hardware issue Crashing...A LOT

[H60MTI]

Lately DCS MT has been crashing constantly. Part way through a mission, halfway through, very end...Just crashing. I can hear it coming because the fans on my GPU spool down and I just have to wait for it. I've it DCS crash 10 times before I finally gave up and went to the couch. I've attached the last log from when it crashed. Doesn't make much sense to me since I really don't know what I'm looking at. From what I gathered it's a bad visualizer.dll in the actual game and not any mod. I could be wrong though. Anyone have any input or guidance on this that can help the crashing issue?

dcs.log

Edited November 3, 2024 by H60MTI

[H60MTI]

And another crash. Just as I was about to get in zone to drop a 2000lb penetrator JDAM on a building, lights out. Whole system went down, not just DCS. These are the 3 new crash logs/files that populated with the crash and system restart. Getting old. Never had this problem until I went and updated DCS.

dcs.20241103-132509.crash dcs.log DCS-BIOS.log

[Slippa]

I dread what’s gonna happen each time I update. I feel for ya, not funny is it.

Could try deleting everything in your fxo folder, also metashaders folder. Other than that I dunno?

Good luck with it.

[H60MTI]

What does the fxo file hold? Don't even know what an FXO file is nor the metahaders2 folder

[Slippa]

Loads of files. I don’t understand it all either. They were both often mentioned when I’ve searched for fixes myself. Sometimes they improved the stuttering.

Hopefully someone with an idea will try to help out.  Obviously I’m not the IT expert, I just fly it, when it lets me. 

From memory, I think both folders will be in your saved games folder.

5 minutes ago, H60MTI said:

nor the metahaders2 folder

Good point, it is called metashaders2. I forgot the 2.

 

[H60MTI]

Yeah, I saw them in the Saved Games folder but definitely don't know what they do/hold.

[silverdevil]

1 hour ago, Slippa said:

Could try deleting everything in your fxo folder, also metashaders folder.

 

1 hour ago, H60MTI said:

What does the fxo file hold?

these folders contain what is known in the forums as shaders. when the game starts, shaders (textures) are created / compiled. many people will suggest deleting the folders each time an update is performed. first run of dcs will recreate these with the new textures.

[H60MTI]

So, deleting the contents of the folder won't really hurt anything then. The game will rewrite these as need on start up.

[silverdevil]

1 minute ago, H60MTI said:

So, deleting the contents of the folder won't really hurt anything then. The game will rewrite these as need on start up.

correct. no problems.

looking at your dcs.log(s) you shared. i suggest you remove all your mods

2024-11-03 12:50:34.275 ALERT   Scripting (Main): loadfile: [string "C:\Users\Andrew\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Mods/tech/VPC-Airfield..."]:6: '=' expected near '-'

then run a repair.

also found in the crash file

D:\DCS World\DCS World OpenBeta\bin-mt\GraphicsCore.dll

numerous reasons for this. try the above fixes and then come back if you are still having issues. the fixes are a good start.

[H60MTI]

What program are you using to read the CRASH file? I can view the logs no problem since they're just text documents. 

[silverdevil]

1 hour ago, H60MTI said:

What program are you using to read the CRASH file? I can view the logs no problem since they're just text documents. 

notepad or notepad++ or a program called logviewer https://www.softpagehomeware.com/

[H60MTI]

Stupid thing...Was asking me what I wanted to open it with. I have Notepad++ and Visual Studio. Both of those can open that but didn't pop up.

So, if reading this right, that D:\DCS World\DCS World OpenBeta\bin-mt\GraphicsCore.dll was the cause of DCS shutting down and crashing.

[Ramstein]

6 minutes ago, H60MTI said:

Stupid thing...Was asking me what I wanted to open it with. I have Notepad++ and Visual Studio. Both of those can open that but didn't pop up.

So, if reading this right, that D:\DCS World\DCS World OpenBeta\bin-mt\GraphicsCore.dll was the cause of DCS shutting down and crashing.

it is pointing to graphics, which means not the file itself but what the file does... probably a setting it is not happy with... or an error in a mission file, or map.

[silverdevil]

1 hour ago, H60MTI said:

Stupid thing...Was asking me what I wanted to open it with. I have Notepad++ and Visual Studio. Both of those can open that but didn't pop up.

So, if reading this right, that D:\DCS World\DCS World OpenBeta\bin-mt\GraphicsCore.dll was the cause of DCS shutting down and crashing.

that is one of the files mentioned in the CRASH file.

