mods conflict Severe System Freezing During DCS Loading/Unloading

[Wawar]

Hello,

I'm experiencing serious issues with DCS that are becoming increasingly frustrating and disruptive. I’m hoping someone from the community or the ED team can help me diagnose or solve this.

Symptoms:
- Sometimes, when I launch DCS, the loading bar freezes mid-way. DCS becomes unresponsive and never finishes loading.
- Shortly after, my entire system starts progressively freezing: Task Manager, File Explorer, Discord, and other apps stop responding one by one. I have to end task DCS.exe to get back the computer. Occasionally, the system completely freezes, forcing me to do a hard reboot.

Other times, the freeze happens when trying to join a multiplayer server. DCS gets stuck during the server loading phase and the same cascade of freezing occurs.

When DCS hangs, the whole system's responsiveness degrades, not just the game. And when it happens, there is no apparent heavy load on the CPU, SSD or the RAM. The ram is not saturated. 

I have this problem only with DCS, no issues with other games or softwares. In actual gameplay, DCS runs smoothly once loaded. 

Here is my specs : 
- Ultra 7 265K
- 64GB DDR5
- RTX 5080
- 2TB NVMe (WD Black PCIe Gen 4, 7000 MB/s read speed). DCS is installed here
- Windows 11 fully updated
- The DCS install is 1 month old

Troubleshooting done so far:
- Core Parking disabled
- Core Isolation disabled
- WIndows Gamemode disabled
- DCS clean of any mods
- DCS slow repair
- Set a fixed pagefile, no pagefile swapping so far
- Checked disk health (no issues), updated firmware, and verified full PCIe Gen4 x4 bandwidth
- Ran CrystalDiskMark, nominal read/write speeds
- Performed full DISM and sfc /scannow repairs
- Disabled Windows Defender and Smartscreen entirely to rule out interference.
- No signs of thermal issues: both NVMe drives run cool (40–50°C), CPU and GPU temperatures OK.

I'm running out of ideas... Logs and DXdiag attached. 

Thanks in advance. 

DxDiag.txt dcs.log

[sleighzy]

Ran you log files through the DCS log analyzer. Looks like lots of issues identified in the DxDiag report, see below. The DxDiag also says a pagefile of ~64Gb, but DCS log says ~8Gb. Can you drop a screenshot of your page file settings.

Some of the Windows errors are memory related. Run a memory test as well. Others can be due to faulty or out-of-date drivers.

Windows Error Reporting (WER)
Your system crashes with Bluescreens.
The following kernel-events have been detected:
ATTEMPTED_EXECUTE_OF_NOEXECUTE_MEMORY,VIDEO_ENGINE_TIMEOUT_DETECTED,VIDEO_MINIPORT_BLACK_SCREEN_LIVEDUMP,VIDEO_DXGKRNL_LIVEDUMP,VIDEO_DXGKRNL_BLACK_SCREEN_LIVEDUMP,PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

• Remove any overclocking (including XMP).
• Run SFC and DISM to check your Windows.
• Check for any updates of your BIOS or chipset drivers.

The DCS log analyzer also said to disable core isolation, although you mentioned you already had. I can't recall off the top of my head if that one is a false positive though and is just a generic suggestion but maybe worth a double-check.

[Wawar]

Thanks a lot for the analysis and the suggestions.

- SFC/DISM : Already done system files were repaired, no change to the issue
- BIOS fully up to date
- Core Isolation, double-checked, it’s disabled
- Windows memory diagnostic, I ran a test, no errors reported
- XMP Enabled, but I’ve had zero instability issues in any other demanding workloads (including memory-bound tasks or games). Not ruling it out, but I'd be surprised if it were the issue.

About the pagefile discrepancy: I’ll share a screenshot as requested, but my system is configured with a manually set 8GB pagefile — I assumed it was enough given I have 64GB of RAM. Happy to try a higher or system-managed value if needed.

I'll share another screenshot from the windows event viewer, with an error that happens at the moment of the PC Freeze : "Error setting traits on Provider {8444a4fb-d8d3-4f38-84f8-89960a1ef12f}. Error: 0xC0000001"

Edited June 26 by Wawar

[Wawar]

I have set the pagefile to 64gb. Same issue, fresh log related to a crash, attached 

dcs.log

Edited June 26 by Wawar

[Wawar]

After a few days of testing, I can say that my issue is sovled. It was Tacview. So, my DCS install was not totally "mod free" after all.

Without Tacview, the initial loading is 2 or 3 times quicker, and no more random crashes.

[TGP14]

Did you delete/uninstall Tacview from your system or just disable it within DCS?

[Wawar]

I removed the tacview folder/files in Savedgames/DCS/Mod/Tech and DCS/Scripts.

To confirm that Tacview is uninstalled from DCS, just check if you still have the « Tacview special options » in the DCS settings menu.


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[MAXsenna]

23 hours ago, Wawar said:

I removed the tacview folder/files in Savedgames/DCS/Mod/Tech and DCS/Scripts.

To confirm that Tacview is uninstalled from DCS, just check if you still have the « Tacview special options » in the DCS settings menu.


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You might want to uncomment the TacView line in the export.lua file too.

Cheers! 

[Czar66]

11 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

You might want to uncomment the TacView line in the export.lua file too.

Cheers! 

Any tip how to do that, Max? Thanks!

[MAXsenna]

Any tip how to do that, Max? Thanks!

Use Notepad++, it's free and NOT the Windows Notepad. Open the file, find the line with TacView in it and then add two dashes in front of the line like this --whatever TacView has placed here..
Then the line should turn to green and you have done it correctly. Save, exit and start DCS.

Cheers!

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[Czar66]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Use Notepad++, it's free and NOT the Windows Notepad. Open the file, find the line with TacView in it and then add two dashes in front of the line like this --whatever TacView has placed here..
Then the line should turn to green and you have done it correctly. Save, exit and start DCS.

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

Nice. Yes I use Notepad++ for ages now, no worries
Export.lua under "...Saved Games/DCS/Scripts". Correct?

Two dashes in front of Tacview related items inside that file.

Thanks, Max!

Edited Saturday at 07:02 PM by Czar66

[MAXsenna]

Nice. Yes I use Notepad++ for ages now, no worries
Export.lua under "...Saved Games/DCS/Scripts". Correct?
Two dashes in front of Tacview related items inside that file.
Thanks, Max!

Correct!

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[PaulXKRS]

I too had been suffering similar woes after transferring my DCS install to a new hard drive. I'd spent a couple of days trying to figure out what was wrong and stumbled upon this thread. I definitely had the same crashing problems. Tried uninstalling Tacview but it didn't cure it. For me it was the pagefile size on the new drive. In retrospect I think I'd been labouring with a pagefile that was too small for years. 

But this thread was the catalyst for my own personal lightbulb moment.

 

Cheers

 

Paul

 

 

[silverdevil]

14 hours ago, PaulXKRS said:

I too had been suffering similar woes after transferring my DCS install to a new hard drive. I'd spent a couple of days trying to figure out what was wrong and stumbled upon this thread. I definitely had the same crashing problems. Tried uninstalling Tacview but it didn't cure it. For me it was the pagefile size on the new drive. In retrospect I think I'd been labouring with a pagefile that was too small for years. 

But this thread was the catalyst for my own personal lightbulb moment.

Cheers

Paul

hello. since this post is marked solved, you should raise your own thread. make sure you post your latest DCS.LOG.

[MAXsenna]

hello. since this post is marked solved, you should raise your own thread. make sure you post your latest DCS.LOG.

I believe he actually solved it.

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