For me loading time to main menu is around 1h20min.
Almost entirety of that time is spent downloading things.
Could most of that content not be cached from previous run and updated in the background once the sim is running?
For me, loading time to main menu is 2m30s (2 minutes 30 seconds)! I have 6 World Updates installed and 20 GB additional 3rd party content! All in all about 60 GB. (Reserved Space sits at 88 GB) Loading time depends on how much (additional) content you have installed but 1h 20 m is way too much! Even with all WU’s installed and 120 GB additional content, loading time was about 4 minutes to main menu! (I’ve drastically reduced 3rd party content for performance reasons!) I highly recommend a reinstallation of the game!
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As stated above, you have something else going on.
I have all WU’s installed and just over a TB of addons, and typically takes 2-3 minutes at most.
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Topic moved into Community Support for community assistance.
Are you using a spinning hard drive or SSD?
Are you seeing an actual download progress bar telling you what is being downloaded/decompressed, or is it just a thin blue generic progress bar?
Yes, something is going wrong.
My folder sizes:
Official folder 166 GB (just 2 world updates installed and 77 generic aircraft uninstalled)
Community folder 45.7 GB (includes all FSLTL aircraft, all AIG aircraft except FAIB, + 18 other add-ons
Load time to the main menu:
With an empty Community folder 2 min 10 sec
With Community folder: 5 min 45 sec
There must be something wrong with the installation itself.
I had recently tried to move some things around because the faster of my two SSD drives where MSFS resides is getting too full. That is of course know to cause many other issues.
I accidentally moved the basic files for MSFS, I think they reside in a folder called XBox…something or another and the next start after that took a really long time.
But only that next start, all subsequent starts were normal.
Do you possibly have some sort of automatic disc cleaning utility?
First thing to check is how much free space is on the drive as Windows needs 10-25% for file sorting (depending on drive size and speed). Not enough and your PC will crawl.
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Wow, thanks everyone for trying to help!
I have a fast PCIE4 SSD, all WU installed, but no 3rd party content, the drive has ample free space.
It is a stock Windows10 install from Microsoft ISO image, I have no 3rd party “utilities” of any sort, in the background I usually have Steam, GOG, MS Store, and nVidia utility, but I have shut them off without any impact to load speed.
It is just a generic blue bar for the normal startup - while it is loading and when I open the Windows Task Manager I can see the MSFS process using next no no disk, CPU, or GPU, but maxing out my bandwidth for over an hour downloading content.
During that time no other process uses any appreciable resources on the machine, it is basically idling while downloading content.
FWIW my Internet connection is about 2mbits - it is not fast, but it is about the fastest that money can buy here.
Is that right? No typo? Then we may have the culprit here! The game requires at least 5 mbit to stream data!
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Correct, no typo.
I have most online settings that I could find disabled, perhaps I could disable more?
I want to keep enough online functionality to carry on my circumnavigation of the planet with a friend, so I would like to keep functionality to create/join groups and see group members in the world, but that is the only thing I want on. Is that possible?
Also, once past the Main Menu everything works fine - yes, loading times for flights are still a couple of minutes of downloading, but I can honestly live with that, it is the initial wait of over 1h that is the real pain in the butt.
Obviously, your bandwith is too low for data streaming! This probably causes the long loading times! I assume that the game automatically switches to offline mode! I’m sorry, I can’t help you but this seems to be an internet problem…
That is a low bandwidth, but I kinda doubt it’s the culprit unless the actual speed to the server is much, much less. I also have my doubts about that because data seems fine once loaded into the sim. While not exactly the same, I went from a 20mb/s connection (sometimes shared with others streaming video) to a 500mb/s connection and didn’t notice a change in loading times. If this were an issue of bandwidth, I would think my loading times should have changed.
@PirateAntz you said have no third party utilities. Has that always been the case, or did you ever install anything that you later removed?
And does anyone know if you can launch and play the sim without an internet connection? I know you can switch to an offline mode once started, but it would be an interesting test if you can disconnect from your net (by turning Wi-Fi off or disconnecting ethernet) prior to launching, and see if it makes loading in better or worse.
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Not saying you haven’t already any or all of these but personally I would be doing the below to try and rule out any background issues…
- Rename your community folder.
- Make sure all your drivers are up to date. E.g. all the drivers for your motherboard, chipset etc.
- Likewise make sure Windows is up to date.
- Likewise again, same with any apps in the Microsoft store.
- Run your PC in a clean boot condition - Google how to do this properly this is a little more than disabling/exiting software and things running on the task bar.
- Reset your modem/router.
It definitely sound like there is something going on with your system to cause such a long loading time. 
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For me the loading to menu is only dependend on one thing (except update days)
Addon objects in Community folder
The speed for loading into menu is same with SATA SSD or NVME SSD,
because its not by mass loading big files, its just reading the definition files for the addon object
and maybe checking for ingame store/content manager updates
1 addon with GB of size → no real time delay
1000 addons with just some MB each → big change, f.e. traffic libraries (FSLTL, AIG, …) where every aircraft+livery combination have their own JSON and XML files = counting every combination as addon
Loading and downloading bigger parts with very long loading time with every start more likely is a broken install with outdated files
Even at 2 Mbps over 80 minutes that’s 9.6gb of download … no way can that be normal
This is all that gets downloaded on my system at sim startup (fastlaunch)
Yeah I don’t think the internet speed is the issue. It really only seems to matter when it’s “checking for updates”. You could turn off all data though and then reload the sim to see if that makes a difference.
I did hear someone complain that their load times became insane after they plugged in their new yoke. So perhaps as a diagnostic you could try unplug any USB devices other than keyboard/mouse.
Just to add, I have probably a 200-300GB install and yeah, it’s probably about a 3min load time. Something ain’t right.
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During initial load to the main menu the game shouldn’t download much from the internet. Basically all the data needed for the main menu is already on the hard drive. The real downloading starts when loading a flight.
Have you tried completely disabling online functionality and restarting the game?
You are off by a factor of 8 - 2mbits, not 2mbytes - that is a 1.1GB download.
Which still seems like a very large amount, hence me posting this, this is way too much every time I want to get to the main menu! Either some offline start flag or “other player planes only” launch flag would be really nice.
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So, update: I have temporarily hooked the computer up to a 16mbit connection and time to menu was under 10 minutes. Roughly 7 times faster, using a connection that is about 8 times faster.
I have nothing at all in my community folder, but definitely making progress on the debug. Over the weekend I’ll have a go climbing up a post to get line of sight for the temporary connection, speed may increase further for a third data point!
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