My solution for FSX freeze ups

[Jethro2992]

This is kind of a long first post, but hopefully someone out there will find it helpful. The following is what seems to have worked in my situation, and may not be a solution to every freeze-up scenario.

 

The scenario I'm referring to is not a CTD (crash to desktop) issue, but the situation where the screen freezes up mid-flight, with sound still running, but none of the controls are accessible -- if you leave it sitting, it will come back in 10 minutes or so, but freeze up again very quickly. The only way out is Ctrl+Alt+Del to Task Manager, and close FSX (which is listed as "not responding").

 

First off, I should list my PC specs at the time we purchased FSX: HP p7-1020 with stock MB, AMD Phenom II 960T 3.0 GHz CPU, 8gb RAM, ASUS EAH4670 Radeon 1gb GPU, Win7 64-bit, 500W PSU.

 

My son (now 13) took an interest in aviation back in 2013, so we purchased FSX Gold in October of that year. My son had done a lot of research, so we made sure to have all the correct patches, etc., ready to go for our 64 bit system. Within a month, while flying the stock F-18, we had our first of many, many freeze ups. We quit flying the F-18, because we thought the fast speed might be the cause, but soon found the same freeze ups would happen on long flights with the stock Cessna Caravan.

 

Fast forward to summer of 2015, after only using FSX for short flights to buzz around the PDX area...

 

With my son taking interest in aviation once again, we looked into the freeze up problem more in-depth, before ordering add-on aircraft. We performed all the fsx.cfg tweaks using the Venetubo (Jesus?) website, when it was still up, and also have been running through the FPS limiter. With those tweaks, everything seemed to work well with the Caravan and F-18, so we added the AeroSoft DHC-6 Twin Otter, the A2A Accu-Sim C182, and FSUIPC. Everything worked great through the fall and winter, and then we didn't use FSX for several months through the spring.

 

About two weeks ago, my son decided he wanted the Carenado F406 Caravan II, so we downloaded it. The next day, while he was attempting a GPS auto-pilot flight from KPDT to KPDX, it froze on him. That night, I tried GPS AP flights from KRDM to KDLS in both the F406 and the DHC-6, but would get freeze ups every time about 10 minutes in. We tried many different things, including backing the sliders off until the sim looked like a blurry Minecraft world, but it still froze. I updated GPU drivers, and even the ASUS GPU Tweak II, but no joy. Checked CPU & GPU temps, but all were good. On the last freeze up, I went to task manager immediately, and noticed that the CPU usage was maxed at 100% -- and the Core Temp app listed 100% usage on core #0. Hmmm...

 

[My Solution]

 

At this point I had two theories: (1) The F406 add-on was causing the freeze up issues, or (2) background processes were bogging down the CPU and causing the freeze ups (possibly from MS increasing the Windows 10 upgrade spam?).

 

While searching for which background processes I could safely shut off, I realized that the GPU Tweak II app had a "Gaming Booster" section, and within that menu was an option to "Turn off Windows services and processes". So I selected it, and tried a KRDM --> KDLS GPS AP flight with the DHC-6, and this time I made it. The next day, my son tried several similar flights in both the DHC-6 and the F406, and all were completed successfully.

 

When he loaded up the A2A C182, he found it to be completely inoperable, and we realized that Accu-Sim was one of the processes being shut down by GPU Tweak. Luckily, we realized there was a second option to "Turn off Windows processes only". He switched to that option, and the C182 was back to normal; and he was able to complete regional test routes without any further freeze ups.

 

In the last week we tried many different routes, and were able to complete all of them. We also added X-Plane 10 to our sim stable, a DHC-6 for that sim, and a new 2gb Asus Strix GeForce 750 ti GPU (which came with the same GPU Tweak app). With the CPU now seeing normal usage, and the extra GPU processing power, we were able to bump up sliders in both sims to a point where we are happy with both the graphics and frame rates.

 

For an older setup built from a consumer level HP, it's not bad at all -- and most importantly, FSX is fully usable once again for the type of flights that we enjoy the most. I have not checked to see if GPU Tweak is available for non-Asus GPU's, but a quick google search reveals several free "game booster" apps out there that will shut down background processes.

[budreiser]

Hoping I don't sound ignorant, but how do you "Turn off Windows services and processes"?

[mrzippy]

Hoping I don't sound ignorant, but how do you "Turn off Windows services and processes"?

 

Right-click on My Computer/Manage/Services and Applications/Services then scroll down through all of the services that are running and choose.

[evm]

I think what the OP meant was the tool "Asus GPU Tweak II". The mentioned "Game Booster" setup and turning off Windows Services automatically is a feature of that tool.

[Jethro2992]

Hoping I don't sound ignorant, but how do you "Turn off Windows services and processes"?

Yes, evm is correct -- I used the "gaming booster" option of the Asus GPU Tweak II app to turn off the Windows processes. I had tried to go in and hand-select things to turn off, but it can be a little overwhelming when you go in to "msconfig" and realize just how many MS/Windows services are running at one time. Again, I believe the "Asus GPU Tweak II" program is an Asus GPU specific program, but there may be other options out there that would perform the same function (if you don't have an ASUS GPU).

[SSI01]

I am running Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 on this machine, AMD Phenom II X4 940 processor 3.00GHz, 12.0 GB RAM, 64-bit OS, AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics card. Will the Asus GPU Tweak II program work for this configuration, or is there another that can be used?

[cianpars]

In my experience, the symptoms you describe (word for word) are caused by an overheating GPU. There may be a number of solutions to cure this such as additional cooling, running with the case open or simply turning down graphics settings in the GPU software (e.g. NVidia Inspector).

 

IAN

[Jethro2992]

In my experience, the symptoms you describe (word for word) are caused by an overheating GPU. There may be a number of solutions to cure this such as additional cooling, running with the case open or simply turning down graphics settings in the GPU software (e.g. NVidia Inspector).

 

IAN

Is this in response to my original post? Because I'm pretty sure I clearly explained that GPU and CPU temps were well within normal spec, and that turning sliders all the way down to a fuzzy mush did not help with the freeze ups. The *ONLY* thing that solved the problem was turning off Windows background processes. I was able to crank graphics back up after shutting off background processes, with GPU temps remaining in a normal range, with zero freeze ups.