Follow-up: I now have a working install. My guess as to what may have caused the reinstall issue:
I bought the Premium Deluxe edition from the Microsoft Store on PC. Following purchase the store shows two available downloads: MSFS 2024 & MSFS 2024 - Premium Deluxe Edition … leaving me to guess what I needed to download (which one or both). When I reinstalled the program following my C: drive crash, I chose to download both (thinking one the base sim & and the other the additional Premium Deluxe aircraft) … and subsequently had the hanging startup problems. I found that if I downloaded/reinstalled just one or the other, the program starts fine … then automatically populates MSFS with all aircraft belonging to my Premium Deluxe purchase.
Another plus: my controls profiles are still there from my original 2024 install.