When I started MSFS 2020 yesterday I just got a black screen instead of the usual welcome screen. No matter what I tried this problem persisted, so I decided to uninstall and install MSFS from scratch, hoping that would take care of the issue.
But the problem still persists, MSFS will start with just a black screen, there will be a small circle in the bottom right corner for about 2-3 seconds, then the screen will turn completely black and stay like that. I’ve waited for hours, hoping there was some background processing/downloading that would eventually finish, but it’s a no-go. The windows show “Microsoft Flight Simulator - 1.13.16.0” so it should be the latest version. I’ve tried this somewhere between 5-10 times with the same result, just a sad black screen.
I’ve googled the issue and tried every “solution” I found, including:
- Disabling all my sound devices
- Deleting (un-pairing) any Bluetooth devices
- Un-plugging all my USB devices
- Stopping ALL other apps before starting MSFS
- Updating my Nvidia graphics drivers, played around with different versions just in case
- Starting MSFS through the Xbox app
- Starting MSFS as Administrator
- Logging out from my MS account, both in “Microsoft Store” and the “Xbox app”
- Disabling antivirus software
- Disabling Windows Firewall (it did ask for permission for MSFS the first time I started it after re-installing, and I can see the rule for it in the Windows Firewall config)
- Installing on drive C, I normally install MSFS on my drive E, which makes no difference with regards to the “black window”
Nothing works, the MSFS window remains as black as the darkest night.
My copy of MSFS 2020 is bought through the “Microsoft Store” about three months ago, and I’ve not had any issues like this in the past.
The “community” folder does not even exist at this point as the “black screen hang” happens after the initial install of the app, and before downloading of the rest of the content start. So this is not a case of an “incompatible addon”. All my addons are installed in a different folder anyhow, and I use “MSFS Addon Manager” to enable them (create symlinks in the “community” folder). But at this point, the “community” folder does not exist.
I’m using Windows 10 Pro version 20H2 build 19042.804 (the latest - with all service packs installed)
Some of my hardware:
- AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
- Nvidia RTX 2070 Super (graphics driver version 461.40 - currently the latest)
- 64MB RAM
- 3 * SSD NVME drives
According to Windows Task Manager, the “FlightSimulator.exe” process sits there using between 9-11% CPU, memory consumption does not change over time, and there seems to be zero network or disk activity.
Digging a bit further I checked if I could see what the process “flightsimulator.exe” were doing by using “Process Monitor” (from www.sysineternals.com) but I didn’t see anything that gave me a clue of where to look next.
If MSFS at least would give some sort of error message then at least I would get a clue of where to look, but no, nada, nothing.
Does anyone have any idea of how to solve this, or at least how to debug this?
Does anyone know if/where MSFS writes (error)log files?
I did submit a request through ZenDesk re this (Request #93063) but I don’t have any hopes for a quick solution through ZenDesk.
Any help at all would be appreciated at this time!