Recommended Windows installation and setup procedure for DCS???

[RedShoes]

Hi, is there a recommended Windows 10 installation and setup procedure for DCS available somewhere???

 

Since the release of Normandy DCS 2.1 I'm suffering from a quite annoying game freeze problem on my PC and despite of all efforts, I'm not able to get it resolved.

More in;

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=189729

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3301236

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=188804

 

anyhow, I have been several times flying together with other people in TeamSpeak and have experience my game freeze problem where as other people have not.

 

I have ordered i7-8700K from amazon.de on 2nd of November and I'm concerned that they might actually deliver it before christmas and I would end up spending ~900 bucks on a PC upgrade that I think I really do not need. New motherboard and some DDR4 to go with the i7-8700K.

 

So, I would be more than willing to spend some more time trying to sort out game freeze I'm having.

I have seen some "how to optimize windows 10 for gaming" articles on the interwebs, but these are partly old and often involve regedits and disabling services that are viewed as not required for generic gaming. I am not 100% sure on how relevant these are for DCS.

 

So, is there a recommended Windows 10 installation and setup guide for DCS 2 available somewhere????

Edited November 26, 2017 by RedShoes

[Johnny_Rico]

With my 8700K I have no stuttering on DCS when flying DCS 2 using windows 7 64bit

Edited November 26, 2017 by Johnny_Rico

[BitMaster]

one thing I forgot to mention in your other thread:

 

make sure your DVR's are all OFF.

 

NVexperience DVR --> OFF

Win10/XboxxApp DVR --> OFF

 

THAT was the reason MANY had stutter and freezes.

 

 

For your 8700k, I am waiting for mine as well, Z370 mobo etc..

 

I will guide you through, just got all the kids and dont have time to type all that stuff but I will once I have more time.

 

here's a short but actually complete list of howto install 10 quick&dirty:

 

- Win10

- Intel Chipset ( always FIRST to install !!! )

- Intel ME driver ( management interface, do that as 2nd driver )

- any other driver in any order--> LAN-AUDIO-USB-BT-WLAN-etc...

 

---> Update your 10

---> Install DCS

---------------------> GO FLY ;)

[RedShoes]

Thanks for the support:thumbup:

Do not neglect you Kids due to some random noob in interwebs having DCS trouble :smilewink:

 

Just getting Win10 installation media setup here;

Additionally I'm planning following;

- Intel Chipset driver, directly from intel.com Intel Chipset Device Software Version: 10.1.1.42

- Intel Management Engine Driver Version 11.0.4.1186 from msi.com (for my mobo w Z97 chipset). Was not sure if a newer version from intel.com is ok.

- Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver from intel.com 15.8.1.100

- Samsung_NVM_Express_Driver_2.3 from samsung.com for my M.2 960 EVO SSD

- nVidia 388.31-desktop-win10-64bit-international-whql (planning only display driver & physics. No 3D, audio or nVidia Experience)

- Onboard audio disabled, installing TurtleBeach Z300 audio drivers

- LAN; KillerPerformanceSuite_1.5.1618 from killernetworking.com

- TrackIR_5.4.2

 

- Disconnect all my other SATA devices

- Windows installation to wipe the whole drive (new partitioning)

- Download DCS + Normandy completely new

- go fly and see if it still freezes

 

 

Q about Xbox DVR; Never used it, never started win10 XBox app. Have previously disabled it from registry according to instructions here; https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6239-DZCB-8600#appreg

Is that a legit way or is there a better way to disable XBox DVR??

[RedShoes]

So I did a new Windows 10 Installation. Unfortunately it did not help for my game freeze problem.

 

Windows 10 Installation from USB drive.

Selected clean new Windows Installation, not keeping any of my data or apps.

 

Before Installation;

- Disconnected SATA cable and power to unnecessary drives (2nd SSD, HDD + Optical drive)

BIOS;

- Load optimized Defaults (no OC, no XMP profiles)

- Disable onboard Audio

- Disable Intel Hyper Threading

 

During Installation;

- used my Microsoft online account for user.

- no PIN

- no MS cloud services

- no Cortina

- all privacy Options set to off.

 

After Installation;

- Intel Chipset Driver (downloaded from Intel.com)

- Intel Management Engine Driver (downloaded from MSI.com for my MB)

- Samsung_NVM_Express_Driver_2.3 from samsung.com for my M.2 960 EVO SSD

- nVidia 388.31 Drivers (only display driver & physics. No 3D, audio or nVidia Experience)

- installing TurtleBeach Z300 audio drivers

- LAN; KillerPerformanceSuite_1.5.1618 from killernetworking.com

- TrackIR_5.4.2

 

- run Windows updates (incl. 1709) until it finds nothing else.

