Ray Proudfoot

I paused the sim whilst I had lunch and when I returned I unpaused it and within 3 minutes it had frozen. After 7 mins it hadn't recovered so I shut it down. No autosave enabled so it's definitely not associated with that. This time only the main core0 VP was 100%. All others ticking over. No idea what is responsible. So frustrating.

Hi John. Yes, the lockup and disconnect occurred together. I was monitoring the EFB log and it was fine up to the freeze. The EFB server log is from the P3D computer and the map display is on a networked PC. It seems to me P3D is effectively blocking all outputs until the program causing the freeze has finished doing what it’s doing. I think FSUIPC is frozen along with P3D. I’ve asked on the Microsoft Windows forum with help in using ProcMon to see what process is causing the issue. On a return flight to Manchester I did a manual save and it took no time at all. I don’t think it’s PMDG, FSUIPC or even P3D. I blame Windows 11 and its aggressive protection. For now I’m leaving autosave off until I can get a resolution. Thanks for your help.

Hi John, I set the logging options as you advised and added more exclusions to Windows Virus including PMDG DLL folder. A flight from Manchester to Heathrow had autosave set every 3 minutes. After 6 minutes flying with no issues I was feeling happy. The flight continued all the way to 3 miles out from 27R and then there was a very long lockup over 3 minutes. That's extraordinary. But it resumed and I was able to land, taxi and park. I'm attaching the EFB log showing the disconnect plus fsuipc6 log which I don't think shows anything as the sim time didn't change during the lockup. I displayed Task Manager - Performance and all 24 cores with the exception of 0, 2 and 4 were set at 100%. Those 3 are set in prepar3d.cfg for the main threads. If there's anything you can spot I'd be grateful. serverLogfile.txt FSUIPC6.log

Hi John, thanks for your reply. To start at the end it’s only been an issue in the last few weeks but almost certainly linked to autosave because I had a P3D crash and wanted to load from a saved flight only to realise it wasn’t turned on. I think the problems started after that. The fact it’s happening with all aircraft only became clear today by checking the FSUIPC log. At half a second I was never going to spot that delay. The flight out of Helsinki this morning had Ai well below the limit of 160 so we can discount that. I forgot there’s a Radar Contact file (rc4) saved too so I’ve added that to the exclusion list. I had turned off Live Virus Protection last week and went 3 days without a problem but then it returned so I turned Live protection back on. Strange it would happen with that off. I’ll add the extra logging and hopefully that will reveal what is causing the issue. But if nothing else I can live with it knowing where the problem lies. But it would be nice to fix it since the sim and computer is great in all other respects. One suggestion. It would be helpful if the call to autosave was logged so users can see immediately if the problem is definitely associated with it.

Hi John, I've just tried a short flight in the DA62 with Autosave turned off. The log reveals nothing unusual. Looks like the problems are linked to autosave but trying to establish why the sim locks for a few minutes will take some time. At least I can reassure myself it's nothing more serious.

I suspect you've forgotten our conversation a few weeks ago on this very subject. I excluded all the file types, folders and executables and also fsuipc6.dll but they still persist. Maybe I've missed one but I don't know which. I'll ask on their forum. Out of interest does the first autosave do anything differently to the rest? I ask because these lockups are always around the beginning of the flight, never in the middle or end. How long is the gap in seconds between 217609 and 218172. That was the gap on a Lear25 flight I've just completed. No visible delay noticed.

Hi John, P3D v5.4 running FSUIPC v6.2.0 flying the PMDG737NGXu. My flight today was from Helsinki to Heathrow. A couple of minutes after take-off the sim locked for 40 seconds before recovering. A short while later it hung for nearly 4 minutes but again, recovered. For the remainder of the 2hr 20m flight to Heathrow it was fine. I'm attaching two logs showing FSUIPC's reaction to the lockups. Have you seen anything like this before and do you have an idea why it might be happening? I'm also attaching a log from a flight yesterday when I was flying a twin-engne prop. I didn't notice any lockups but they're logged but of much shorter duration. The reason the previous autosave files weren't there is because I delete them as part of a clean-up when importing the latest flight plan. Would extra logging identify where the problem lies? FSUIPC6_prev.log.txt FSUIPC6.log

Hi John, For the sake of ease I'll include all the actions I've taken including those from Yakpilot. Feel free to cut and paste this into a pinned FAQ topic. Settings required to minimise / eliminate the delay when Autosave is enabled for the PMDG aircraft in Prepar3D all versions. In Windows 11 select Start - Settings. On the left menu select Privacy and security. At the top of the list select Windows Security. Select Virus and threat protection. Under Virus and threat protection settings select Manage settings. Scroll down to Exclusions. Select Add or remove exclusions Click "+ Add an exclusion" Add the following choosing File from the drop-down. Prepar3d.exe Add the following choosing Folder from the drop-down The folder containing FSUIPC6.dll The following folder. Your initial path may differ. C:\P3Dv5\PMDG\PMDG737NGXu\PanelState C:\Users\[username]\Documents\Prepar3D v5 Files Add the following choosing File Type from the drop-down. FXML PLN WX After adding those and with Autosave enabled I looked very closely for the autosave action. I barely noticed the save routine and there was no noticeable pause or stutter in P3D. My thanks to @Yakpilot for his post giving this extra info.

