No, don’t be sceptical: don’t want to sell you snake oil or anything like that.
But since we all came to notice that MSFS is demanding on the hardware at the best of times I searched in my old software cabinet for an old piece of software that I had used years ago with a similar problem.
Some of you may have heard of the tool: it is called “Game Booster 3.5” by IObit and has been around for ages. In fact there still is a newer version around which is marketed by “Razer”. Both are freeware but the newer versions require a registration. The old one doesn’t. Functionality-wise for improving MSFS performance there isn’t any difference I could see.
First: what does is NOT do?
Don’t fool youself. This is not some magic tool and it also doesn’t make your PC any faster! It just let’s you close down nonessentials in order to use as many of the PC’s resources as possible.
So, what does it do?
On startup it checks which programs, apps and services are currently running and gives you a recommendation which of those - nonessential to playing games - you can shut down in order to improve performance (like Windows Designs, printer drivers, diagnosis client, backgound IP services, remote access client, OneDrive, Dropbox, Apple Device Services etc.). You can the also edit the list to your liking. The program will remember which programs and services you terminated last time.
In my experience you can check almost the whole list. The only things in my list that I don’t check are the audio driver and the input drivers for the joysticks.
Then you simply press “Start Boost”, and Game Booster closes all of the selected processes running at the moment. The beautiful thing is: as soon as you exit MSFS you can click on the button again, and all closed programs and services will be restarted.
Nevertheless I recommend closing programs like the brower, office programs and of course other games beforehand.
The tool is multilingual and also has some more functionalities I never use: you can set up profiles for different games, set up a key shortcut for taking screenshots, defrag the game folder (no longer necessary or recommended with SSDs) and it also has an FPS tool.
In my case it made a huge difference. I chose to also close the virus scanner and firewall (most routers have a separate firewall as well). MSFS now is buttery smooth. Stutters are gone.
If you like: try it and post your experiences.