Game Hang

[Pudgie]

Hi All,

While flying for approx. 35-40 mins just fine the game suddenly just hung up w\ the sound working just fine. Never saw a CTD or dialog box pop up during this episode. Took my box approx. 2-3 mins to get back to desktop on it's own but it did. When it did so I noticed that in the notifications area my icon for the Logitech Setpoint drivers (trackball\keyboard control version 6.68.250, driver ver 5.92.117 the latest vers) was showing 2 icons instead of 1 (looks like this driver tried to restart itself after a potential crash) and so it may appear that this is somehow either having issues which is causing the game to hang or is clashing w\ the game during some operations within the game causing the game to hang...…..

Some speculation on my part but I did check the AHIII temp folder and found that a .dmp file was created from this hang so I'm posting it for y'all to check it out for any info as to the cause of the hang and any info that relates to my end so that I can look into it.

I would appreciate it.

 

[Pudgie]

Here is another .dmp file provided as I just experienced the same random event occur again in the same way as laid out in earlier posting.


 

[Pudgie]

Update:

Finally found some time to look deeper into this & I found the culprit...………..issue was the Logitech drivers were clashing w\ the AHIII game client intermittently, most likely concerning the Game Mode function within the Logitech drivers causing the game to hang at the same time as the Logitech drivers also hung. Once the game was shut down then the Logitech drivers would reset & restart in Win 10. Once this finished then AHIII could be restarted & would run OK afterwards.

Deleted the Logitech drivers, checked Device Manager & cleaned all up as needed, rebooted box then set my Logitech Trackman Wheel trackball up to use the Win 10 Microsoft mouse drivers & set up all controls.


Have been playing the game for a while since w\o the 1st hint of an issue.....all smooth & responsive so all is good for now.

Will monitor box as I also haven't had any screen freezes occurring since this was done...…...interesting.

 

[Pudgie]

Update:

So far after deleting the Logitech Setpoint software\drivers & installing the Microsoft Win 10 drivers for my Logitech Trackman Wheel trackball I haven't had any issues w\ AHIII...….this also includes the random screen freezes as well.

I'll continue to monitor my box while playing but it is finally appearing to show a conclusive connection to the Logitech Setpoint mouse software\drivers being used & the random lockups\screen freezes within the AHIII client software that were occurring on my box.

Something y'all might try on your box if you haven't already done so if you're having these issues & you're using mouse driver\software other than the OS-supplied MS mouse drivers to see if all this clears up for you.

So far this is looking good on my end...…………………

Only took about 1 1\2 yrs to catch up to it. Lord knows I've tried just about everything else to isolate this issue.....never dawned on me to consider the mouse driver\software until recently!

 

[Bizman]

Thanks for sharing!

Unlike any other drivers, Windows mouse drivers often work much better than those provided by the manufacturer. However, as in your case, if the mouse works flawlessly the mouse drivers aren't the primary suspect when there's issues with a program. Since they're used for all computing tasks outside gaming it's too easy to forget that mice and keyboards are on the same line as game controllers as joysticks, pedals, pads, throttles and whatnot.

Good catch!

[Pudgie]

Thanks, Bizman.

The main hindrance to resolution of this issue for me was that all the while I would see the intermittent screen freezes the OS would perform the graphics driver resets fast enough that the TDR timeout threshold wouldn't be exceeded thus I never would get the .dmp file generated in AHIII, thus there's nothing to use to go on to try to TS so I went the old trial route and shut down all programs 1 by 1, check to make sure all was actually shut down, reboot then run AHIII to see if the freezes would reoccur to try to isolate it. I had actually shut down the Logitech Setpoint software during that process thru Apps in Windows Settings but this in itself doesn't actually remove the actual Logitech mouse drivers that were installed unless you do this in Device Manager but as already mentioned wasn't any .dmp files generated to cue me in. The other random AHIII .dmp files that I did see generated prior were found due to my usage of the MSI AB\HWINFO32 combined overlay that I use to monitor my system operation while flying AHIII Dx9 version only, Dx11 version of AHIII had no issues w\ this (I use the Dx11 vers exclusively). A quick upgrade to the latest vers of HWINFO32\MSI AB software to cover the Rx Vega 64 vid card and the Win 10 ver 1709 OS fixed that so I was again left clueless until the last 2 .dmp files appeared.

If you would note that in the 2 .dmp files I posted the ID code in both files are identical which pointed to a singular, repeatable event. Since I've come to understand that most .dmp events are usually associated w\ software operation being affected by or in some conflict usually w\ a driver's operation, when I noticed the Logitech Setpoint icon in the notification display a double icon after each event occurance then reset back to a single icon after a few seconds I restarted AHIII and ran it for quite some time w\o issue. It was after noting this behavior is when I started to focus on the mouse driver as being suspect w\ AHIII only while the game was actually running as I had no issues w\ my trackball's operation or w\ the Logitech Setpoint software otherwise......as you have alluded to in your post.

Since Hitech & Co use all default OS criteria when developing AHIII it's only academic that the default OS-supplied mouse drivers should be tested\verified to work smoothly w\ the game client so I made the switch......................