58 minutes ago, Ramstein said:

it is pointing to graphics, which means not the file itself but what the file does

as ramstein mentioned. it could be that you need to reinstall graphics drivers.

as i mentioned before, it is best to get some easy troubleshooting steps out of the way and the other ones perhaps will not be needed.

get rid of MODS

run a repair

other tips here https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/faq/543/

Edited November 3, 2024 by silverdevil

[H60MTI]

It could be the Nvidia driver. That is having issues with Corsair iCue. I had to roll back iCue to work properly. I'll do some digging later. Thanks so far. I'll see what I can come up with.

[javelina1]

8 minutes ago, H60MTI said:

It could be the Nvidia driver. That is having issues with Corsair iCue. I had to roll back iCue to work properly. I'll do some digging later. Thanks so far. I'll see what I can come up with.

what driver version are you using?  I'm on 560.70, and having a lot of crashes since the latest DCS update, including the most recent hotfix

[H60MTI]

I am on 565.90. They are currently on 566.03. I'll have to install that later and hope for the best.

[javelina1]

14 minutes ago, H60MTI said:

I am on 565.90. They are currently on 566.03. I'll have to install that later and hope for the best.

thanks.  I'm going to give that one a shot as well....

[javelina1]

I installed the 566.03 driver.  Did the normal removal of the DCS fxo & metashader cache.  Also, flushed the NVIDIA cache via the disk cleaner.  Then I took the additional step of clearing out:

    C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\D3DSCache
    C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\NVIDIA\GLCache
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\shadercache\
    C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\NVIDIA\ComputeCache
    C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion\DXCache
    C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion\GLCache

There's a dude on the MSFS forums who says to flush these out as well, whenever you put in a driver update.  (I don't have DCS or MSFS via Steam, but I still cleared that one out, though I know it wouldn't have any impact)

I then flew one of my toughest Syria missions.  It was FLAWLESS!  I swear, it was the smoothest flight I've ever had.

FWIW, I'm happy and flying along just fine....  (though those poor b*st*rd's on the receiving end of my Rhino aren't....) 

 

 

[H60MTI]

I updated my driver this morning. Had a day off work cause my kids school is closed for voting. Why they use elementary schools for voting locations is beyond me. I actually went to play Ghost Recon Breakpoint and that crashes as well. Weird. Funny thing is, I ran FurMark and Cinebench R23 at the same time as everything was stable. I don't understand it. Those numbers are after a 10 minute run of FurMark and Cinebench running at the same time on separate monitors. You would think stressing the system like that would cause something to crash. I'll try dumping those folders and see what happens.

[H60MTI]

I went in and cleared most of those files mentioned above. There were some that I couldn't because they were being used at the time and couldn't erase them. Didn't help, at least for Ghost Recon Breakpoint. It still crashes. I'm probably going to have to break my rig down and see if anything is jacked up.

[sleighzy]

I'd recommend removing your custom mods and trying this again. You have a number of them in your Saved Games folder as well. If it still crashes then attach an updated log from the latest crash.

Can you also run the Windows dxdiag tool, save the report, and attach it here. This may offer further insight as will contain the last 10 crashes on your system.

Edited November 5, 2024 by sleighzy

[H60MTI]

Here is the DxDiag results. Just tried DCS again and still crashed. Just updated it as well with the version that just dropped. I also just removed all my mods from Saved Games and stashed them on one of my other hard drives not associated with the game. About to try that. I've noticed that sometimes DCS just freezes and doesn't show the file that causes the crash in the log. Just stops responding and can't produce a log file.

DxDiag.txt

[sleighzy]

2 minutes ago, H60MTI said:

I've noticed that sometimes DCS just freezes and doesn't show the file that causes the crash in the log

The log file will always be present, but if it doesn't contain an actual crash from the game then this can occur if Windows kills the process or stops responding for some other reason.

[sleighzy]

The DxDiag report shows that there are crashes for the following:

• Google Earth (googleearth.exe)
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint (GRB.exe) - this is an assumption based on a Google search for that process name. This crash indicates the application wasn't properly handling memory(?)
• DTS Sound Studio (DtsApo4Service.exe)
• Cinebench
• DCS (DCS.exe) - possibly not handling memory properly
• LiveKernalEvent - this has a code of 141 which indicates a hardware issue

Based on the above it appears you may have issues across your system and not just DCS. Does the above list sound correct?

The "not properly handling memory" ones may be related to system problems.

Can you run the below two separate commands from a command prompt (cmd.exe) as an administrative user, restart your PC, and see what happens. Let me know if those commands identify and fix any issues.

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

sfc /scannow

If you're updating graphics drivers try using DDU to completely clean any old drivers first.

Edited November 5, 2024 by sleighzy