KSP2 on launch uses 100% CPU and forces hard power off to recover

[iDrake]

Hello, 

I am troubleshooting a condition that started happening to me as of yesterday. Before going into the details, here is the general information requested on support cases. 

 

You system specifications (CPU / GPU / RAM/
A: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7820X CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3600 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    32.0 GB

If you are trying to load an existing save or start a new one
A: start the game at all

The content of the file "Player.log" situated in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program 2
A: -----start-----
Mono path[0] = 'C:/Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program 2/KSP2_x64_Data/Managed'
Mono config path = 'C:/Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program 2/MonoBleedingEdge/etc'
Initialize engine version: 2022.3.5f1 (9674261d40ee)
[Subsystems] Discovering subsystems at path C:/Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program 2/KSP2_x64_Data/UnitySubsystems
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1; jobified=0
Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.1]
    Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (ID=0x1e07)
    Vendor:   NVIDIA
    VRAM:     11041 MB
    Driver:   31.0.15.4633
Begin MonoManager ReloadAssembly
-----end-----

A zipped copy of your campaign located at C:\Users\<name>\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program 2\Saves\SinglePlayer
A: saved
 

 

 

Problem Description:
I launch KSP2 from Steam, and the Private Division launcher executes. I click the play button, the launcher window disappears and the KSP splash window comes up with the spinning circle in the bottom right corner. it takes about 5 seconds and then, everything begins to lag extremely hard. The mouse movement across the screen is rough and jittery, the responsiveness of the entire OS drops. Each time this happens the only working option to recover the system is to hard power off. Through troubleshooting I've determined that CPU is hitting 100%, however have been unable to confirm the exact process and path that is the offending process—more details in the troubleshooting section. 

 

Troubleshooting:
I've attempted to gather more information by using Process Explorer and having it up on the screen in a small window with it focused on CPU usage, to try and identify if there is one single process causing the issue and what it is. When this problem happens, the lag on the OS is so powerful that it takes on average about 45 seconds for even Process Explorer to refresh graphically. In one attempt I let it sit for 10 minutes, waiting to see if I could catch an offending process. It never came up, but there was a general increase across all running processes including the highest one being System Interrupts. The CPU usage is so heavy that even my RGB fans which cycle through a rainbow display (iCue / H1501 Elite LCD XT) will stutter and lag as a result of the CPU impact. (Which I find to be impressive!) 

I've attempted to recover the system when this happens by ending task on the private launcher process, does no good and never terminates. 

I've attempted to recover the system by doing a sign out, waited 20 minutes, it got as far as the spinning dots, never made it further, gave up and hard powered off. 

I've attempted to recover the system by doing a shutdown, as above, waited a more than reasonable amount of time, with the same results as the sign out attempt. 

I've attempted to recover the system by mashing ALT-F4 as soon as the lagging starts. 

I've tried verifying the game files. 

I've uninstalled KSP 2 and tried a clean install.

I've tried copying out the Private Division launcher director from APPDATA and letting all those files be recreated. (And they did)

I've tried deleting out the KSP directory out of APPDATA after zipping up the singleplayer directory for troubleshooting. 

I've tried shutting down all background processes within reason to rule out a new conflict with other software. 

I've shut off all security software and AV, going as far as to disable the system services from ever starting up on a clean boot. 

I've ran SFC, no OS issues found. 

I've made sure my GPU driver is up to date, no change preceding this issue started. Currently on 546.33 GeForce Game Ready Driver release date 12/12/2023

I've ran other games without this issue. 

 

 

Next Steps:
I'm happy to do any next-level information gathering like procmon that is targeted to capture KSP executable actions. I don't know if an ELT Trace would work as I'm having to shut down the system with the power button, so an ETL capture wouldn't be able to package its data.  I'm open to giving things a try. I'm fairly IT knowledgeable. 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2023 by iDrake
I forgot to bold something and I have OCD

[iDrake]

We fixed the glitch!

After giving it a few days I decided to come back to it and dig deeper. I will spare everything it wasn't, and the painful crawl through the system and application event logs, but I discovered there was a recent update to MSI software on my rig. 

 

 

Resolution:
Root cause was an update done to MSI Center. This application has several feature sets. One is a feature set called Gaming Mode described as "Provide auto-tuning function for your favorite games." Upon removing this feature set from MSI Center entirely, KSP now launches correctly. I never had an issue with this before, have an issue now, and have decided never to use that MSI Center feature set again. 

 

 

Reference: 
https://www.msi.com/support/technical_details/NB_ SW_MSI_Center#txt01