Strange, I have KB5001330 installed as well and that makes no difference for me, MSFS still “hangs” with a black screen unless started with the “-FastLaunch” flag.
I’ve tried it once again and installed KB5001330 and the sim starts fine without black screen. But I’m getting lower FPS which i didn’t before the latest patch 1.15.8.
I have the exact same problem!! Without KB5001330, I get a black screen… with it, it works again, bu with 5FPS less than before the update… WTF
I have finally arrived at this tentative solution.
When I launch MSFS without the “-FastLaunch” flag, I get a black screen “forever”.
At the time of this event, I could observe that the GPU load (about 70%) was quite high in the task manager of winndows.
My environment is as follows.
Win10 pro 20H2 19042.928
AMD3700X MM32GB GPU RTX2070(462.31)
FS2020 1.15.8.0 (MS Store)
well, it looks like I am in this club now. Rolled back windows update, updated nvidia drivers, tried fast launch, etc… still dead in the water with unresponsive black screen at sim launch.
fantastic.
after windows update and nvidia driver update I now have this issue. did not have it before.
I too started to experience the hanging at black screen when loading this Sunday past.
Prior to this and after the last MSFS update I experienced stutters that resembled a slide show, couldn’t use the sim at all.
The freezing at black screen loading seemed to occur after the last Windows 10 updates (I’m part of the Insider group) so I tried the “fast load” fix and it worked immediately.
I tried restarting the sim using the original shortcut and no luck.
Tried with the “fast load” and all good.
Each time I shut down the PC completely by powering down, waiting a minute and turning it back on.
I uninstalled windows update KB5001330 and the sim would only start using the “fast start fix” so this confused me even more.
On Monday I fired up the sim using the original shortcut and to my surprise it loaded properly.
Tried again and all fine.
Received a message about Windows updates, so gambled and went ahead which reinstalled windows update KB5001330.
This time MSFS2020 loaded normally using my normal shortcut.
Also no major stutters in game apart from very heavy scenery, but nothing like beforehand.
I’ve made three flights with the latest version of FBW A320 and all great.
So at the end of the day…I’m stumped…but back to flying normally.
Edit: through all this I had an empty Community folder and after “fast load fix” only had the FBW A320.
I have noticed with the black screen at sim startup that the program is actually running in the background. I can hear all of the menu sounds and background music, but the screen remains black.
I have rolled back both the latest windows update and the nvidia driver, but that did not help.
also, the fast launch trick does not work for me.
MSFS is dead on my computer until a fix comes along.
Fresh install here and just experienced the black screen at start. I found this thread and the -faststart advice.
That worked and the sim started at the second try, but then it decided to redownload all the darn content again! Then after the update finished, the sm hung at a black screen after I clicked ‘continue’ following the download, with only the background music playing.
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I absolutely give up… doing a full reinstall. Man, I hope my settings/views/controls/joystick assignments are still preserved. Flight sims always seem to have to be an uphill computer science project to keep running in a reasonable manner.
Here with me the problem was just Shark007 codecs, after resetting the settings via the Shark panel, the simulator is starting normally.
“cmd.exe /C start shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App -FastLaunch”
This worked for me.
For me too, with the Update 1.16.2.0 the problem still persists 
Ran into this for the first time today. As others reported, this fixed it:
cmd.exe /C start shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App -FastLaunch
Unfortunately I ran into this issue today and I’m not sure what the culprit is but it stems either from the most recent windows update or MSFS 2020 update. I am essentially “grounded” and on boot I get a black screen, 2-3 seconds of a blue spinning “wheel” and its back to desktop. As above, I’ve tried audio inputs, firewall and security options, background apps, FastLaunch, check integrity of game files. You name it. I’m really looking for a solution. - hope a fix will make its way soon.
Any updates from the dev team or solutions? This is quite frustrating.
Thank you very much! It was the Seagate toolkit that was not allowing this to run and by “end tasking” it - no more issues. Thanks again.
You’re welcome.
I had the same issue. Fixed it by disabling my antivirus and firewall.