Microsoft Flight Simulator was not found and cannot be opened. The storage device may be missing or disconnected

User Support Hub Hardware & Peripherals
1

Hello,

I have moved my main ssd to an new PC.

I cloned it before and put this cloned ssd in my old PC.

Now, when I try to start msfs it shows me this message:

Microsoft Flight Simulator was not found and cannot be opened. The storage device may be missing or disconnected.

There is a button “show in store”.

When I go to the store its shows me “This product is installed” and the button on the right shows “play” but when i click there the same message as shown above show up again.

On the new PC with the original ssd (but with the now new chipsetdrivers etc.) the store show up “install again”.

Swapping the ssd between the two PC changes nothing.

Any idea how to solve this? Is the msfs installation hardware bound?

Note: some of the “…” are translated from the german writing and are maybe different in the english version.

thank you

2

Uninstall and reinstall. Pretty ■■■■■■ I know.

3

I do think that MSFS needs to be officially installed on the new pc. Doing this updates the registry on the new pc and sorts all of the verification that the instance is a legal instance. I’m not 100% certain how MS does this in msfs, but that is how most programs work. So I agree with slydon13 that you may need to do a complete install.

4

Thank you folks. Will do a new install when the new PC is complete by end of this week who is now sitting on an test bench, still waiting for a cable and a new NVMe ssd.

The strange thing is that the old ssd also doesnt work on the old PC when I put it back.