Can't even start MSFS on Steam any more?

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After recent updates (not sure which one exactly), I can no longer start the game, it crashes before it gets to the updater. It seems that others area having the exact same issue

I’ve thrown 4+ hours into trying every workaround I can find, but nothing works.

I’m posting this in the naive hope that someone from Asobo escalates issues that are stopping people even using the game. Performance issues and aircraft bugs are one thing, but 8 months on from launch crashes that prevent the game even starting is not a good state of affairs.

Happy to work with anyone at Asobo to figure this out if they reply to my ZenDesk ticket.

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Not trying to be a jerk here, but why not just uninstall/reinstall the whole thing? (unless you’ve already done that)

If something about the update didn’t agree with your prior version, just get rid of the prior version, right?

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Yep, tried clearing every last scrap of MSFS data from my PC, including the 100GB content folder, and tried reinstalling numerous times.

Done all the workaround related to corrupted cloud profiles etc.

Like I said, 4 hours and counting on this. I guess reinstalling Windows is next, but I can’t face that right now. :grinning:

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Having the same issues. While MS indicates I own the app it refused to let me install it. Wasted $200

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Have you checked the Event Viewer for any potentially relevant information? Make sure to check all entries around the red error one as well.

It takes about 3-4 days for a Zendesk ticket to be looked at, hopefully they can help you more.

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Took them 8 days to respond to mine. Theyre asking for event viewer data which I intend to send when im off work. But lord knows it might take another 8 days to get a response on that, heaven knows when we’d see an update that will fix the issue.

My buddy bought the game 2 weeks ago, he just gets a black screen when trying to launch the install process. It’s just laughably bad right now. I say this as someone who previously had 190+ hours in the game and no sign of slowing down.

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Thanks for the information. I guess it’s different with support requests. I have not needed to send one yet, but I’ve sent several bug reports and it doesn’t take more than 5 days for them to be marked as Solved, which means they’ve read the report. Hope you get it solved soon!

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Thanks, me too. I hope I remember how to work all the FMS boxes I was learning…

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I… yeah I really don’t wanna do a fresh windows install. I saw someone on Reddit had this issue and … as they stated anyway - apparently had to reinstall windows twice to fix it… my god

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Yes - I’ve had to reinstall it from scratch at least ten times.

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just under 500 hours in sim on steam all updates worked on the day they came out amazing how most of us have no problems yet others seem to have lots

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I heard most CTD issues come from overclocking. So if you have your hardware overclocked, see if you can revert everything back to factory default stock specs without OC.

Then there’s also one thing where try to see if you install the sim into the default path in everything. And make sure you don’t have any mods installed first.

Reinstalling Windows might help too. Especially reinstalling using the latest Windows version and build. This is to make sure your entire PC is clean of any junk files that might have affected it.

Also, what’s your PC specs?

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Sounds crazy. But if I were you and willing to play MSFS at all cost. I will buy a new update high end PC with at least 2T SSD HD and never split into more then one drive. I mean with only one C drive in your PC (I think that’s the main point) and that’s all. Also I never installed any free/ paid ware other then from the in game marketplace. Then many problems will be solved especially CTD. Believe it or not I’m just doing that in the very beginning while MSFS launched last August. And up to date I’ve more then 700 hours of flight time and only got 3 CTD.

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Free community mod is fine. But since they don’t really edit any of the official game files, if one of them causes CTD, you just need to remove it from the community folder and you should be back to the way it was before.

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Only overclocking I have on is RAM over clocking via XMP which has been enabled for months on end with no issues. All else is stock, I’m running an AMD 3700X, RTX 3080, 32gb DDR4 on an Aorus Elite B550 motherboard, game saved on an m.2 drive connected via 4.0 PCIE

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Yes, but when you do that you would have chance don’t know when and how things were going wrong. And that’s the risk you never want to have. The worst thing is sometimes it can never be recovered back to normal in MSFS even you are a computer specialist :rofl::crazy_face:

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Are you serious? uninstall/reinstall the whole thing?
To be honest: I did it ( un and reinstall FS2020) and guess what? It got worse… .
I simply refuse to re-install my entire laptop ( that would be insane because the only failure is called ‘FS2020’.

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Either you’re willing to do what it takes to solve the problem or you aren’t.

It’s Windows. Sometimes files get corrupted/moved/deleted/overwritten.

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I also had the XMP on initially and it worked since MSFS launch. But a few months ago I had to turn it off to avoid CTD.

My experience is strictly avoid any overclocking as far as my setup is concerned. And keep the Community folder entries on a need to basis per flight. This is so easily done the MSFS Add-On Linker.

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Hey, id like to help but we need more info:
Have you tried with an empty community-folder?
Can you show us the errors you get in windows eventviewer when the crash occurs?
Is there any message shown on screen?
Steam or MS Store version?

Its really strange, i can play MSFS for hours and almost every day and i have yet to experience a CTD. I cant really believe that the software can be stable as a Brick on my end and not even starting on your end.
There is something wrong somewhere, but we need as much info as possible to be able to locate the reason for this.