Author Topic: Couatl.exe CTD  (Read 3708 times)

stevefocus

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Couatl.exe CTD
« on: August 04, 2016, 08:00:34 pm »
Hi I was flying KLAX-KPHX when midway through my climb phase I got P3D is not responding. On checking event viewer I saw this message. Any idea what the problem could be.

Faulting application name: couatl.exe, version: 3.1.0.3532, time stamp: 0x579a06cf
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.14393.0, time stamp: 0x57898d9d
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x000d9841
Faulting process id: 0x255c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d1ee3083c6f5be
Faulting application path: D:\Prepar3D v3\fsdreamteam\couatl\couatl.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 3fc550da-9c19-4600-89f3-7ba2498b36e9
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

virtuali

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Re: Couatl.exe CTD
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2016, 02:56:06 pm »
The most likelly cause is, the sim has closed abruptly, because you have likely have exhausted memory because of the combination of too many addons, to high setting, and a memory-hungry airplane you are probably using, so the abrupt crash of the sim has MADE Couatl.exe crashing, because Couatl couldn't receive the command from the sim to shut down, so it wasn't able to do all the proper cleanup it's normally supposed to do when the sim closes normally.

We tried to catch all the possible instances of this message, not because it's the cause of the problem, but because users might be mislead thinking Couatl.exe is the cause of it, when in fact it's the *victim* of the sim abrupt crash that would have happened anyway, but apparently we haven't found all of them.

Note that this would make any difference: the sim would have crashed anyway in that situation, just that you wouldn't seen this error, so you wouldn't be mislead thinking the crash was caused by Couatl.exe (which, by definition, CANNOT crash the sim, since it's an external .EXE, so it doesn't have any access to its memory).

I suggest to check the amount of free memory in a similar situation.-

stevefocus

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Re: Couatl.exe CTD
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2016, 03:27:35 pm »
Okay thanks for the clarification, it was not caused by an oom as I had 0.8GB of vas left. Will have a look see if I get any other crashes.

virtuali

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Re: Couatl.exe CTD
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2016, 03:58:35 pm »
it was not caused by an oom as I had 0.8GB of vas left.

The sim will crash before reaching the 4GB limit. The actual limit is around 3.5-3.6 GB.

And, it's not just the total amount of free VAS that counts: the available memory must also be continuous.

If, due to memory fragmentation, you have what might seem enough VAS, but the program (FSX) asked for a block larger than the largest which is available as a continuous chunk, it will crash even if it seems there was some memory left still, that's why it's best to keep some headroom.

stevefocus

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Re: Couatl.exe CTD
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2016, 05:18:12 pm »
Yeah I know, with fsuipc it normally crashes with around 250mb vas left on the counter. Just completed a flight with PMDG NGX from FSDT LAX to Flightbeam KPHX and still had 800mb to spare and no issues with crashes or anything, really need to find out what is causing this ntdll error. Thanks for the help anyway.