Also, it doesn't crash in Orbiter without a trigger event. Did you check that all animations refer existing meshes or meshgroups? AFAIR, the thrustergroups are completely erased on staging and I don't think you refer to bad thruster handles when recreating them... maybe you can auto-check this and write a warning in the Orbiter log, if a bad handle is passed, shouldn't be hard to implement.
I'm fairly certain the animations are all centralized (panels or subsystems), so IMO if that is the problem, then it should have been visible long before.
AFAIK, the RCS is created once at the start. The CTD also seems to happen at the pad, and no RCS is fired at that point. Also, Orbiter could/should check if it gets a NULL handle in several functions, it shouldn't be a performance hit, and if it is, make the check only in debug builds.
You and me might find that in the FCOS software specification. Do you want some references?
I know it is in the ALT FCOS spec doc. This whole thing is taking more time than it should because the FCOS of that document is not what was flown in space (that FCOS plus G1 plus SM was way too large for the available memory), so I need to "massage" things a bit. If you have a FCOS spec from like 1979 or later, I'll take it.
Ill check when i am back, but it moves at engine start, then flips out when the stack is released. i have not checked to see if the happens at KSC too, but it came up recently as far as i can remember. I have not updated SSV in a while, and the only changes between the current release and what i have is the ascent guidance improvements.
For v1.12 I did change the touchdown points at SLC-6 to fix a tiny tilt that existed... maybe with a lower surface resolution the touchdown points are no longer leveled?
Or perhaps it is not heavy enough... could you add another 0 to the SetEmptyMass at SLC6.cpp:244, to see if that keeps it on the ground?
Yes. I've tried just about everything here on my end but with very limited information. Maybe D3D9Client is just getting too old for an ever changing OS?
The only way forward I see is you running debug builds of SSV and/or Orbiter attached to VS, to see where it crashes.

This assuming the CTD also occurs in the debug builds, which is far from certain.