Game freezes in MA, SEA, offline

[Spikes]

I have no idea what the deal is but with the last couple patches my game has been freezing like crazy. Fortunately it didn't happen in FSO, but it's happened 3 times in one sortie today. It even happened only 2-3 minutes after I loaded into offline mode. I re-installed the game on my SSD a few days ago hoping it would help but it has only gotten worse. Also when I get back into the game it creates a duplicate of my plane (ie I see my icon and a plane fly away for the 5 minute timer).

I am not sure what else to try, I've updated my BIOS and updated all the drivers. I tried DX11 but get those micro freezes all the time and terrible frame rate along with the freezes.

Unfortunately there's no crash report or anything, it just freezes and will stay like that until I kill it in task manager.

DxDiag attached...I don't know what else to try.

[Bizman]

Wow! How many monitors do you have? I lost count...

You seem to have the Nvidia HDMI audio installed and enabled which is known to cause issues so unless you need to listen to your monitor speakers disabling and uninstalling that might help some.

More importantly, it says driver:n/a for many of your motherboard devices. Does that really mean that you haven't installed any motherboard drivers? If so, either grab the CD that came with your motherboard or go to the manufacturer's site and install the chipset drivers. Those are crucial!

Also notice that due to how an SSD works for updating files, it's not the best choice for AH which makes gazillions of micro updates during the game. Although SSD's are fast and nice for most purposes, an HDD might work better for running AH.

[Spikes]

I sometimes swap to my monitor speaker if I don't have my headset on, but I can disable it to see if it helps, it has never been a problem before though (in the last 4 years).

Chipset drivers should be installed and up to date but I will double check.

I can move it back to the HDD, I did it to try and cut down on load times (extremely long white screen when first opening/reloading after crashing). It helped a little bit but not nearly as much as I thought it would.

As for the monitors...there's 5.

[Skuzzy]

That Trigger II external graphics device is using 8GB of your system RAM.  You may very well be running into resource issues even though the computer has 16GB of system RAM.

The NVidia card appears to be sharing that RAM, but also taking another 4GB above that away from the computer as well. 

Basically, 12GB of that 16GB of system RAM is all being allocated to video. 

Telemetry gathering or Windows update could be the straw that breaks the computers back.

[Spikes]

I unplugged the USb to VGA device, and telemetry and Windows update have always been turned off. I logged into the game and within 5 minutes of just sitting in the tower, game crashed.

[Skuzzy]

Unplugging it may not do the trick if the driver is still running.  That device driver will have had to hook some low level functions in order to insert itself.  I have no idea what the overall ramifications would be.

You would have to run the DX11 version of the game to have a chance, as DirectX 9 requires double the resources of Direct 11.  It is just the way Microsoft designed it.

[Spikes]

I ended up updating my video card drivers, one was released recently. Flew FSO and the MA with no crashes...here's to hoping whatever the problem was is gone. Thanks Skuzzy, Bizman!

[Spikes]

I lied. It's doing it again today in Scenario. I've crashed 10-11 times usually in about 15 minute intervals. When in the game I'm only using 5gb of RAM.

I freshly installed the game back on my hard drive last night.

DX11 does the same thing plus I get all sorts of micro-freezes in it. This is the only game I have issues with.

It is completely unplayable.

[Bizman]

Dx11 micro freezes, something like half a second randomly a couple of times in an hour is something that I get all the time and learned to live with. AFAIK it's more about Dx11 than AH and other games suffer from it as well.

The freezes are something else. As Skuzzy said, the Trigger driver may do things in the background so uninstalling it might help. Another thing about it is that it's yet another USB device. They all draw currency so you may as well suffer from a power outage either at the USB ports which is easily cured with a powered USB hub or at the power supply level - five monitors need quite a lot of both CPU and GPU activity, both of which need lots of power when driven at the upper limit.

When playing, how about having only the monitors used for playing plugged in? Not to mention not running other programs in the background - watching 1080p YouTube videos during bomber runs can really chew up resources!

[Skuzzy]

If it is crashing, then there should be some dump files in the games "temp" folders.  Zip and post the most current one in the bug forum.

[Spikes]

Dx11 micro freezes, something like half a second randomly a couple of times in an hour is something that I get all the time and learned to live with. AFAIK it's more about Dx11 than AH and other games suffer from it as well.

The freezes are something else. As Skuzzy said, the Trigger driver may do things in the background so uninstalling it might help. Another thing about it is that it's yet another USB device. They all draw currency so you may as well suffer from a power outage either at the USB ports which is easily cured with a powered USB hub or at the power supply level - five monitors need quite a lot of both CPU and GPU activity, both of which need lots of power when driven at the upper limit.

When playing, how about having only the monitors used for playing plugged in? Not to mention not running other programs in the background - watching 1080p YouTube videos during bomber runs can really chew up resources!

When I tried DX11 it was every 10 minutes or so, plus lower frame rates (the counter said 58 FPS but it felt much more like 45 or so, lots of stuttering when zoomed in). I uninstalled the USB display driver, actually wiped out all the video drivers and did a fresh install of the NVIDIA software just in case. I suppose I will it today and report back.

When playing I don't usually have anything else open (maybe a Chrome window but not anything intensive like Netflix or YT). I wouldn't think it would be an issue and it hasn't been in the 2-3 years I've had this setup, unless my GTX970 is failing, but I have zero issues in other games which I would assume I would.

If it is crashing, then there should be some dump files in the games "temp" folders.  Zip and post the most current one in the bug forum.

I only see two patch files in temp. I've checked the Windows event viewer as well and don't see anything out of the ordinary (I was looking for driver fails or something along those lines). Is there some sort of logging or debugging tool I could run while playing the game?

[Skuzzy]

If the game is not creating a dump file, then that may mean something outside of the game is it.

How about power management?  Any USB power management enabled?  Check as Windows 10 can and will reset those without telling you about it.

[Spikes]

I went in and found the "USB selective suspend setting" and disabled that - along with the graphics drivers wipe I was able to be in the MA without issue the whole day. The only new phenomenon was those small microstutters like Bizman was saying, but even with DX9. It was something like a half a second freeze, and then two more back to back, then it would be fine for another 15-20 minutes. But I can live with that if it means no more game crashes!

[Spikes]

It still does it. I have no idea why, I've reformatted windows, reinstalled everything, close everything I possibly can before I launch AH. This is irritating.

[Bizman]

Did you install the game on the HDD instead of SSD like suggested earlier?

Another feature I've noticed do funny things is the background activity of the Store Apps. Go to the Store, click the ... icon and check for updates. After having done that, uninstall every app you don't use. Some of them can be uninstalled through Programs and Features, some can't be found there. For those, scroll down the Start menu and right click the ones you want to get rid of.

Then there's the suggested apps, which only have a tile in the Start menu. Right click>More>Turn Live Tile Off (or turn them all off at once), then remove/unpin those you don't want. Turning off applies to those you have to save as well. There's no need for the Store tile to show online ads while you're playing!

Also, there's a bunch of settings you'd possibly want to scroll through and disable most of them. It's tedious, I know, but there's no other way than opening each Setting menu one by one including the sub menus and trying to figure out whether you want/need something or not. Occasional suggestions are on my "not needed" list as well as various hints and tips based on my behaviour. Not to mention allowing apps to use my camera, microphone, whatnot! Just make sure you don't accidentally disable your AH voice! 

Make notes what you do so you can easily find a setting you'd like to reset back on in case some needed feature stops working. Happy hunting!

Oh, and I didn't find if you've ever mentioned the make and model of your power supply. That's another potential culprit.