Finally was able to boot into the game. Wish I had tried one at a time but didn’t, changed/did 2 things.
First- I booted up my xbox series s and installed the game to see if it would work. It actually worked better than I thought it would. Took a test flight just using the controller and quit the program and shut down the xbox.
Second- Booted up the PC and just before launching the game, checked the system tray and QUIT Navigraph Sim Link.
The game loaded, and I was back in.
Leaning more to the installation on the Xbox as the solution for me but can’t rule out SimLink. Haven’t seen any complaints about it.