Hi there, I had to do a complete clean install of WIN 10 and MSFS 2020 today…My firewall didn’t help matters. I was using Mcafee Firewall and it didn’t work. Is the built-in defender firewall helpful? Any help is greatly appreciated.. Oh, when i was flying a couple of days ago , I have been flying in “Windows Mode”..
Windows Defender used to be pretty bad some years ago, but it’s good now. That’s all I use on my system as active protection.
But I can guarantee you that you’ll hear a zillion different opinions on which you should use.
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Think about installing a VPN as this will give your System Greater Protection.
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My personal advice is get rid of Mcafee…I uninstalled my..sadly still was paying for suscrition..but it affected my flight SIM..Of course this is only my experience.
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I use a hardware firewall. I’d only recommend going that route if you’ve had experience configuring one. Also use Windows Defender and a VPN. All a VPN does is mask your WAN IP address. A VPN does not protect you against malware or viruses unless it comes with some extra software that does such.
But yes, by all means get rid of McAfee. It isn’t what it used to be. I’m surprised they haven’t labeled McAfee as malware yet. 
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I dumped McAfee a couple of years ago after a Dell support tech recommended I do that. And Dell was who installed McAfee. I’ve been told by a couple of IT professionals that the best anti-virus/malware removal tool is Windows Defender. I take their word for it. I’ve got no talent to prove them wrong.
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I use McAfee EPO at work, after switching away from Sophos, and have no complaints. I use Windows Defender only at home.
I don’t know about the home versions, but McAfee comes with Adaptive Threat Protection. In essence it looks at the behaviour of applications, and is not signature based. If you have heard of Cylance, it does a similar job.
For example, if you were running Word, and the active scan checks it out as it launches, and finds nothing, other AV might consider this job done. ATP continues to monitor it. If Word suddenly started making lots of registry write calls, or trying to modify system files in any way, the ATP will block those actions.
Sophos has its InterceptX product, that is supposed to do a similar job, but we never used it so can’t compare the two.
I now typically never get a CTD.
Yesterday, I went to Update a Carenado Aircraft from the MS Store, and it seemed to update ok, but then the sim did a CTD. !!
I restarted the sim, and decided to delete the plane, and then re-load it.
The Plane appeared to delete, and had a size of 0 bytes, but was still there, despite a Re-Boot.
In the end I had to resort to actually Manually deleting the plane from OFFICIAL, and then when I restarted the SIM, it did not show as present @ 0 Bytes, and I was able to successfully download & install it again.
SO, after the CTD, the Carenado aircraft files were still there, but the Sim could not see it or select it. ( maybe some index file somewhere ?)
Anyway, I know that messing with files in OFFICIAL is a bad thing to do, but in some cases, you may have to – even if you risk having to completely re-install the whole of MSFS !!
I had to do the same thing a few days ago, for the Seminole.
Yes, it was the Seminole that I was referring to .. – so its not all me messing up !!!
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No, I’ve had it with their planes a few times. If you try to delete its folder with the sim open it will fail as some of the files are open, even if you cancel the update process. My guess is the downloaded archive fails to extract correctly as it cannot overwrite these locked files. For me it was a handful of fonts files. Close sim, delete folder, then update. It doesn’t even need to download the archive again, it just extracts it.
This might be an appropriate time to bring up the subject of “BACKUPS”.
A simple and tested disk or partition backup may negate the need to reload windows and/or MSFS.
Do it… Test It… It works. Do a full backup followed by Weekly Differential backups to give yourself a fallback point to restore your system in event of boot failure or just total catastrophe.
I maintain 2 Full/Differential backups and a Cloned Disk … Spinning disks are cheap these days.
Do yourself a HUGE favor and create yourself a TESTED backup.
Hi guys thanks for the replies ,I have always made a backup of my system…But I have never validated the backup. .I use Macrium Reflect the free version. .I will make sure I validate the backup in the future. Thanks again…
I installed through steam and just did a reinstall to hopefully fix a really strange issue with the airspeed instantly jumping to around 80-100kts faster or slower than my current airspeed. After the reinstall though, all my settings and mappings were still intact. Do you know if that is normal?
I think all those settings are saved in the cloud. I have the MS store version and just completed a clean install of my OS and sim and all my settings were still there.
Hi Peter,
Macrium is a fine piece of software. I use the paid version, however, I have tested the free version.
Great backup software. BUT… This is what I found the hard way years ago. If one did not test a backup plan all the way to actually going through the process of removing a system disk and restoring your system to a new, empty or unallocated disk and booting it successfully then you may be in for a surprise. I was… The backup software you choose to use may indicate that your backup is secure and ready if you need it, however, it may give you grief if you have not actually tested a total recovery of a system disk. Years ago, I learned the hard way that my backup plan didn’t actually work.
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Good to know…thanks. My first flight after the reinstall went really well (knock on wood) so seems like it fixed the airspeed issue.
Just an afterthought,… If you’re looking for another AV Company, have a look at Bullguard who have provided Protection for my Family for over 7 trouble free years.
Regards from Thom.
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avast works for me
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