SF2 occasionally stops responding to keyboard

[+malibu43 142]

I'm hoping this has come up somewhere already and someone knows if there's a cause/fix...

Just reinstalled SF2 after not having it installed or playing for several years.  I had my installation folder and mod folders backed up on a hard drive and simply drag and dropped them back into place.  Occasionally during flight the keyboard will stop responding altogether.  I can't pause, I can't change views, I can't alt-D to change HUD, and hitting ESC does not exit the mission.  Sometimes if I mash keys furiously, I get keyboard input back, but sometimes I then lose them again.  Most of the time this has happened, I have to alt-TAB and close the SF2 window from there.  Upon restarting the game, everything works fine.  This seems to happen maybe once every 5-8 flights.

Anyone else experienced this?

I'm running on Win10.

[+Gunrunner 314]

That's a new one to me, if you had the game freeze with the sound "hanging", sure, but if the game keeps on running, never saw that one yet, are you sure it happens only with SF2, or may it be a weird coincidence ?

Could it be linked to remanent keys and other weird windows shortcuts ? Sometimes with Windows 10 when you keep some keys, or combination of keys pressed for a certain time or pressed in quick succession, it will pop up a menu asking you if you where intending to do some specific actions, sometime this pop up will remain in the background but be in focus, robbing the input from the foreground window (usually a fullscreen game) until either the timer expires, you somehow click blindly to dismiss it, or you press the right key to dismiss it. I've never had it happen with SF2 though but it's been a pain in my neck with some other games.

[+malibu43 142]

I'm not 100% sure but I feel like maybe it's happened when I've tried to pause (ALT+P).

I wonder if I'm hitting Windows key by accident...

[+EricJ 4,245]

I'm running Win10 and only had a fixable joystick issue recently. Other than that I've been experiencing no problems with the keyboard.

[FalconC45 162]

I have this issue pop up on my SF2 install too.  Few times too.

Falcon

[Wrench 9,848]

have you tried unplugging the keyboard, and letting the OS "find" it again, and reload it's drivers?

[+malibu43 142]

16 hours ago, Wrench said:

have you tried unplugging the keyboard, and letting the OS "find" it again, and reload it's drivers?

It's a laptop, so no unplugging possible.  Since it only happens with SF2, I'm guessing it's not a driving or device related issue.

I'll experiment with the Windows key theory later when I get a chance.

[Wrench 9,848]

well, shoot!

[+Flamesky 16]

Dear SF2 Community, Having the same issues with the Keyboard not responding in SF2 lately after a clean install of all the complete SF2 Packs and add ons on my SSD's it used to work in the past but had to reinstall Windows 10, 64-Bit, and ever since it's not working anymore. Unplugged the Keyboard and then plugged in again the same problems still exist. I can type without any problems here as one can see with the very same Keyboard. I really have no clue at least right now what's causing this problem. Uninstalled all the SF2 packs and add ons restarted, then reinstall all the SF2 pack's nothing seems to work.

Any help would be really appreciated...

[UllyB 1,206]

I never encountered such thing. I suspect the power of your rig is the culprit. What graphics board do you have ? Do you have a dedicated videocard on it or it's a rig that just emulate the video card, "stealing" RAM from the motherboard ? If it's the latter , you can forget it playing the game on the highest graphics settings. (Video RAM is ten times faster than the RAM modules power, so a dedicated videocard makes a big difference) What CPU do you have ? How much RAM do you got ? Is it a laptop with 5400 rot/min or a 7500 rot/min by chance ? (A laptop has low speeds for its HDD generally to avoid heat excess into such a small/crammed space.)This things count if you have high quality textures on terrain, plane sky etc. SF2 environment has lots of 3D objects, CPU, RAM and the videocard are esential. Press, in the game, ALT+D and tell us what are the minimum FPS you get. It will give us an idea of what is happening there.

 

Edited April 29, 2021 by UllyB

[+Flamesky 16]

My PC setup consists of the following hardware. I run a self-made PC TOWER with an i7-8700 CPU @ 3.70GHz and NVIDIA GeForce RXT2080 Graphics Card, 2  Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD's, and 64 GB of Corsair DDR RAM my Motherboard is an ASUS TUF Z370-PRO GAMING and  IPS-Gaming-Monitor 27 Alienware AW2721D 240-Hz NVIDIA® G-Sync®-compatible. Never had any type of problems with that configuration.

Thanks, UllyB for getting back to me. It's very much appreciated. Finally, i was able to locate the root of the problem and solved it. Mistakenly unknowing wise i copied first the Mod Folder into the Saved Game directory folder on the C:\ Drive and after that, i  installed the Main SF2 Game Packs. That was causing the Keyboard commands finally not to work anymore in the game it created a kind of conflict.

Here's the Solution: I uninstalled everything related to SF2 including DLC's, Expansion Packs restarted Windows 10, and installed the Main SF2 Game Packs and DLC's, Expansion Packs first, and then finally in the end the SF2 Mods so after that the keyboard commands worked perfectly again. Since i am running Eagle Dynamics DCS, IL-2 Sturmovik Great Battles, and MS Flight Simulator 2020 without any problems i was really getting curious why the SF2 keyboard commands are not working but now it works perfectly. 