 

- Logged in to XBox App to turn off DVR.

- Windows update settings, changed active hours and disabled downloads from other PCs.

- Windows power plan to high Performance with additionally USB selective suspend disabled and PCI express link state power management set Off.

- nVidia Control Panel 3D Settings left to default, except set Power Management Mode to Prefer maximum performance.

 

Downloaded DCS World 2.1 Early Access and let it install DCS 2.1

Started download of Normandy map, WWII asset pack and the four WWII planes from DCS module manager.

Activated the modules, set in game graphics settings and started Bf109 Normandy freeflight single player mission.

Paused the mission to set the controls.

Had Saitek X52 Pro, MFG rudder pedals and Saitek Throttle Quadrant connected to PC.

Removed any double axis bindings, set slight curvature for Pitch, Roll and Rudder. Set couple of Buttons on throttle for View Zoom In / Out.

 

Flew low level aerobatics with looking arround using trackir. Game freeze in about 10 minutes.

[Johnny_Rico]

The whole game froze ? Does any other game or program cause this problem ?

[RedShoes]

The whole game froze ? Does any other game or program cause this problem ?

 

No, DCS 1.5.7 runs mostly fine, IL2 rund fine, Assetto Corsa runs fine, plenty of Oculus Rift titles I have rund fine, ...my twin sons played almoust 2 weeks nonstop PUBG with my rig last September, with some GTA V in between, no issues like that.

 

I'm pretty sure it's not my PC, it's not my windows installation, it's bugs in DCS 2.1 alpha version.

 

Just wanted check if there is a recommended windows 10 PC installation / setup procedure for DCS available somewhere?

...and check that my windows installation is optimal for DCS.

 

...and at the same time I must admit that it just bugs the hell out of me that there are other people who do not have these problems. Or at least not to the same extend as I do. I have flown together with other people in TeamSpeak in multiplayer servers and I seem to have more frequent game freeze issues.

[Johnny_Rico]

Well if I had any crashing problems on anything I would run some PC tests to be sure

 

1. run core temp for monitoring and run intel burn test for 10 runs

2. Run memtest (http://www.memtest.org/) version runs from usb / CD

 

You could possibly have a RAM issue only apparent with DCS because DCS might use more RAM than most other programs so only it hits the effected area

[RedShoes]

Thanks,

 

I think I should be fine on temperatures.

IntelBurnTest 10 runs, max Core Temp in 64°C

I'll run the linux memtest this evening. Have tried it a while back (like 4 weeks ago), was fine back then.

Just ran a 30min run on MemTest64 in windows and it went through fine.

 

Are you aware of any good memory test for graphics memory on nvidia cards?

[Johnny_Rico]

memtest from windows is not reliable, had it pass fine then fail the proper CD one

32G of RAM will take a long time to test properly, I left mine running overnight for a total of 16 hours

[RedShoes]

thanks, I'll start the linux memtest this evening and have it run overnight.

I have only 16GB installed in my system at the moment.

Want to keep it simple and did not notice any improvement in DCS with 32GB vs 16GB.

[hansangb]

Just a word of caution. I have the paid/pro Memtest. And I used it for 24 hours to find - what I suspected - a bad RAM stick. It didn't find it. I had to use the process of elimination to find it. Also, in my case, it always BSOD'ed itself. It didn't just lock up. I feel for you.

 

The one thing I would try. Make a copy of c:\users\your-name-\SAVED GAMES folder. Then delete it and let DCS rebuild it. See what happens.

 

And simplify by removing non-essentials like Helios, TrackIR's of the world.

Edited November 27, 2017 by hansangb

[BitMaster]

The only real memtest that seems to work is from Google, runs on Mint Linux and is called stresstestapp. All others are said to be peanuts vs. that one.

 

I have a USB stick inserted i9nto my internal USB Hub that has exactly that on it, Linux Mint.

 

Whenever my Lady goes haywire, I boot the stick and recheck from other OS.

 

-stresstestapp google it and understand how it's ment to be used. It's fairly easy.

Edited November 27, 2017 by BitMaster

[hansangb]

The only real memtets that seems to work is from Google, runs on Mint Linux and is called stresstestapp. All others are said to be peanuts vs. that one.

