If the game locks up, how do I unlock it?

[MetricKerbalist]

Hi KSP colleagues,

I downloaded Kerbal Space Program from Steam, and I have version 1.12.0.3140 (WindowsPlay x64).  I do not have any mods installed.  The game loads quickly and runs fine.

Sometimes, however, if I click the wrong thing, it will lock up.  For example, I pressed "persistent" to load a flight.  KSP then froze and it locked up my computer.  I could not exit the game and I could not get my computer to unfreeze.  My mouse froze and so did my keyboard.  Naturally, I tried Ctrl-Alt-Delete, but to no avail.  Finally, I just resorted to turning off my computer with an on-off switch -- obviously, not a good way to turn off one's computer.

Here is my question, please:

In the future, if the game ever freezes again, is there some way of exiting the game?  That would be alright.  However, I don't like having to just turn off my computer.

Thank you for your consideration.

Stanley

[jimmymcgoochie]

It sometimes takes a while for the game to load a save, especially if there are a lot of active crafts in it. The game might seem to freeze and stop responding, but it will probably recover if you leave it alone; being impatient and poking at it makes it more likely to crash. It regularly takes 15+ minutes for my very heavily modded RP-1 game to load and several minutes to load a save, enter or leave the editors or launch a craft, because the save files are large and there’s a lot for the game to load.

It’s possible that your PC is running out of RAM, in which case there will probably be an error in the logs; try running Task Manager (or activity monitor on Mac) and then load the save again while watching your RAM use- if it goes up to 100% then that’s your issue and you’ll need to drop some mods (if you have any) or cut down on RAM use by other programs (Chrome uses a lot of RAM, for example) to save more for KSP.

[MetricKerbalist]

2 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

... try running Task Manager ...

That's the problem.  I can't run Task Manager.  None of the keys nor the mouse is responsive.

2 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

It’s possible that your PC is running out of RAM ...

I honestly doubt that I am running out of RAM.  I have 32 gibibytes of RAM on my computer.  When I am in the game, it runs beautifully and responsively.

[jimmymcgoochie]

2 hours ago, MetricKerbalist said:

That's the problem.  I can't run Task Manager.  None of the keys nor the mouse is responsive.

I meant running Task Manager before starting up KSP, so it's running and can log the performance as KSP loads.

I don't expect you'll use up 32GB with stock KSP, however I've seen 32GB of RAM being completely used up during the loading process and sometimes that caused my PC to crash, requiring a hard reboot; it's not impossible, but requires some serious modding.

[MetricKerbalist]

7 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

I meant running Task Manager before starting up KSP, so it's running and can log the performance as KSP loads.

Hi @jimmymcgoochie,

And then, please, what would logging the performance do for me?

Stanley

[MetricKerbalist]

Hi KSP colleagues,

Fortunately, I have not had any game freezing since my last communication.

However, following @jimmymcgoochie's advice, I have been turning on Task Manager before starting KSP.  Interestingly and unexpectedly to me, the game consumes considerable computer resources.

Here are significant statistics:

• About 19% of CPU
• About 2275 MB (26%) of memory
• About 34% of GPU
• Power usage is "very high"

Other than the few game freezes that I have had, KSP loads nice and quickly and it runs beautifully.  That's why I was so surprised to see the substantial usage of computer resources.  Of course, the game does so much that perhaps I should not be surprised.

Stanley