[UllyB 1,206]

Your rig is high end, so we eliminated the problem here. I am glad that you finally got to the bottom of it. Nice going!

When you got a problem, you can count on our help. Even a simple opinion or speculation can spark an idea of how to solve a problem. Don't be a stranger!

Edited April 29, 2021 by UllyB

[warbie 9]

When i was trying to run SF2 on a Win 10 laptop, i had a similar issue few years back. 

If you are using a laptop or an integrated graphics card, you should designate the higher-end GPU to run this game, and go to the "Options" menu to check your graphics settings. 

If it still persist, check your VRAM memory and visual quality settings and if you can confirm that it is not a performance related issue, you might want to check your keyboard's wires.

[wasteboy 4]

I have a similar problem to the one described in this thread. I just purchased, downloaded and installed the SF-2 Complete ($99.99). The game when running does not recognize input from either the keyboard or the joystick.

When I start in Options and go to Controls it lets me input changes to the joystick to use the slider for rudder control and the throttle lever for throttle control. However when I go to fly in a game either instant  action or mission it opens in the air but does not respond to either the keyboard or joystick. That includes ESC - the only way I can get out is to employ Task Manager and end the task.

I know the joystick works because it does in both DCS and Microsoft Flight Simulator. So the computer should likewise be adequate.

I have tried several total uninstalls and reinstalls, shut downs and restarts etc. but nothing works so far. As suggested above I made sure NAVIDIA is the prefered graphics

What can I do?????

The computer specifics are:

Dell/Alienware Alienware x17 R2

Windows 11 Home 64 bit

Disk drive: NVMe PC SN810 NVME WDC1024GB

Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900H   2.50 GHz

Ram: 16.384GB (15.7 GB usable)

DirectX Version: DirectX 12

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU

Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X

 

[UllyB 1,206]

On 2/27/2020 at 5:31 PM, malibu43 said:

It's a laptop, so no unplugging possible.  Since it only happens with SF2, I'm guessing it's not a driving or device related issue.

I'll experiment with the Windows key theory later when I get a chance.

Does that happen ...on the laptop you just have plugged a...USB mouse ? If so, try a cable one and you'll see that the lag will disappear in...smoke If you are wondering what has a USB mouse got to do with that, when you are touching just the keyboard, think again, I has to do with that. USB cheap mice have very big lag , especially if you are using in swift succesion keys on its keyboard. A professional USB game mouse doesn't have these problems, who would pay 100+ buck for such device ?  Part of the problem are IRQs and the device controller. An interrupt request (IRQ) is a signal sent to a computer's processor to momentarily stop (interrupt) its operations. The signal is usually sent by a hardware device to interrupt the processor so the device gets some time to run its own operation. The device controllers for each device (the USB mouse here) you have plugged into your motherboard and the IRQs work together. So...

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by UllyB

[+EricJ 4,245]

On 2/28/2023 at 10:38 PM, wasteboy said:

I have a similar problem to the one described in this thread. I just purchased, downloaded and installed the SF-2 Complete ($99.99). The game when running does not recognize input from either the keyboard or the joystick.

When I start in Options and go to Controls it lets me input changes to the joystick to use the slider for rudder control and the throttle lever for throttle control. However when I go to fly in a game either instant  action or mission it opens in the air but does not respond to either the keyboard or joystick. That includes ESC - the only way I can get out is to employ Task Manager and end the task.

I know the joystick works because it does in both DCS and Microsoft Flight Simulator. So the computer should likewise be adequate.

I have tried several total uninstalls and reinstalls, shut downs and restarts etc. but nothing works so far. As suggested above I made sure NAVIDIA is the prefered graphics

What can I do?????

The computer specifics are:

Dell/Alienware Alienware x17 R2

Windows 11 Home 64 bit

Disk drive: NVMe PC SN810 NVME WDC1024GB

Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900H   2.50 GHz

Ram: 16.384GB (15.7 GB usable)

DirectX Version: DirectX 12

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU

Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X

 

It's starting to do that with me. I worked on a personal skin of mine and wanted to check on how it looked in-game. Can't do shit with the keys and didn't try the stick because it probably was borked too. I'm thinking it's Windows 11 as it never happened before. The updates I think (but don't know) are causing it to make it not work like that.

[+EricJ 4,245]

Okay I think I narrowed down the issue, it has to be the stick that is causing  the issue now (at least with me). I unplug my stick because I need to play Ghost Recon Breakpoint and it gets touchy with the game and my stick, so I unplug it. Anyways, after unplugging my stick I had full keyboard authority, and mouse worked fine. So something is causing an issue with the game and the stick. I've been using the same stick for a year or two now and haven't had any issues. It could be a setting with the Microsoft Gaming or something, but that could be a start, the joystick causing the issue.

And I think the workaround with Win11 is to to go into Settings/Bluetooth and Devices and View more devices. Select your stick while plugged in and remove it from the listing. Then unplug it and then replug it back in and things should  be fine. I had noticed earlier when I was doing something with Breakpoint it didn't recognize my stick (it's sensitive to my stick) and I did what I had to do without any issue. Only when I did the previous described did it recognize my stick and had the controller problem I had with it.

Maybe something screwy got with the updated stuff that Microsoft is doing with Win11 but that might solve your problem too.

Edited March 7, 2023 by EricJ