Assetto Corsa - 1 second freezing

[Fat-Alfie]

Does anyone know anything about AC troubleshooting? I have developed a problem over the last few days (not sure when it started). I start an AI race (or Practice or Hotlap - it doesn't seem to matter) and periodically the game freezes completely. The sound is stuck at a certain RPM but the screen freezes for 1 or 2 seconds. Then, it just unfreezes. The car is 2 seconds further down the road (so the physics must still be running) and the Render Stats app shows a huge red, wide spike. I don't remember changing anything on my set-up, no Windows updates, no changes to hardware.

Once or twice this freeze has coincided with an AI driver crashing out, so maybe it is caused by an increase in CPU load? It happens on mod tracks and Kunos tracks, and tbh it's making AC unplayable. I mean, I can still work on my own mod tracks, but I can't enjoy testing them anymore.

I have done a fresh installation of AC, am running only the Kunos launcher, no mods (other than my own mod track). I have run a RAM check with no issues, a GPU check with no issues, Windows says my C Drive is fine, my GPU driver is up to date, I don't know what else to check. I even tried pCars and it ran without any issues. I feel like some part of my PC is failing but I don't know what

Do these symptoms ring any bells with anyone else who may have had a RAM, GPU, CPU or PSU failure?

Help!

 

[Alex Townsend]

Could be something happening in ACC too. We appear to be having possibly similar issues with online play and lag induced issues lately. Possibly something has changed or not been updated as full release is just around the corner anyway so may be all good by end of next month

 

[RobertR1]

I used to get this with my Rift all the time. Once I moved onto the samsung odyssey+ and then the pimax 5k, these issues never happened.

I was never able to find a fix for the rift.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I am running a single 2560 x 1080 screen, if that helps - no VR

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Sounds like DirectX related. Try to run DxDiag to see if any conflicts, check audio drivers.
How is FMOD usage on render stat?
And as always digging through the logs can give some clue.
They are in "c:\Users\<yourname>\Documents\Assetto Corsa\logs"

 

[RaceNut]

Check your USB devices for any devises showing an error (Unknown USB Device). I just had this happen last-night running AMS (exact issue you describe). I used USBdeview to try to isolate and identify the device causing the USB-resets that resulted in the game stopping momentarily. Upon disconnecting suspect devices, I found that the issue persisted and was roaming (Changing devices).

Solution: Unplug ALL usb-devices and then starting with bare essentials (Mouse, keyboard, etc.), plug in USB-devices - hubs first and monitor for any conflict in Device Manager and/or USBdeview. If all goes well, continue connecting other devices one by one.

If the error persists, be sure that Windows is fully updated, reboot and try again. Both me and my son had to do this within the last few days so I imagine there was a significant OS update that affected the USB system requiring a complete reset in some cases.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Well, I managed to run abut 100km without any issues at all tonight. Before I started up AC I quit all other running programs, started Windows Task Manager and ended any unnecessary running tasks, and it was fine. All I can assume is that something must have been running in the background each time AC locked up, something either updating, or scanning, or backing up.

 

[Sim Strata]

Try and monitor your HD activity if it returns. I had the same, I noticed 100% HD activity spikes. I replaced the HD and the issue disappeared.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

It's strange that you should mention that, because I am sure that I can hear one of my drives 'clicking' each time I do anything on my PC, like it's waking up each time it's called upon. Maybe my C drive is on its way out.

There's also a lag lately, copying and pasting from one document to another in either Illustrator or Photoshop, which I never had before.

 

[RasmusP]

It's strange that you should mention that, because I am sure that I can hear one of my drives 'clicking' each time I do anything on my PC, like it's waking up each time it's called upon. Maybe my C drive is on its way out.

There's also a lag lately, copying and pasting from one document to another in either Illustrator or Photoshop, which I never had before.

Go into power management settings and set the disk/drives standby/sleep or whatever it is on English windows to "0", which equals "never".
That way you at least be sure that they don't actually go asleep and wake up
And yep, sounds like hdd issues! Windows still basically gets a heart attack due to a slow/not responding drive. Very annoying sometimes!

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I am fairly certain that it is already set to never sleep but I will check in the morning.

If my HDD is starting to fail, any suggestions for a good replacement (ssd maybe)? And if there is an easy way to copy everything off my current C drive onto to the new drive and make that my new C drive, without having to reinstall all my software?

 

[Roderick Kennedy]

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/clone-a-harddrive-questions.159497/

If your hdd is clicking get it replaced as soon as possible,you don,t want/need a complete failure.

 

[Please Stop This]

https://en.minitool.com/
os migration wizard
https://www.minitool.com/help-pw/migrate-os-to-ssd-hd.html

install in your old system and run

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Thanks for your help guys

 

[Ghoults]

I would not trust any hard drive software out there that tries to put a number on how healthy a driver is. I just had an ssd die despite showing 95% good health in all kinds of ssd health apps. No bad sectors etc either. Only issue I had was that in cm I'd get these unresponsive moments when opening the car or the track selector plus some rare crashes with symptoms exactly like you described (screen freezes, sound stuck). I did not lose any data as the disk is still readable but just won't boot. It is a great excuse for upgrading though . SSDs are super cheap nowadays anyways and you can get 250gb ssd easily under 50€. I would not use hard drives anymore as system drives because ssds are just so much snappier.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

My current C-Drive is a 1Tb HHD - would you suggest replacing it with a 1Tb SSD?

For the record, my freezing issue has disappeared completely - I have put that down to background software.

 

[shmafoozius]

Have an nVidia card? Maybe you were affected by their latest annoying bug:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-430-39-driver-cpu-usage-issues,39195.html

And there just was a hotfix for that which might also explain why it's suddenly gone...

 

[shmafoozius]

My current C-Drive is a 1Tb HHD - would you suggest replacing it with a 1Tb SSD?

Is your 1TB HDD almost full? 1TB SSD is more like 900 to 960GB. Also, do not attempt to use every last GB of an SSD. It will get SLOW. If you're almost using up all of your 1TB HDD, either go for a 1,5TB SSD or buy two and split everything up.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I have used 570Gb out of 930Gb, and don't anticipate using much more, tbh.

And yes, I saw that Nvidia bug, and applied the hotfix already.

Thanks for your advice

 

[Denis Betty]

Sorry DP.