I bought the Deluxe version on Steam months ago and I was NEVER able to run it once.
It ALWAYS CTD before reaching the main menu, no matter the workaround I’ve tried:
installed either Adrenaline and Pro versions of the drivers
removed and installed older versions of the drivers (down to 2021)
set the virtual memory to fixed size (16 GB)
set the virtual memory to automatic
set the virtual memory to none
disabled the network before launching MSFS
changed the AMD Radeon profile: Game, Power save, etc…
disabled the Steam Cloud Save and removed its folder
checked the integrity of the files in Steam
ran Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
ran Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
ran Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
ran sfc /scannow
ran chkdsk C: /r (windows partition)
ran chkdsk D: /r (data partition)
uninstalled and installed again MSFS from scratch
formatted the hard-drive and installed Windows from scratch
changed graphic card to RTX 4080
reinstalled again MSFS from scratch (for the very first time I was able to reach the main menu and to flight about 30 minutes). On the next reboot, the same problem (CTD before main menu) appeared again
ran memtest, 2 passes
reduced GPU power to 46% with MSI Afterburner
verified the xbox app is running and logged in with the same user (of Windows and Steam)
(temporary) disabled Windows Defender and Windows Firewall
tried to run MSFS offline (turning off the WiFi connection)
installed English voice package
set English as language for non-Unicode softwares
My system fits well the minimum requirements:
Windows 11 Pro
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
32 GB RAM
Radeon RX6800 XT (now RTX 4080 16 GB)
850W power supply
No mods yet, no overclock, no USB peripherals, no antivirus, no other applications. Just a clean install of Windows 11 and Steam.
I’m quite annoyed about the lack of support about this game.
Steam does not offer any support, just link to this forum where I see many people with the same problems and NEVER a technical answer (by Microsoft) about how to find out the root cause of their failure.
I was going to buy a nvidia RTX 4080 but it’s very expensive and I have no clue that it would solve the problem.
Is there a reliable way to fix this problem or to get a REAL technical support for a PURCHASED product?
I would report your issues to ZenDesk, here is a link to the FAQ…
For the time being, I would let Windows handle your virtual memory on your computer. Just for good measure, you might want to make sure that your memory modules are seated properly in their slots. I don’t think you should run MSFS as an Administrator, I tried this and it causes a CTD from what I recall.
You say that you are not using an anti-virus however, you should have Windows Defender. I would create exceptions for all of your MSFS folders when configuring an anti-virus.
I had similar with a 7600x. Tried for days to resolve and finally found a post recommending turning off PBO and Core Performance Boost. Havent has a crash since. My CPU is now (only) getting 4.6Ghz but it is fast enough for VR
I have a similar setup and I have tried everything that you have and some more. In the past couple of years I found that the only thing that prevented CTDs 99.99% of the time was to limit 6800XT’s max frequency to 70% via AMD control panel (everything else is at default settings). Could possibly be a faulty GPU but who knows, I won’t change it now. Worth trying applying the same workaround just in case, as it’s free. I may still get the odd CTD here and there with MSFS being what it is (i.e. super unstable to 3rd party addons, locations etc) but at least I’ve ruled out the GPU and I can now fly for hours on end almost always.
If I understood correctly, I clicked on “Manual tuning”, then enabled the GPU tuning and set the Max Frequency to 65%.
Launched MSFS and it crashed again before reaching the main menu. When it CDT, the Metrics panel showed 4% as “Utilization” of the GPU and a Clock Speed around 30 MHz (like nothing).
Yes that’s correct. Sorry to hear it didn’t work either. My MSFS wouldn’t need to be stressed before it CTD’ed. Sometimes it would crash in the menu, sometimes just before the menu loads, sometimes 10-20 minutes into a flight.
A very few other games began having similar issues at some point, which made me suspect it was mostly a GPU issue and this is how I came up with my workaround (though other potentially heavier games never crash at all even at 100% max freq and full settings, so it must be a combination of game and mostly GPU). The GPU wouldn’t even crash under stress testing. It would only crash for MSFS and 4-5 other games at most.
If yours always crashes just before reaching the menu then it must be something else. And at this point it’ll most likely be pure luck if its gets fixed or some random advice by the community rather than through MSFS’s official support.
I’m a developer (not very expert) and I’m not used to rely on “luck”.
Must be a reason, but I don’t understand why we have to try random advice (don’t mis-understand: they are welcome!) instead of following a step-by-step procedure in order to surely find the root cause of a crash.
If it would happen once in tons of hours it would be hard, I know. But in my case, the crash is 100% repeatable at the very same loading progress - no matter what I change.
You have a good point, however without a proper meaningful stack trace and/or debugging tools (not to mention nearly non-existent dedicated Customer Support*), it’s nearly impossible to tell what 0x80000003 stands for specifically for MSFS.
The same for the dreadful and more common 0x80000005.
So with the root cause remaining unknown or attributed to a few dozen potential root causes all different from each other (googling MSFS 0x80000003 produces a ton of workaround proposals), any workaround found by the community seems to be more than random luck than anything deterministic.
This really is a head scratcher. Sounds like something fundemental in the BIOS or memory utilisation of your particular configuration.
Is there any way you could see if your copy will install and work on another machine? It would at least conclusively rule in or out a problem with the way Steam has delivered/installed your copy of MSFS