 

I have a USB stick inserted i9nto my internal USB Hub that has exactly that on it, Linux Mint.

 

Whenever my Lady goes haywire, I boot the stick and recheck from other OS.

 

-stresstestapp google it and understand how it's ment to be used. It's fairly easy.

 

 

Interesting. I'll have to give that a shot. I've been around the block with Linux when it first came out (and since then). 45 floppies before being able to mount sunsite.edu for the rest of the distro. LOL. Can you imagine that happening now? People letting you nfs mount you? How times have changed.

[BitMaster]

Interesting. I'll have to give that a shot. I've been around the block with Linux when it first came out (and since then). 45 floppies before being able to mount sunsite.edu for the rest of the distro. LOL. Can you imagine that happening now? People letting you nfs mount you? How times have changed.

 

I had my own SuSE NFS based Install-Server. Where others had to share DVD's and live with slow read speeds I booted over the net, hooked up to NFS and installed SuSE in less than 1/3 of the time a DVD needed.

 

I miss the times when I had time for such stuff. These days you download stuff and forget how easy it has become.

 

The best floppy disk I ever used was for Fli4L ( floppy isdn 4 linux, the 1 floppy router ). That little gem forced me to dig into IPv4 and networks more and more. SuSE was the master, fli4l the slave at the gate, with DOUBLE 64k ISDN lines ! DOUBLE !! 128k with both B-channels....LoL. That was a hell lot faster than the 14.400k I started with, or the Elsa 56k I used for my Linux Faxing mostly. Oh man, back then everything was better, even the future :huh:

[Chukk]

You might want to look into page file sizes within windows 10. It is quite easy to make changes and test if this will make any difference. Even though you have a SSD drive, DCS is still trying to access a lot of files on your drive. Worth playing around with and very little chance of hurting anything.

[hansangb]

But I wouldn't give up my gigabit Internet service! :)

[BitMaster]

my pagefiles are 16gb fixed size each, have 3 of them on 1 ssd and 2 hdd's.

[RedShoes]

I have now 16 hours of MemTest86 from a Linux USB stick behind me. No errors found.

 

Perhaps I'll give that stressapptest a try.

BitMaster, I assume this is what you ment?

https://github.com/stressapptest/stressapptest

[BitMaster]

I have now 16 hours of MemTest86 from a Linux USB stick behind me. No errors found.

 

Perhaps I'll give that stressapptest a try.

BitMaster, I assume this is what you ment?

https://github.com/stressapptest/stressapptest

 

yep ! that's the one.

 

Chances are low that it will detect an error after 16h of torture but to be very sure to exclude that option as your source of error I would do it, just to finish and exclude that branch of possibility.

[RedShoes]

Thanks :thumbup:

 

I ran the stressapptest for four hours also it did not find anything wrong with my RAM.

 

I have Corsair Vengeance DDR3 2400 11-13-13-31 1.65v RAM.

I have two kits (bought 1.5 years apart) of 2 x 8 GB, total of 32GB.

 

Lately I have had only one kit 2 x 8GB = 16GB installed in my PC. Have been testing both bios optimal default settings and XMP enabled. All the memory testing has been passing.

 

So to validate my memory testing I OC'ed my RAM.

I first tried 2600MHz 12-13-13-35 1.65v. It passed 2 passes of linux MemTest86 and stressapptest.

I then raised to 2800MHz 12-14-14-36 1.65 and got plenty of errors in MemTest86.

After this I raised DRAM voltage to 1.7 and still got some errors in MemTest86, but not quite so many.

Tested stressapptest and it first passed, but 2nd run of 15 minutes also failed.

 

So, I guess the memory testing applications do work.

 

Interestingly when it failed at 2800MHz / 1.7v, it failed only in very high address range above 15GB. Now, I'm thinking should I test my individual memory modules one by one and try to find the two best ones???

 

..or just stick it all in, go for the safe verified settings and move on...

[RedShoes]

...oh yeah, and meanwhile my old rig w i7-3970K w 32GB or G.Skill RipJawZ 1600 DDR3 has been running linux USB stick MemTest86 for 24 hours and also no errors found.:thumbup:

[Johnny_Rico]

I have had issues matching 2 kits bought at different times (exact same make and model mind you), but those 2 sticks in each kit are matched at the factory

By them selves each kit worked great, but together was a ballache (slots were all tested so knew it want mobo)

 

Run them all 2400 and all is well maybe ?