DCS suddenly begins freezing in last 24 hours, now unplayable. Looking for advice...

[Istari6]

Posting here rather than in the Bugs forum, as I'm pretty sure it's not a DCS/Eagle Dynamics issue per se. Hoping for some advice on how else I can get DCS restored - I'm "jonesing" for my flying time.

 

Been playing DCS intensely since November, almost entirely with the P-51D. Had waited for years to get into this sim until VR was available, now I have a Vive and it's been a terrific experience. No problems for two+ months until the last 24 hours, when something changed and now it's become unplayable.

 

Playing a P-51D mission yesterday, DCS suddenly froze. I'd never seen this before. The Vive headset showed a SteamVR loading screen, the mirror display was frozen. Waiting did nothing, clicked multiple times, then had to force quit. Since then, every mission has frozen the same way. Typically happens within 2-5 minutes of the mission start. Same symptoms every time, happens in both P-51D and Me-109K.

 

Steps I've taken so far, with no result:

 

1. Deleted and reinstalled DCS World (including deleting folders)

2. Rolled back NVIDIA drivers to previous version (12/1) which I know had worked fine since I only updated NVIDIA maybe a week ago.

 

I was thinking maybe it was RAM beginning to fail, but only DCS is frozen. I can ALT-TAB and access other programs, so it's not the entire computer locking up.

 

The only other clue is that shortly before DCS started freezing entirely, I noticed I was getting brief "load screens" when changing external views. Usually only a second or two, but hadn't seen that before. Don't know if it's related, but timing is suspicious.

 

Any ideas on what might have changed and how I could get DCS working again?

 

I'm running DCS 1.5.5, not using the Beta 1.5.6 code.

 

Chris

Edited February 3, 2017 by Istari6

[ChillyWillies]

2. Rolled back NVIDIA drivers to previous version (12/1) which I know had worked fine since I only updated NVIDIA maybe a week ago.

Chris

 

Hey Chris,

Got a few ideas. I know you rolled back your NVIDIA drivers, but I would boot Windows into Safe Mode, use DDU to clean uninstall the GPU Drivers, and then reinstall the newest clean drivers in Normal Mode (meaning just not Safe Mode.)

I have also heard of a conflict with the NVIDIA HD Audio and it causing crashes; I think my stability increased when I reinstalled and I chose not to reinstall that NVIDIA HD Audio Driver. So you might try only installing the NVIDIA Driver without GeForce Experience.

 

One more thing: The DCS Updater Utility has seemed to make using VR easier, not sure if you use this already. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=160053&highlight=DCS+Updater+Utility

 

Let me know if those things help at all.

[Art-J]

I presume You didn't forget to move/delete the Saved Games\DCS folder from Your system drive? If You did forget, it might be a good idea to do so, many sources of player's problems are hidden in corrupted personal settings stored over there (reinstalling the game won't do anything, as the installer doesn't touch that particular folder). Though If You haven't changed anything in the game itself, it shouldn't make any difference I guess...

 

Before doing so, zip and post Your logs folder from the same location, there might be some entries in the logs indicating what the problem is, otherwise we can't really advise much based on this very vague problem description.

[Istari6]

Hey guys,

 

Thanks for the quick responses. I wanted to take some time to run some more experiments before responding.

 

First, to the moderator that moved this to the VR Issues forum, I ran more tests with VR turned off (2560x1600 on regular 2D monitor) and still had exactly the same "hard freeze" problems. So consider moving the discussion back to general Bugs/Issues since other folks playing 2D might encounter this issue?

 

CW - great idea on uninstalling the NVIDIA GeForce Experience. That seems to have resolved the hard freezing problems. However, I'm still left with this strange effect that started happening right before the hard freezes, and is still continuing now. Occasionally (seems to happen when I'm firing my weapons), the entire DCS sim will autopause and the FPS counter will appear. I have to manually unpause but then the FPS counter is left onscreen. Happened twice in the mission I was just flying (Bf 109K Aerial Gunnery Training). Very distracting since it seems to trigger when I'm in a gun pass. I've not seen this at all during two months of playing, just started appearing a day or two before the hard freeze issue.

 

Art-J - to try solving both of these problems (hard freeze and autopause with FPS), I ended up deleting everything in DCS, including creating a copy of my Saved Games/DCS folder and then deleting the original. So it's a completely new install from scratch. I saved screenshots of all my settings and then manually input them again. Logbook is also fresh. But still getting the sudden pausing above with the FPS counter appearing.

 

I didn't know there were logs in DCS, but I found the file and have included in the next post. Does this data give any ideas on why there's the pausing with FPS counter?

 

Thanks for any further tips, still new to DCS and coming up the learning curve...

Edited February 4, 2017 by Istari6

[Istari6]

(DCS Log attached)

 

OK, trying to attach DCS Log file, saved as .TXT to meet upload requirements

dcs.txt

[JLX]

I'm still left with this strange effect that started happening right before the hard freezes, and is still continuing now. Occasionally (seems to happen when I'm firing my weapons), the entire DCS sim will autopause and the FPS counter will appear. I have to manually unpause but then the FPS counter is left onscreen. Happened twice in the mission I was just flying (Bf 109K Aerial Gunnery Training). Very distracting since it seems to trigger when I'm in a gun pass. I've not seen this at all during two months of playing, just started appearing a day or two before the hard freeze issue.

 

This is just a shot in the dark but the default key bind for the FPS counter is Ctrl-Pause. There may be some kind of input error causing unwanted Pause, Ctrl (and perhaps other) key presses. Either a faulty controller and/or corrupt key binds?

 

Might be worth looking into at least. As you said it happens on gun runs check associated buttons (trigger etc). Swap controllers if you can to isolate the issue.

 

It may even be that a bad keypress triggered an unwanted hotkey in GForce Experience?

 

Anyway, just guesses. Good luck!

[Istari6]

JLX - good suggestion. Troubling that it might be a bad input, since I purchased a new HOTAS Warthog stick and throttle in November to support this new habit.

 

However, I decided to go about it a different way and opened Controls and cleared all bindings to the Framerate counter. So theoretically, there's no way to trigger it from user input. Yet it's still happening, occurring 2-3x a mission, always around weapons use. Not sure what else I can do to run this issue down - very frustrating.

 

Is there a log of what triggers changes in state? Something in the DCS logs that would show what's causing the system to pause and the FPS counter to display?