Excessive load times.

[GarrisonChisholm]

Good evening.  I am encountering an intermittent "event" that so far has not killed my game, but it is a bit frustrating and damnably weird.  My 2 questions are has anyone encountered what I will explain below, and can anyone explain it?

My load times, from double-click on icon to select save game usually runs 8-12 minutes.  I have 1850 patches for 40 mods, and I play on a potato.  However, the game always works (albeit with slow frame rates).  However, lately I have noticed that when I SAVE a game while a ship is Either building or being rolled out of Kerbal Construction Time, my next save game load can take a LONG time.  Once it took 45 minutes, and I only waited that long because I needed to do the dishes and I saw it happen to finish loading as I was walking back.  Another time it took 4 hours (I got doing something else and so didn't care how long it took), but my Latest load topped them all-  15 hours.  Yet, this only happens half the time, the rest of the time it takes about 1 minute.

Mind you, this is how long it takes after I select which Save Game to load.  So, has anyone experienced this before, and what on earth could my computer be doing for 15 hours that- when it finally finishes- the game plays "fine"?  Thanks for any input.

[Likely most troublesome mod- Kerbalism.]

[linuxgurugamer]

Just a guess, how is the health of the hard disk drive?

[Geonovast]

I'd start backing everything up as soon as possible, then clone the drive to a new HD.  Sounds like an imminent HD crash.

[GarrisonChisholm]

On 6/5/2018 at 9:05 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Just a guess, how is the health of the hard disk drive?

Well, it is only the load of the Persistent Save which is hobbled, every other ap and program runs to normal performance, and it boots to ready from cold off fast enough.  When I run Defraggler (which I run every couple of weeks) *it's* report on disk health reads "good", but I am sure that is not a proper diagnostic.

After the persistent save loads, I can load any other save game and it loads in 90 seconds, and when go to a probe and then return to the KSC that transition is also not delayed.

[linuxgurugamer]

On 6/7/2018 at 5:37 PM, GarrisonChisholm said:

Well, it is only the load of the Persistent Save which is hobbled, every other ap and program runs to normal performance, and it boots to ready from cold off fast enough.  When I run Defraggler (which I run every couple of weeks) *it's* report on disk health reads "good", but I am sure that is not a proper diagnostic.

After the persistent save loads, I can load any other save game and it loads in 90 seconds, and when go to a probe and then return to the KSC that transition is also not delayed.

Ok, try this:

Rename the persistent save to a different name, then copy it back to the original name, leaving the original on disk.  Then try to start the game and see what happens

[GarrisonChisholm]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Ok, try this:

Rename the persistent save to a different name, then copy it back to the original name, leaving the original on disk.  Then try to start the game and see what happens

Interesting.  So, rename it to AttemptNo1.whatever, save it, then rename it Persistent and save it again?  Ok, I'll try that at this point.

What happens though if there is no 'persistent' save at all when you select what game to load?  Does it pick the most recent save after that, or does it blurp and faint because there is no Persistent to load?

[linuxgurugamer]

No.  I said to COPY it back.

And just the persistant.sfs file 

Games are saved in this file

Edited June 11, 2018 by linuxgurugamer

[GarrisonChisholm]

I am set to try this this evening, with a twist-  after renaming copies of the Persistent files, I have started a new game with the same settings and copied over those Persistent files, hoping that when the game loads it will be to a Day 1 setting with nothing going on, and then I will be able to load a select save file (the old persistent which is my active game) from there.

If this doesn't work, then I will simply try running a normal persistent load from a copy as you suggest.

[GarrisonChisholm]

Well, the problem is unsolvable as is, but I have explained it.

Before my last play session I had 45 active flights.  My Ike lander dropped 2 seismic probes, and my Orbiter dropped 4 landers and 2 relays.  This raised my active flights to 53, and it will not load, no matter my connivances.

An earlier save with 45 or fewer active flights will load.  I think (if I recall?) @Mikki had a similar issue with Kerbalism and the number of saves (forgive me for dragging you in!).

So, I think I could just unload Kerbalism, load the save, kill 10-15 old flights, re-install Kerbalism and proceed, but I am not sure how the game will like being loaded without the Kerbalism parts.

Unless anyone sees a simpler solution that I do not?...

[Mikki]

10 hours ago, GarrisonChisholm said:

An earlier save with 45 or fewer active flights will load.  I think (if I recall?) @Mikki had a similar issue with Kerbalism and the number of saves (forgive me for dragging you in!).

No worrys, but you might remember me by mistake, i played lots with Kerbalism but never exceeded more than 25 mods and rarerly had more than 20 flights on rails or surface... but i can confirm that loadtimes increase parallel to their content, but i never experienced loadtimes longer than say  -30 seconds in modded installs after hitting the specific load game button on the second loadscreen.
Reading your post i guess the issue relates to hitting critical amounts of ram and generaly benchmarking KSPs limits by amounts of active flights... 

I have personally returned to pure Stock, even without Kerbal Engineer Redux...

[putnamto]

i would still clone the drive just in case, so if the drive does perchance fail it would be easier to loose a few days of progress than it would be to lose an entire save file.

Edited June 16, 2018 by putnamto

[GarrisonChisholm]

Ok, I have finally corrected my issue, so I thought I'd post the status for anyone who may have wondered.

It was indeed a Kerbalism issue.  I removed Kerbalism, and the save loaded up- I then deleted about 10 redundant/useless flights, reinstalled Kerbalism and it has loaded up fine and is functional again.  I lost a bunch of flights I did not expect to (that had kerbalism parts and did not return when I stripped out the mod), but I am happy to have access again and I think I treat the situation creatively (as far as the 3 or 4 folks who follow my mission reports are concerned).

Thanks for everyone who assisted me!  For what its worth, I will be replacing my laptop within a few months, just in case the hard drive is indeed about to go.  For the amount of time I put into KSP on this laptop I deserve to cut down my wait times anyway.  :)