I spent 2 hours today. I also uninstalled stuff that got recently installed by the store (some Asus ■■■■, Armoury crate, Aura whatever, ROG Service). Rebooted ofc. No difference.
Turns out, because I cant add Flightsimulator.exe to the exceptions list (because it wants me to open a file), I have to bypass Windows defender each time I start the pc. That’s going to wear thin after a while.
Its a work around, but not wholly acceptable for an overly long time.
Seems a way to allow potential threats in when installing addons etc… so, no addons until a fix.
OK thanks.
FS is OK now after disabling Real-time protection, running FS, then re-enabling Real-time protection, running FS.
But I copy your instructions above in my list of fixes in case it crashes again.
you will still be protected of viruses if you leave Defender running. the issue here was to avoid the crash caused by yesterdays automatic updates to MS Gaming services/xbox app, which also caused the Firewall to pop up. you have to let flightsimulator.exe through the Firewall (private network).
In Defender, simply add an Exclude for the “flightsimulator.exe” process, instead of searching and then excluding MSFS complex directory name via the “exclude path” option in Defender. no need to run powershell etc etc.