapse of time: sometimes after few minutes, sometimes i can fly (the same mission) for hours and land without problems

- full-screen is disabled

 

What I can't understand is the fact I can continue to use TS during the freeze, so i can assume there is not an hardware problem..

 

My specs:

Win7 64bit

CPU DualCore E8500 @3.8 GHz

MOBO ASUS Stryker II Formula

VGA NVIDIA GTX 670

RAM 6GB @ 800MHZ

 

Here my DxDiag and a dcs.log file taken after a crash

 

tank your for helping! :cry:

DxDiag.txt

dcs.log.zip

[AtaliaA1]

Although there are other potential causes this sounds like Memory error to me.

 

Have U mucked with windows caching? (Virtual Memory)

[NineLine]

Are you doing any sort of overclocking on your GPU? Have you made sure your drivers are updated and/or are not using beta versions that might in unstable?

 

Hello everybody!

I need help to fix this problem:

 

DCS freezes and crashes often after a variable amount of time.

 

Those details may be useful for finding the issue:

-The crash is always the same: screen freezing in which time i can't use any input (alt+Tab, Ctrl+Alt+canc, key pressure etc..) but during this time i can communicate via TeamSpeack for a time of 20-30 seconds.. After this time my pc starts to make sound glitches and restart itself.

- I have no problems with other 3D applications or games, just DCS

- having tested for this purpose, CPU and GPU temperatures are always under safe values

-crashes are not going to happen in precise lapse of time: sometimes after few minutes, sometimes i can fly (the same mission) for hours and land without problems

- full-screen is disabled

 

What I can't understand is the fact I can continue to use TS during the freeze, so i can assume there is not an hardware problem..

 

My specs:

Win7 64bit

CPU DualCore E8500 @3.8 GHz

MOBO ASUS Stryker II Formula

VGA NVIDIA GTX 670

RAM 6GB @ 800MHZ

 

Here my DxDiag and a dcs.log file taken after a crash

 

tank your for helping! :cry:

[grifo]

Thanks for responding! :)

 

Although there are other potential causes this sounds like Memory error to me.

 

Have U mucked with windows caching? (Virtual Memory)

 

No, I haven't.. I don't know either how to do it

 

 

 

Are you doing any sort of overclocking on your GPU? Have you made sure your drivers are updated and/or are not using beta versions that might in unstable?

 

My GPU is not overclocked. Anyway my CPU and RAM are overclocked 20% by ASUS AI overclock. I'm using this for years and never had this glitches. Drivers are up to date and i'm having this problem using 1.2.7 beta and stable, 1.2.8 beta and stable. I checked also the steps in the sticky thread of this section.

[NineLine]

Can you watch you memory usage while you play, to see if maybe you are running out of memory? What aircraft do you normally fly? Make sure you are not running anything else in the background while you play the sim. 6GB of ram is the minimum now.

[grifo]

well.. I use track-ir, TeamSpeack and Saitek profiler normally in background. Crashes happens mostly in multyplayer games and with heavy missions, but sometimes also singleplayer lights. I made some testing for memory usage and it fills 85-90%.

If this can be a cause, what setting can I low to save some RAM?

[NineLine]

The more units and complexity of the mission, the higher the memory usage. It really is dependant on the mission. I only have 6GB of ram as well, but I dont see this issue.

[grifo]

good to hear is not mandatory to have more... so what can be the cause? Are the dxdiag and dcs.log useful to you?

[SkateZilla]

Sounds like a Graphics Card/Driver Crash.

 

GPU Driver Crashes, Which stops output to the screen,

System continues to run while it tries to recover the display driver.

System Fails to recover the display driver, and begins to Issue a HALT Command.

Sound Glitches/Stutters when Halt Command is issued by Kernel.

 

Depending on Recovery options, you may or may not see a BSOD before reboot.

 

Check Event Viewer, Windows Logs, System

(Winkey+R Eventvwr)

 

There's likely some errors listed there./

[HiJack]

I had similar problems on my build but they wenth away after I did disable xHCI in BIOS. What stick do you have? And is that ASUS board a Z87 based board?

[NineLine]

good to hear is not mandatory to have more... so what can be the cause? Are the dxdiag and dcs.log useful to you?

 

Graphics freeze usually mean something wrong with the GPU, do you have another one you can try? Have you changed anything else recently?

[grifo]

Sounds like a Graphics Card/Driver Crash.

 

GPU Driver Crashes, Which stops output to the screen,

System continues to run while it tries to recover the display driver.

System Fails to recover the display driver, and begins to Issue a HALT Command.

Sound Glitches/Stutters when Halt Command is issued by Kernel.

 

Depending on Recovery options, you may or may not see a BSOD before reboot.

