[SOLVED] Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 crashing to desktop - bad disk?

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undefinedman

Jan 23, 2022
8
0
10
I played for so many months in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 with no issues but recently I started to have random crashes to desktop. At first it was kind of once a few days, then it was more often and since few days it crashes all the time. In the menu, in the airport or when I fly. It's random, sometimes 2 minutes after launch, sometimes 5 and sometimes after 2 hours.

I looked up to Event Viewer and I saw suspicious error right after the game crashed:
The device, \Device\Harddisk8\DR8, has a bad block.

I couldn't identify what psychically is the harddisk8 so I downloaded WinObj to find out but it turned out there's no Hardisk8 ?

image.png


And the game is installed under E: drive which seems to be \Device\HarddiskVolume6.
The E: drive is the WD Black AN1500 4TB which is half year old.

So I scanned first chkdsk e: /f /r to find bad sectors and it was none. Then I ran HDTune Error Scan and no errors. Then I scanned all my drives using chkdsk and HDTune and no errors whatsoever.

I am loosing my mind now and can't tell find what is the problem and where is that Harddisk8?

My specs:
AMD Ryzen 9 3950x
RTX 2070 SUPER
64 GB RAM
FRACTAL DESIGN Ion+ 660
5k resolution screen

Temperatures are all the time between 50-60 Celsius and when the crash occurs it just freeze the game for a 2 seconds and go back to desktop.

For testing purposes I lowered graphics to the lowest and it seems there are no crashes. I put the plane on autopilot and it ran for 40 minutes on low level. GPU usage was about 40%. Then I put graphics to medium and locked to 30 fps. GPU usage was about 60% and started to crash after some time.

The more demanding graphics I put, the quicker the crash. On ultra settings, 5k, 60 fps it crashes after several seconds but as said, temps are 60-65 Celsius then.

Worth to mention that I have several other demanding games on that disk and I have no problems at all there.

There are tons of similar topics on forums with the exact behaving but I write here to exclude my disk failure.
 
Last edited:
Solution
geofelt
Apparently, the device is a raid-0 setup under the covers.
There would be several logical devices. That may explain the drive 8 question.

The high gpu usage at high settings is a clue.
My testing of fs2020 using a 3070 card showed 100% gpu usage in task manager with ultra details and a 4k monitor.
I have never seen anything that high before.
Under such a load, you are going to generate heat and have a large power draw.
Some have complained of heat with the an1500.
What is the make/model of your case, and what is the fan arrangement.
Try taking the side cover off and direct a house fan at the innards.


What is the make/model of your motherboard?

I found this user comment:

I am giving three stars because I feel the product is 5-star...
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geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
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Apparently, the device is a raid-0 setup under the covers.
There would be several logical devices. That may explain the drive 8 question.

The high gpu usage at high settings is a clue.
My testing of fs2020 using a 3070 card showed 100% gpu usage in task manager with ultra details and a 4k monitor.
I have never seen anything that high before.
Under such a load, you are going to generate heat and have a large power draw.
Some have complained of heat with the an1500.
What is the make/model of your case, and what is the fan arrangement.
Try taking the side cover off and direct a house fan at the innards.


What is the make/model of your motherboard?

I found this user comment:

I am giving three stars because I feel the product is 5-star hardware and the customer experience was one-star. WD advertised and marketed this AGGRESSIVELY, implying that it was a universal fit for any PCI-express slot. Quote from their website: "This plug and play, bootable add-in-card simply connects into your PCIe® expansion slot, requiring no external power or cables. Primed with an enterprise grade RAID controller to run your entire operating system while you game."
Ok, what they don't tell you is you MUST check to make sure your motherboard is on the compatibility list. I just bought a brand-new, high-end, name-brand gaming PC, and it is not 100% compatible. Sometimes this drive shows up, and other times it just...won't.
So I will pull it back out and put it into the next computer I build, which I will make sure the mobo is compatible before I buy it.
My fault for not checking compatibility? At least half my fault. Remember, this is what was advertised to me:
"This plug and play, bootable add-in-card simply connects into your PCIe® expansion slot, requiring no external power or cables. Primed with an enterprise grade RAID controller to run your entire operating system while you game."
I didn't see any fine print about compatibility until I started Googling to find out why the drive showed up intermittently. :/








  1. Response from Western Digital:

    SM OLS Team
    · 7 months ago



    Hi Overly Optimistic,
    Thank you for showing your interest in the WD_BLACK AN1500 NVMe SSD Add-in-Card and we appreciate your time for sharing your valuable feedback with us.
    Please be informed that a list of motherboards that have been tested to fit the WD_BLACKTM AN1500 AIC is already provided on our online store website. You may also refer to the link mentioned below to access this list for future reference
    "List of motherboards that have been tested to fit the WD_BLACKTM AN1500 AIC"
    https://documents.westerndigital.co...ck-ssd/compatibility-list-wd-black-an1500.pdf
    We are happy to answer all your queries related to Western Digital products. You can contact us by phone and provide your details. We would be happy to assist you.
    Need Help? Please see our "'Contact Us" page for information.
 
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Solution
U

undefinedman

Jan 23, 2022
8
0
10
rgd1101 said:
brand and model of the psu?
list all your physical disk
Click to expand...

PSU is FRACTAL DESIGN Ion+ 660
and my disks are:

0: SanDisk X400 M.2 2280 128GB, assigned letter D (development files, not related to game or system)
1: GOODRAM Irdm Pro 1TB SSD, assigned letter C (system, program files, steam)
2: WD_BLACK AN1500 NVMe SSD, assigned letter E and F (games only, and F so far remains empty)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
U

undefinedman

Jan 23, 2022
8
0
10
geofelt said:
Apparently, the device is a raid-0 setup under the covers.
There would be several logical devices. That may explain the drive 8 question.

