Hi all! I’ve got a very frustrating issue for 3 days with my MSFS now. When I tried to start it the screen remained blacked, the intro music played and nothing happens at all. I closed MSFS again, restarted the computer and tried again. Same issue.
After a couple of restarts and running as admin it asked me to do a 163GB update, which basically is the whole sim. I thought it might be the solution to my problem, but as soon as the “update” was finished and I rebooted the computer it asked me the same thing.
I googled and found out, that I need to change the userconf.opt file and put in the correct path where my MSFS is installed.
This is what I don’t get at this point: the userconf file is located under C:/user/appdata/roaming/steam etc.
My MSFS with the community and official folder (which is empty by the way - the official folder) is located under D:/MSFS2020 and I also have a steam folder with the FlightSimulator.exe also located on D:
All the solution tips in several forums basically say that I need to select the correct Path when it asks me to do the 163GB. But all paths I tried (including the one
with community and official folders in it) lead to the same problem again. I also read that as soon I will select the correct Path in the updates screen the remaining update size will recalculate. Doesn’t happen with me. It remains 163GB.
Please help! Do I need to reset my whole computer or is there any other solution to that?
Hi, you definitely don’t need to reset your whole computer. Worst case scenario should be to uninstall MSFS and manually delete your D:\MSFS2020 folder, then start again from scratch.
Can you show us a screenshot of the contents of your Official folder that is inside D:\MSFS2020 along with the full directory/file path?
Hey @Speed1994 thanks for your reply. I’m at work now so unfortunately I will only be able to share screeshots by tommorow morning. BUT, the last thing I have seen was, that the “Official” folder in D:\MSFS2020 was completly empty for a strange reason when I left the house.
I just do not understand why this issue came out of nowhere a few days ago. Everything went well the day before.
If your installation was originally in D:\MSFS2020\Official but that folder is now empty, it must have been deleted for some unknown reason. Did you press the ‘Verify Game Files’ option in the Steam MSFS properties? Or maybe something somewhere got corrupted?
Either way if that folder is now empty, I would recommend verifying the MSFS install via the Steam option (this would normally delete your game installation, but at this point you have nothing to lose), after doing that the only thing you can do is reinstall the simulator from scratch into that directory. Sorry there isn’t a quick fix
That’s so random! Thx for your quick reply.
Yes, I pressed Verify Game Files already and I also pressed deinstall MSFS in steam, but this only removed about 1.1GB and not the whole simulator.
If I understand correctly I first have to deinstall MSFS (the 1.1GB) via Steam and after that delete the whole D:\MSFS2020 directory? Will this be everything that needs to be done or do I still need to use the microsoft software manager to fully install everything?
Aha! That explains it, when you press verify in Steam it deletes your installation:
If you were trying to reinstall MSFS from scratch, that would be what you would need to do. However because you have already verified the installation (and uninstalled and reinstalled it afterwards as well!), your MSFS Steam installation should be okay and you should be all set to reinstall the sim into D:\MSFS2020 without doing anything else
Alright! Just for my understanding: with the screenshot posted in my opening thread if I press update with the D:\MSFS2020 path linked the SIM will reinstall. But is this still the 163GB? Isn’t that a bit to big for the Official folder? The MSFS2020 folder still has about 190GB even with the “official” folder being empty (as mentioned I can only tell what I remember when I still was at home and cannot double check atm).
I pressed Verify Game Files, because of the first mentioned problem hoping that this would solve the problem. Obviously it got worse by doing that..
That does sound strange! in that case you can either try to track down where the 190GB is in the hope of retrieving your installation (is it in Community or something? Like D:\MSFS2020\Community\Official), or you can just delete the D:\MSFS2020 folder and start from scratch. Personally I’d delete D:\MSFS2020 and start again because something has gone very wrong and is not playing nicely
I’m actually really curious as to what’s happened if your Official folder is empty but the D:\MSFS2020 is still showing as 190GB
@Speed1994 the 183GB only come from the Community folder, the Official folder is completly empty. Just started the suggested ‘update’ with a size of 163GB into the D:\MSFS2020 folder. I hope this works. Strangely, as mentioned before I already did this pretended update with the first suggested path (C:\user\appdata etc.), but I just checked if I could move the content of the Official folder there into the D:\MSFS2020 folder, but the one on drive C:\ is also completly empty
The download of the ‘update’ into D:\MSFS2020 propably takes too long for me to stay home. So I will give you an update as soon as I know what happened.
