Author Topic: P3D hangs on start up, and hangs on shutdown  (Read 4391 times)

alexmish

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P3D hangs on start up, and hangs on shutdown
« on: October 19, 2015, 06:27:32 pm »
Very interesting behavior observed. I believe it is related to couatl app:

1. When starting P3D, the program freezes at splash screen.  I have to kill it through task manager.  Subsequent start *usually* work, but sometimes it takes 2-3 kills before it will finally start.  Nothing noticeable in the event log, nor in couatl (except it says it is waiting on bglmanx.dll...).  Taking bglmanx.dll from dll.xml file solves the issue, but then I lose all my addon airports and GSX...   Also, examining process tree during sucessful start shows presence of as_audio.exe, while during unsuccessful starts it is only couatl.exe.

2. After (eventual) successful start and use of P3D, the process hangs and can be seen in the task manager.  I've used a winintervals process explorer tool to see that couatl.exe is running under P3D.. Not sure if it is the cause or not.

3. After long flight (3+ hrs), the program crashes..  Just CDT, not even error message in the event view.  Looks like as if it was trying to load "next in flight's path" scenery when it hang.

What I have installed:

P3D v3
PDMG 737 (latest)
ASN Next (latest)
FSUIPC (extremely latest :) - been asking same question on Pete's forum)
FTXGlobal

The PC has dual video cards (NVIDIA K5200 and GTX 680), dual audio interfaces (built-in and add-on), 16GB memory, 256GB SSD etc - just bought it last week, expensive toy.  I do also have 2 Matrox TripleHead2Go cards connected to it, to drive outside view (3x 55"TVs), F/O and Captain Side PFD/NDs monitors, and then directly plugged monitors for Upper and Lower DUs.  There are also GoFlight MCP, 2xEFIS, and 1xDIO to drive LEDs.

Lots of HW connected...


Ah, and also AVG anti-virus (where I took care of excluding P3D executable, couatl.exe, blgmanx.dll, and other executables for add on components).  I didn't try to completely uninstall it yet...

« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 06:31:30 pm by alexmish »

virtuali

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Re: P3D hangs on start up, and hangs on shutdown
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2015, 09:34:25 pm »
Very interesting behavior observed. I believe it is related to couatl app:

Nothing in your report seems to have any relationship with it. Couatl CANNOT crash the sim, it's impossible it could, because it's an external .exe. Only a .DLL can crash/freeze the sim.

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1. When starting P3D, the program freezes at splash screen.  I have to kill it through task manager.  Subsequent start *usually* work, but sometimes it takes 2-3 kills before it will finally start.  Nothing noticeable in the event log, nor in couatl (except it says it is waiting on bglmanx.dll...).  Taking bglmanx.dll from dll.xml file solves the issue, but then I lose all my addon airports and GSX...  

It's possible ANOTHER addon you are using is having a conflict with bglmanx.dll, most likely because it uses another version of the VC++ runtime library. Other addons you use use older versions, like the 2010 or the 2008.

According to P3D SDK, they recommend that .DLL addons modules would be compiled using the VC++ 2013, and this is what we obviously use for bglmanx.dll, but if other modules you have use a different version, there might be conflicts that APPEARS to be "solved" by disabling/removing bglmanx.dll, but they happen only *because* of a conflict caused by another module.

A more proper test, instead of disabling bglmanx.dll, would be disabling everything else EXCEPT bglmanx.dll, and see if the sim is more stable this way.

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Also, examining process tree during sucessful start shows presence of as_audio.exe, while during unsuccessful starts it is only couatl.exe.

I think that file belongs to Active Sky Next.

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2. After (eventual) successful start and use of P3D, the process hangs and can be seen in the task manager.  I've used a winintervals process explorer tool to see that couatl.exe is running under P3D.. Not sure if it is the cause or not.

Since P3D started Couatl.exe, you are supposed to have it running under it, so it's normal.

It's not normal, instead if you still see it AFTER you quit from the sim. Check this.

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3. After long flight (3+ hrs), the program crashes..  Just CDT, not even error message in the event view.  Looks like as if it was trying to load "next in flight's path" scenery when it hang.

What's exactly is a "next in flight's path" scenery ?

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There are also GoFlight MCP, 2xEFIS, and 1xDIO to drive LEDs.

GoFlight modules are known to cause issue, because they use *several* versions of the VC++ runtimes at the same time.  See this thread here, we found a solution after a direct remote session:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,11370.msg87810.html#msg87810

The crashing problem (the user was convinced it was also convinced it was caused by bglmanx.dll, because it was "fixed" by disabling it, but it was GoFlight's fault, instead) seemed to be cured by loading the GoFlight driver manually after starting a flight, instead of having the sim loading it automatically in the EXE.XML
« Last Edit: October 20, 2015, 11:50:26 am by virtuali »

alexmish

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Re: P3D hangs on start up, and hangs on shutdown
« Reply #2 on: October 20, 2015, 04:40:26 am »
Thanks for the prompt reply! After experimenting with disabling all addons in dll.xml and exe.xml, and still having hungs during sim's shutdown, I've decided to rebuild the p3config.cfg, and that seemed to fix the problem!

BTW, I have nothing for GoFlight devices in .xml files, I usually start PMDG GoFLight Interface manually after loading a scenario.

I also suspect I have case of the vainterface.dll not being freed up from memory... Comparing dll.xml between FSX and P3D, I see that for FSX there were additional tags in the xml file for this dll to initialize and de-initialize the library... Nothing in P3D's version, so I wonder if that is the culprit (will try tomorrow!)

alexmish

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Re: P3D hangs on start up, and hangs on shutdown
« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2015, 08:21:59 pm »
Just to follow up and close on this issue, how can I find out what version VC++ each addon was compiled under?  Is there a file's property to examine for this?

Thx

virtuali

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Re: P3D hangs on start up, and hangs on shutdown
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2015, 10:16:28 pm »
Just to follow up and close on this issue, how can I find out what version VC++ each addon was compiled under?  Is there a file's property to examine for this?

You must use this utility:

http://www.dependencywalker.com/

The version you must use for FSX modules is the x86 version. This will list all the dependencies of any .DLL or .EXE file, and might give you some ideas why some modules don't load.

Note that, it's NOT by any means "perfect". You will see many reports of "missing" .DLLs, without them being a problem so, it's an useful tool, but cannot be trusted to be *sure* a module has a "problem"

alexmish

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Re: P3D hangs on start up, and hangs on shutdown
« Reply #5 on: October 21, 2015, 10:18:07 pm »
Grazie!