The high gpu usage at high settings is a clue.
My testing of fs2020 using a 3070 card showed 100% gpu usage in task manager with ultra details and a 4k monitor.
I have never seen anything that high before.
Under such a load, you are going to generate heat and have a large power draw.
Some have complained of heat with the an1500.
What is the make/model of your case, and what is the fan arrangement.
Try taking the side cover off and direct a house fan at the innards.


What is the make/model of your motherboard?
Click to expand...

My motherboard is Asrock x570 Steel Legend and the fan is Noctua DH15S, I got plenty of fans around my case because it's a large Define 7 XL and as I said, the temps are very okay for CPU and GPU because they hardly reach 65. Of course I tried to take the side cover but none of this helped.

I found this user comment:

I am giving three stars because I feel the product is 5-star hardware and the customer experience was one-star. WD advertised and marketed this AGGRESSIVELY, implying that it was a universal fit for any PCI-express slot. Quote from their website: "This plug and play, bootable add-in-card simply connects into your PCIe® expansion slot, requiring no external power or cables. Primed with an enterprise grade RAID controller to run your entire operating system while you game."
Ok, what they don't tell you is you MUST check to make sure your motherboard is on the compatibility list. I just bought a brand-new, high-end, name-brand gaming PC, and it is not 100% compatible. Sometimes this drive shows up, and other times it just...won't.
So I will pull it back out and put it into the next computer I build, which I will make sure the mobo is compatible before I buy it.
My fault for not checking compatibility? At least half my fault. Remember, this is what was advertised to me:
"This plug and play, bootable add-in-card simply connects into your PCIe® expansion slot, requiring no external power or cables. Primed with an enterprise grade RAID controller to run your entire operating system while you game."
I didn't see any fine print about compatibility until I started Googling to find out why the drive showed up intermittently. :/


  1. Response from Western Digital:

    SM OLS Team
    · 7 months ago



    Hi Overly Optimistic,
    Thank you for showing your interest in the WD_BLACK AN1500 NVMe SSD Add-in-Card and we appreciate your time for sharing your valuable feedback with us.
    Please be informed that a list of motherboards that have been tested to fit the WD_BLACKTM AN1500 AIC is already provided on our online store website. You may also refer to the link mentioned below to access this list for future reference
    "List of motherboards that have been tested to fit the WD_BLACKTM AN1500 AIC"
    https://documents.westerndigital.co...ck-ssd/compatibility-list-wd-black-an1500.pdf
    We are happy to answer all your queries related to Western Digital products. You can contact us by phone and provide your details. We would be happy to assist you.
    Need Help? Please see our "'Contact Us" page for information.
Click to expand...

OMG I never though that disks may be incompatible with a motherboard. Although on the list there's no my motherboard, but the closest one is ASRock X570 AM4/X570 Extreme4. I tried to google, but no trace of complains WD Black with Steel Legend motherboard.

I will test tonight my other hard drive and I will install there msfs2020 and be back with the result.
 
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U

undefinedman

Jan 23, 2022
8
0
10
Thank god, it's crashing on my other drive too. I did a fresh install on my external 1TB HDD which is 100% good and the game is crashing the same way as before.

So at least I can exclude any failure of WD Black AN1500.
 
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U

undefinedman

Jan 23, 2022
8
0
10
Bob.B said:
Just to take a peek.
Run a pass of crystaldiskinfo and post a screen shot for each disk.
Click to expand...

but why? It's nothing more than HDTune I already did tests. I already confirmed that disks are 100% good. Besides AN1500 S.M.A.R.T. info is not readable by any of those programs because of RAID nature. The only way is to read it via WD Black Dashboard

image.png

image.png
 
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U

undefinedman

Jan 23, 2022
8
0
10
Of course I appreciate that and I did not mean to be harsh. I already checked all those disks to find bad sectors or used dedicated software to read SMART but nothing there, so that's why I asked specifically where can I find what is harddisk8 because that was an initial question and either this error is meaningless and I should not be worried about or harddisk8 really exists but cannot find what exactly is this.
 
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B

Bob.B

Splendid
Feb 8, 2021
6,935
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24,140
undefinedman said:
Of course I appreciate that and I did not mean to be harsh. I already checked all those disks to find bad sectors or used dedicated software to read SMART but nothing there, so that's why I asked specifically where can I find what is harddisk8 because that was an initial question and either this error is meaningless and I should not be worried about or harddisk8 really exists but cannot find what exactly is this.
Click to expand...
I have no idea what dr8 is.
Sometimes you have to hunt+peck around with try this try that/swap this swap that....etc.
That's why I asked for a screenshot for each disk......hunt+peck.
 
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U

undefinedman

Jan 23, 2022
8
0
10
I already wrote different topic to search a problem within the possibly bad hard drive(https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...tor-2020-crashing-to-desktop-bad-disk.3746424) but turned out it works fine.

So I dig more and find out that uninstalling completely NVIDIA drivers and let the Windows install their drivers makes the game stable.
All games I have run very well on my machine just Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is crashing in the menu or after 3 minutes.

I made several tests including latest drivers and old drivers from NVIDIA and still crashing. The only way to have this stable is to uninstall them completely and leave Windows drivers which works pretty well (60 FPS).

My specs:

AMD Ryzen 9 3950x
RTX 2070 SUPER
Asrock x570 Steel Legend
64 GB RAM
FRACTAL DESIGN Ion+ 660
5k resolution screen
Temps are max 65 for both CPU and GPU


and these are currently installed drivers:

image.png


Does anybody know why? Should I wait for another NVIDIA drivers release?

Could it be that my PSU should be more powerful?
 
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