 

Check Event Viewer, Windows Logs, System

(Winkey+R Eventvwr)

 

There's likely some errors listed there./

 

I checked event viewer, bu there isn't any message recorded at the crash time. Is there an other way to check for errors logs?

 

I had similar problems on my build but they wenth away after I did disable xHCI in BIOS. What stick do you have? And is that ASUS board a Z87 based board?

 

my motherboard is ASUS Stryker II Formula. How can I disable xHCI?

 

EDIT: I checked all BIOS options and there is NO xHCI settings

 

Graphics freeze usually mean something wrong with the GPU, do you have another one you can try? Have you changed anything else recently?

 

I have an older one, a gt 210, but DCS will not work with that... I changed my VGA in september last year, and this problem is going since a couple of months. The one I had, a GTX 580, is burned

Edited May 14, 2014 by grifo

[AtaliaA1]

Have U tried going back to older ver. of graphics driver?

[grifo]

Have U tried going back to older ver. of graphics driver?

 

I had this issue with the old graphic drivers. I updated and it continues.

 

Now I flown 3 times for a couple of hours and without problems the same mission that crashed last time after 40 minutes. This make me crazy! I can't replicate the crash in order to check what is going on... It seems so RANDOM!

 

Any new ideas??

 

Anyway thank you for trying to help me:)

 

 

:helpsmilie::helpsmilie::helpsmilie::helpsmilie:

[AtaliaA1]

heat and memory are the only thing that come to mind with this issue.

 

you could try raising and lowering the graphics settings to narrow it down a bit. system ram ver. video ram kind of test.

[_Dredd]

Guys, I would be reverting your nvidia drivers back to at least 334, or further back to 332 and testing again.

 

There have been many other users over on Nvidida forums reporting freezes and crashes on other games as well, not just DCS.

 

Even I had problems with 1.2.8 and the latest drivers. But strange enough it occurs in MP only.

I've gone back to 332, reinstalled DCS and haven't had problems just yet... Knock on wood.

 

I have a feeling the latest drivers have serious issues with WDM and DX9.

 

If AMD/ATI users are having similar, then that's something else entirely that might point towards the game then by coincidence.

 

I would say at the very least, driver versions should be posted with these reports.

 

Edit: I see you are on 335 in your dxdiag, try 332 drivers out.

Edited May 16, 2014 by _Dredd

[grifo]

are you talking about 332.21?

[_Dredd]

are you talking about 332.21?

 

Yep.

[AtaliaA1]

Guys, I would be reverting your nvidia drivers back to at least 334, or further back to 332 and testing again.

 

There have been many other users over on Nvidida forums reporting freezes and crashes on other games as well, not just DCS.

 

Even I had problems with 1.2.8 and the latest drivers. But strange enough it occurs in MP only.

I've gone back to 332, reinstalled DCS and haven't had problems just yet... Knock on wood.

 

I have a feeling the latest drivers have serious issues with WDM and DX9.

 

If AMD/ATI users are having similar, then that's something else entirely that might point towards the game then by coincidence.

 

I would say at the very least, driver versions should be posted with these reports.

 

Edit: I see you are on 335 in your dxdiag, try 332 drivers out.

 

 

Logical. They did muck with the DX9 files for the new driver releases with both of those ver. you mention.

[grifo]

I reverted to 332.21 now. Since crashes are so random, I'll know if it worked only after some time and after some heavy multiplayer session.

 

Thanks for the hint!

 

It's absolutely necessary to reinstalling DCS? or it could be enough to delete the DCS folder under users/savedgames ?

[_Dredd]

I completely reinstalled, as saved games folder I believe are configuration files only.

All dll's, etc are in the game directory itself.

After I had problems with the game crashing at load on the desktop after uninstalling and reinstalling nvidia drivers, I thought best to uninstall completely, reboot and reinstall, so that any hooks are fully disassociated.

[_Dredd]

Yeah same problem noticed here.

 

The fact it occurs in a heavy MP session leads me to believe they haven't fully fixed the memory leak/DXRenderer issues they indicated were fixed in the recent RC change logs.

I think it was RC2 or RC3 this was mentioned

 

Perhaps.. This is associated with directx9 code, which isn't playing nice with recent nvidia drivers?

I guess you'll only be able to tell, once you jump into a fully populated server.

 

Last time I saw it in RC3, it started happening as soon as I was 5-10mins into the server.

Stupidly I'd put the latest drivers on, just prior to.. And then after I reverted back and tested again but the server wasn't as heavily populated, so I haven't done a real full on test check as yet.

 

Guess there's a playing field to being testing from..

Edited May 18, 2014 by _Dredd

[grifo]

I reverted to 332.21 nvidia drivers and after many MP session and heavy stress test it seems to be solved!

 

Thank you!