@Yakpilot, your post from 8 years ago helped me to prevent the 7-9 second pause on FSUIPC Autosave in P3Dv5.4 . Many thanks. On Windows 11 Pro it’s now barely noticeable. 👏

Hi John. After some searching I found the post that helped. It was posted back in 2015 by Yakpilot but is just as relevant today. You had linked to it already. It’s possible Win 11 is even more protective / aggressive than earlier OSs. https://forum.simflight.com/topic/80097-problems-with-windows-10-autosave-the-answers/ The extra bits I added were the file extensions and the PMDG folder where its panel state is saved. Given the complexity of the PMDG aircraft it seems logical a save would take longer and if the protection system of 11 is checking it that probably explains the delay. I didn’t modify the save folders mentioned in that post. So P3D can do something better than MSFS. 😄 That’s a refreshing change. Take care and my best to all the Dowsons. 👋

Thanks John. I found a topic where the chap had excluded lots of files, folders and file extensions and that appears to have done the trick. I was watching very closely when an autosave was due and there was barely a stutter. I'm trying to find his post as it proved very useful. Maybe a sticky if you think it worthwhile. I don't engage it when on the ground. Does the same happen in MSFS?

Having done some searching I've found your post here which explains the problem and a solution. I'm in the process of excluding as much as I can for the PMDG in particular. Windows 11 is the culprit. Too much protection for those who are sensible in how they use their computers.

Hi John / Pete, P3Dv5.4 flying the PMDG737-800 with FSUIPC 6.2.0. I have used Autosave for years and never had a problem but having enabled it yesterday I'm experiencing pauses of 7-9 secs when autosave is called. I thought it might have been settings I changed in Prepar3d.cfg but by timing the frequency of the pauses they occur at 1m 45s intervals. I have FSUIPC set to 120 secs with a max of 10 saves. I turned off autosave and the pauses stopped so there does appear to be a link. I have a new fast computer so I'm stuggling to work out the problem. Screenshot of saved files attached. I also have FSUIPC set to keep the clock synced. Is that a factor?

That is very good of you John. 👏 I’m waiting for FS Labs to announce their intentions for v6 especially as Concorde is currently being beta tested in v5. I’m never a first day buyer but hope to switch to v6 as soon as feasible.

Hi John. @Jlinckeused email hence why there’s no solution posted on that link. I wish people would stick to the forum. He wasn't using the correct syntax for registering the DLL. Once he corrected it things were fine. Well I assume so because he never came back to me except to say he had registered it. Here is John Dekker’s post on registering. It needs doing in two folders. https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/265834-713-and-unregistered-dlls/ The file was part of Windows 7 but dropped for 10. Hence why so many need it.

Use P3D for your IFR flights and MSFS for your VFR ones. 😄 No ATC needed when you’re just sightseeing. 😉 Best of both worlds. 👍 That’s my opinion. Others may disagree. It is possible to reverse engineer an executable but it’s time consuming, expensive and requires a lot of skill. Such a pity JD didn’t make the source code available. 😔

Hi @Gabe_62, John Dekker doesn’t have any interest and the source code is not available. RC monitors your position based on lat/lon, altitude, speed and heading. Same for all Ai too of course. If the MSFS SDK had all that info that could be collected by SimConnect and made readable by RC4 I suppose it might work. Lots of imponderables though. It will require the skills of John and Pete to see if it’s possible. I integrate SIDs and STARs into the plan I feed RC4 but of course at 40nm out those are replaced by RC ATC.

Hi John. If you can get ShowText to interface with RC4 / MSFS you’ll make a lot of frustrated MSFS pilots happy. ATC is always neglected by sim creators.

John posted on the AvSim RC Forum and I supplied him with that DLL. He managed to get it registered and is now enjoying RC4. 👍

No worries John. Shift+Z will eventually show it although the text is a bit small. I used to use Riva Tuner but it’s incompatible with P3D v5 and causes ERROR_DXGI_DEVICE_HUNG problems causing the sim to crash.

Hi John. Hope you and all the family are keeping well. Remember the bad old days of a 32-bit simulator and having to monitor VAS. Those days are behind us but with some scenery for P3Dv5 using a lot of VRAM I wonder if you would consider adding an offset to store the amount used? Some like FlyTampa KMIA can cause P3D to run out of VRAM if a high texture setting is used. With fewer graphics cards having 11Gb like the 1080Ti users with powerful cards may still need to keep an eye on it. Thanks!

Thanks John. I've now turned off Hyperthreading. The flight earlier was very stuttery presumably because there was no Affinity Mask setting in P3d config so the program was trying to push as much as possible onto core 0. Now corrected and should I get any further problems with WideFS connection I'll try the above, thanks.

I paused P3D for 45 mins and when I unpaused it RC4 was fine. But look at my CPU core usage. I'm at FL390 over northern Spain near Pamplona. No way should core 0 be running flat out like that. Although WideFS seems fine at present I wonder if this pausing is responsible for the heavy use of the cores. Just spotted something. There are 12 cores. That means hyperthreading has been turned back on. Probably as a result of yesterday's BIOS update. I'll turn it off after this flight and see how things go with further ones. It's not a WideFS problem so this is for info only.

After a further 30 min pause I unpaused. I was taxiing to 32R and shortly afterwards was told to contact Twr. Did that and all was well. Updated sim time and that was reflected in lua display. AIC is now running and I'm now enroute to LEMD. I'll pause for another 25 mins. More to follow.

Interesting. I paused P3D for 40 mins and then unpaused it. RC was responsive and when I adjusted the time the lua display was updated immediately. There was one difference from yesterday. Ai Companion was not running on the DELL-XPS15 laptop via WideClient. I've now started it and will pause P3D for 30 mins minimum. AIC does interact via SimConnect as well as FSUIPC so I wonder if that might be a factor. I don't use its facility to delete any Ai Aircraft. Purely as a visual indicator of Ai in P3D.