2.5.6.60966 hangs

[Smashy]

I just updated and had 3 hangs that required using Task Manager to kill DCS.  Cold start from McCarren in Hornet.  The only mods are modification to pluginsEnabled.lua to remove module icons on homescreen and CMDS_ALE47.lua to save custom expendables programs.

 

I've tried a repair but no luck.dcs.log

 

The last hang showed something interesting in the log.

[Smashy]

I've tried a few more times and even tried rolling back to 2.5.6.60720.  No luck, so I don't think it's version 2.5.6.60966.  It's got to be something on my end.

 

The crash logs mention different .dll files.  I'm continuing to dig into this but any suggestions would be appreciated.

crash.zip

[Smashy]

After a bit more testing:

 

First I uninstalled the SteelSeries management software that updated itself earlier today.  No luck.  I then did some testing with the release version, 2.5.6.60966, and 2.5.6.60720.  With both open beta versions, I was able to reproduce the crash only with a specific mission.  All other tests were crash free.  The problematic mission was a test mission that I was using to practice cold starts and VFR landings.  Over time, I've added/removed objects from it to play with various things but right now it's just my Hornet sitting cold on the ramp.  If I have time tomorrow, I'll see if the same mission file will cause the release version to hang.

[TeamMaximus]

Maybe you can post your suspect mission file here and let some of us try to reproduce the hang.

[Flappie]

Hi @Smashy. The DCS logs don't say much because it looks like an "external" crash. Open the Windows Event viewer and look for events at the time of your crashes in the Windows Logs/Application and Windows Logs/System sections. You may have more specific error messages. Copy-paste them here.

 

By the way, add these folders as exceptions in your antivirus:

• C:\Users\username\Saved Games\DCS\
• C:\Users\username\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\
• \DCS World\
• \DCS Wolrd OpenBeta\

[Smashy]

I tried to reproduce the crash today 3 separate times with 2.5.6.60966 and everything worked fine.  I'm fairly sure I did not do anything differently today but I can't say that with 100% certainty.  The only thing different is the uninstallation of that Steelseries package but I did see crashes last night after uninstallation.  I'm puzzled but not going to complain since everything is working for now.

 

@Flappie - thanks for the feedback.  I use the default Windows 10 security program.  Since everything is working, I'll leave things alone with that until the next time I see problems.

 

If the crashes/hangs reoccur, I'll post updates here.

[Smashy]

All of a sudden, I recently started getting similar crashes/hangs.  While I did notice similar types of error messages in the crash logs the crashes weren't as consistent in terms of time before failure.  While investigating, I eventually found a large number of "The IO Operation At Logical Block Address for Disk was Retried" in the system event logs.

 

Up until I found that,  I did a bunch of troubleshooting that involved video card driver updates, memory tests, disk tests, reseating DIMMs, moving my game install to another drive, swapping SATA/power cables.  The last 2 actions had positive results so I focused on that.  I decided I had a bad drive, bad cables or bad onboard SATA controller.  After reseating all cables, I couldn't reproduce the crash.  Oh well, it looks like it's fixed for now.

I'm just posting this in case anyone has similar crashes - check the event log and go from there.  Also my crash logs also contained errors like this:

 

# -------------- 20210304-173533 --------------
DCS/2.5.6.61527 (x86_64; Windows NT 10.0.19041)
G:\DCS World.beta\bin\edCore.dll
# C0000006 IN_PAGE_ERROR at C467BB5A 00:00000000
SymInit: Symbol-SearchPath: '.;G:\DCS World.beta;G:\DCS World.beta\bin;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\system32;SRV*C:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols;', symOptions: 530, UserName: 'Smashy'
OS-Version: 10.0.19041 () 0x100-0x1

 

tl;dr - I suspect my crashes/hangs were caused by bad SATA and/or drive power connections.  Reseating all cables to the SSD where DCS was installed seemed to fix things for me.

[Flappie]

Many thanks for your detailed feedback.