DCS keeps crashing lately

[KittehBit]

Have been playing DCS on and off for years. Worked fine, I had long sessions without any problems, even when recording. But in last 2 months it was unplayable. I can have it running for somewhere between a few minutes and maybe 15 minutes, but it will always crash. Sometimes I wont even finish the cold start until it crashes. I have read through forums and tried couple of things, including repairing the install. Full reinstall of the game, full reinstall of nvidia drivers, run memtest for couple of hourse (no errors). I don't get it.

All other games run fine. It's only DCS and it's extremely frustrating, since its the game where I have sunk the most money into for modules (lets leave Star Citizen out of this ^^;;;;). This is really unacceptable.

Please help if you can.

dcs.log-20240510-143312.zip

[KittehBit]

Anyone? :<

[Hiob]

Obviously I have no crystal ball, but I would bet on a hardware issue. Other applications being stable doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

Does it freeze, crash to desktop or crash to reset or black screen?

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, some advice based on your log

Shader Cache
Your shader caches are outdated.
Delete Saved Games\DCS\fxo and metashaders2

Hot plug Events
Disable hot plug in your CONTROLS section.

There is a GPU-related error
Remove any overclocking from your GPU.
Uninstall your GPU driver with DDU and install a clean one.

Advice
 
Change your pagefile to at least 32768 MB (initial size)

 

let us know if it helps

[KittehBit]

Am 14.5.2024 um 20:51 schrieb BIGNEWY:

Hi, some advice based on your log

Shader Cache
Your shader caches are outdated.
Delete Saved Games\DCS\fxo and metashaders2

Hot plug Events
Disable hot plug in your CONTROLS section.

There is a GPU-related error
Remove any overclocking from your GPU.
Uninstall your GPU driver with DDU and install a clean one.

Advice
 
Change your pagefile to at least 32768 MB (initial size)

 

let us know if it helps

Thanks for the suggestions.

- Hot plug disabled.
- Deleted the 2 folders
- Removed the driver with DDU
- Installed Studio Drivers again (after reboot of course)
- I dont use overclocking and the GPU is not an OC version
- Page file is 33000 MB

2 tries, 2 crashes during cold start :<

dcs.log-20240518-172904.zip dcs.log-20240518-173924.zip

[silverdevil]

54 minutes ago, KittehBit said:

Installed Studio Drivers again (after reboot of course)

hello. you should be using game ready driver i think.

[KittehBit]

vor 19 Stunden schrieb silverdevil:

hello. you should be using game ready driver i think.

That would be weird, since they are the less stable ones. And I did had them before, with the initial crashes.

[silverdevil]

4 minutes ago, KittehBit said:

since they are the less stable ones.

where did you get that idea? i know for my case i have never used anything but the latest nvidia game driver. i do not have any issues.

[Czar66]

19 hours ago, silverdevil said:

hello. you should be using game ready driver i think.

I have used Studio Drivers for a whole year in 2022 in DCS, no crashes. Changed to game ready because of few new interesting titles that came out and game ready have the day 1 drivers for them.

Studio drivers are stable for gaming. They differ only in single digit percentage in performance and most of the times equal in games. They are less frequently updated than game ready and that's they only difference most of people will notice.

Having the same test on the game ready driver won't hurt.

To OP:

-Disable any 3rd party anti virus if you have it. Windows defender is fine.
-Disable any program that manages RGB lighting on your hardware. (we've seen weird stuff happening with these)

The crash error is C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION, which seems to be a memory error. It is beyond my knowledge anything else.

 

[KittehBit]

vor 32 Minuten schrieb silverdevil:

where did you get that idea? i know for my case i have never used anything but the latest nvidia game driver. i do not have any issues.

Well, my own personal experience, but also directly from Nvidia's driver site.
null

vor 4 Minuten schrieb Czar66:

I have used Studio Drivers for a whole year in 2022 in DCS, no crashes. Changed to game ready because of few new interesting titles that came out and game ready have the day 1 drivers for them.

Studio drivers are stable for gaming. They differ only in single digit percentage in performance and most of the times equal in games. They are less frequently updated than game ready and that's they only difference most of people will notice.

Having the same test on the game ready driver won't hurt.

To OP:

-Disable any 3rd party anti virus if you have it. Windows defender is fine.
-Disable any program that manages RGB lighting on your hardware. (we've seen weird stuff happening with these)

The crash error is C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION, which seems to be a memory error. It is beyond my knowledge anything else.

 

Dont have any RGB software, using Windows Defender.
Memory seems fine, I ran a Memtest for 3-4 hours, 0 errors.

[silverdevil]

9 minutes ago, KittehBit said:

Well, my own personal experience, but also directly from Nvidia's driver site.

never knew this in my time in world of nvidia. either way. good luck figuring out your issue.

[Maverick87Shaka]

Game studio is not an issue at all....since I'm using my machine for both play and work, only studio driver since at least 2 years, and no problem at all with DCS

[Czar66]

1 hour ago, KittehBit said:

Dont have any RGB software, using Windows Defender.
Memory seems fine, I ran a Memtest for 3-4 hours, 0 errors.

Memory errors can be software related too, I think.

Tried running DCS with HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling) OFF?

[KittehBit]

vor 41 Minuten schrieb Czar66:

Memory errors can be software related too, I think.

Tried running DCS with HAGS (Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling) OFF?

I just read up on HAGS. I mean, I could try it, but that would not be a acceptable solution long term.
The same goes for all undervolting/underclocking suggestions that I read on DCS crashes.
Reducing my systems overall performance (that I spent my hard earned money on) is not a viable solution to a single game/software crashing. :<

Edited May 19, 2024 by KittehBit

[Czar66]

50 minutes ago, KittehBit said:

I just read up on HAGS. I mean, I could try it, but that would not be a acceptable solution long term.
The same goes for all undervolting/underclocking suggestions that I read on DCS crashes.
Reducing my systems overall performance (that I spent my hard earned money on) is not a viable solution to a single game/software crashing. :<

 

HAGS impact on performance in minimal. Is more of a nuisance on stability and squeezing a few frames here and there than what your hardware optimum performance is.

FPS capping to somewhere your GPU and CPU can render regardless of scene density is also much better in frame time stability, rendering HAGS gains useless, if there is any to be noticeable.

With that said It might not be where your problem is but it is worth to check. Disabling it has improved frame stability on my machine through some other titles.

Why I recommended: I did had crashes on DCS with HAGS on in the past but I cannot reproduce it anymore turning it on. I left it off.

Just trying to help. DCS is not like other titles and these main features that promises heaven on earth in performance gains for free can fumble something somewhere on demanding CPU heavy titles.


BTW, more important than the HAGS deal: Have you deleted your Direct X and GPU shader cache?

C:\Users\>you<\AppData\Local\NVIDIA\GLCache <- this is for Nvidia;

Disk Cleanup (windows functionality) <- for Direct X Shader Cache

Edited May 19, 2024 by Czar66

[KittehBit]

vor 11 Minuten schrieb Czar66:

HAGS impact on performance in minimal. Is more of a nuisance on stability and squeezing a few frames here and there than what your hardware optimum performance is.

Hmm, okay. I did some more research and it seems you are right on the performance gains.
This (german) article suggests a performance agin around 4% with HAGS on. Source
So I disabled it. DCS crashed again during cold start, without even giving me an option to gather diag logs this time.