DCS crashing constantly when player runs it

Tusslewithme

They've lost upwards of 30+ minutes of progress, it happens when saving. Or sometimes after it's open for extended periods of time.

MrNate

Well that's no good.

A couple of things we can start with:
If you could either post the .dcs file here, or email it to me at quality-mix@hotmail.com , that would help me see if there is anything strange going on with the save file.
Next, depending on what platform is being used, launch DCS from the terminal, use it until it crashes, then copy and paste the text from the terminal here in this thread.

I hate hearing that progress is lost 🙁. If we're lucky, some of the data may still actually be in the dcs file, provided it's been saved.

Tusslewithme

From player: "
I loaded my sheet and saved, it was fine
I loaded my sheet and wrote a few words in the main page, it was fine
I opened the book and wrote 4-5 lines of text and hit save, it froze for a split second, then the whole thing closed, no errors no popups just force closed"

It's for a shadow of the demonlord game so some stuff in t https://forum.charactersheet.digital/assets/files/2026-05-27/1779919060-490334-scrungus.dcs
here may be silly.

It's windows.

MrNate

Alright. So far I've not been able to reproduce the crash. I've tried by following your exact steps to no avail, both on my linux machine and windows machine.

The next thing to try is to launch DCS from the terminal in Windows, and see what text is spit out when it crashes. I can provide steps if needed, but a quick search on how to launch applications from the windows terminal will provide the info as well.

Tusslewithme

MrNate

this is what they get when they try to run it

MrNate

Ah. So they are in the right folder. But they need to type in the name of the executable file from within that directory in order to actually launch it.
If I remember correctly, the file is called dcs3.exe. So, that's what they would have to type in and press enter.

We were almost there! Go ahead and try that and let's see what happens! If we are still having trouble doing this, I'm happy to hop on a video call so we can do a screen share and figure it out. @Tusslewithme

Tusslewithme

MrNate

Apologies, a family member died amongst many other things, so I wasn't here.

MrNate

I'm so sorry! Absolutely no apologies necessary!

If you look at the text it gave back to you in the command prompt, it actually wants you to type it in like this:
.\dcs3.exe
With that dot slash before dcs3.exe

Tusslewithme

MrNate Would there be a way for you to make it generate a crash log locally, as a small update? Just to ensure that when it DOES it logs the error? It's SUDDENLY behaving, as tech issues do, when TRYING to troubelshoot.

MrNate

I had been considering this. I'll see if there is something I can come up with.

For the time being, I recommend your player to save as frequently as possible, in order to try and avoid any major data loss. Also, running it from the terminal will provide that data when it crashes.

One known issue that I thought was resolved was when attempting to save a DCS file to a restricted location, such as Program Files, it would crash out because of permissions. Ensure files are being saved in a location like a folder in Documents.