BTW I’d like to show my deep regret in Buying this Simulator.
FS wasn’t rebuilt for the FlightSim Community. It was rebuilt only to show Azure’s capability to sell servers to corporate customers and big data hoarders. Microsoft does not care about FS Community. Let’s go back to X-Plane shall we?
Since 1.19.8.0 it takes 5 minutes to check for updates. Sometimes a bit longer. This used to work before for less than a minute. Anyone else having this long checking experience?
This is after I re-installed 1.19.8 twice.
EDIT: This turned out to be my Rolling Cache file. After I deleted it, the loading time returned to normal.
For me this was an issue of decompressing package files causing windows to crash.
I’ve only just installed MSFS for the first time this week, and I must have had 8-10 blue screens SIMPLY DECOMPRESSING package files after download.
Firstly my machine runs fine, Win 10, all drivers are up to date. I think I’ve had 2 blue screens since Win10 was released.
My PC blue screened (not leaving any dump file???) whilst decompressing one of the world update packages.
It then went into the aforementioned “checking for updates” loop.
Close MSFS.
I went into \appdata\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_blah\blah\blah\official\jfcmicrosoftreally? and deleted the files for the package that was corrupted by the unexpected crash. You shouldn’t need to delete EVERYTHING and thence redownload EVERYTHING. Sort by modified date, check name against what you were downloading (decompressing) at the time of the crash and you should be cool.
Restart MSFS
PROFIT!
This worked for me, might not work for you.
That profit I talked about? Yeah Nah.
Went to Content Manager to download the world update again (World Update 2 USA) and another freaking blue screen. This time a different package (it was USA - Points of Interest) from that update. It was also during install, not decompression.
These blue-screen crashes don’t generate a dump file btw.
Going to try with a different world update.
Edit: I didn’t delete the USA - Points of Interest package this time, the game started fine. I then installed that package via the content manager and it completed successfully.
MAN I wish I would have seen this post like… I dunno, EIGHT TROUBLESHOOTING HOURS AGO!
That in-game “Installation Manager” SUCKS. WIndows decided to lock up on me during the (September 17) download this morning, and I have literally been fighting it ever since. I went into the Offical Folder (Steam install, different location) - E:\MSFS2020\Official\Steam - then I sorted by today’s date, and just moved everything from that folder that met the criteria to the root directory on my E:.
Restarted MSFS. It FINALLY recognized that something was missing and now it’s downloading 16.40GB worth of updates.
Microsoft / Asobo - please, PLEASE figure out why the Installation Manger can’t handle a crash / disconnect. I have literally wasted 8+ hours on this today trying different things. Only when I did the above steps did MSFS stop just loading to the Installation Manager screen and “spinning.”
I love this game, and I just went through a full reinstall of the game and all my downloads about two weeks ago. I did NOT want to go through that again.
This is exactly what happened to me.
Try this: Checking for Updates Screen - Stuck - #196 by Latka
I don’t know if it’s the built-in Installation Manager causing the problems, or what - but the sim does not know how to recover if it crashes or gets disconnected. Not sure if it’s a case QA didn’t test, or something they haven’t figured out yet, but I agree. Downloading games and updates to those games has been a “thing” for a while now. I really hope they can get it sorted out!
I would consider myself a pretty big fan of the whole MSFS series. I can’t think of any other time (yesterday) where I’ve spent 8-10 hours off and on troubleshooting something. I work in IT, and usually if I can’t fix it in about an hour it’ll get escalated to someone else…
In my case, FS wasn’t cause of Checking for Update Screen, it was Steam. I was waiting for 10 minutes FS to check for update. Than I kill it in taks manager, then I saw my disk usage was high, searched for what is using my disk, than I saw Steam is using it 100%.
Steam was updateing Snowrunner, than I pused it, start FS again and it checked for updates in 20-30 seconds. Update is in progress, but download speed is like we are in year 2001. 
Just a heads up, My fix to this problem was updating my Nvidia driver via GeForce Experience
Guys I warn you - don’t use alt+f4, had to reinstall the whole game.
Solution after this happened to me today. Restart Steam. Check Microsoft Store for queued or paused updates. For me there were five Visual Studio redistributable packages that had been paused for no apparent reason. After installing these Flight Sim worked.
Probably it was an issue with Flight Sim initiating the download of those packages, then the downloads becoming paused for some reason, then Flight Sim crashing when it can’t find the files it assumed it has installed. Whenever I’ve had issues with Microsoft games, it always comes down to some ridiculous problem with the Microsoft Store.
Fresh Windows install, fresh install of MSFS via Steam. Launched it to get the content installed, and kept getting stuck in a sign-in/update loop (sign in, says it needs updates and it will return me to sign-in screen, sign in, repeat), and it eventually crashed after I signed into Xbox Live on of those times. Now constantly stuck on checking for updates, tried every method mentioned here. Deleted the already empty Community folder, Official/Steam is empty already, deleted ROLLINGCACHE.CCC, there is no Content.xml yet, running as admin, installed all Windows Updates, ensured there were no updates pending in the Microsoft Store, have most recent NVidia driver, rebooted the machine several times. Nothing seems to work.
If I click no, I see the updater screen flash for a second, then it goes to the loading bar screen, which loads the bar fully but then never does anything.
I’m having this same issue…
same issue here (steam version)
nothing helped
its stuck in that loop
Same here, looking to Ckeching Update screen by 30 minutes.
This software and the support provided by Asobo / Microsoft are a big joke (in my opinion the biggest on PC games). It’s a disaster.
Yeah, I have never had a great feeling about it knowing that this was going to be lead by the same developers of the failed and “cant believe it was ever released” Monopoly Plus.
Hi everybody,
I had the same issue being stuck at start up on screen “Checking for updates”. I saw someone mentioning the problem was solved by disabling firewall. I confirm that this solved the issue.
So I think this is a good FIX:
DISABLE FIREWALL … DISABLE FIREWALL … DISABLE FIREWALL
DISABLE FIREWALL … DISABLE FIREWALL … DISABLE FIREWALL.
This is needed only once. After it passed once, you can activate firewall again and it works OK.
Interesting - that helps! I always thought it has something to do with incompatible mods but it may caused be real time virus scan (Mc Affee) ?!
Each time after starting MSFS2020 the ‘spinning wheel’ in the Install Manager section has stopped spinning while checking for updates. The game load continues after a short period (similar to when the spinnig wheel was ‘alive’) and everything works normal. Any known causes for this? I hope it will still detect any updates despite the lack of spinning.
Rgds
Søren
