I’ve installed the FS2020 launcher. When I get to the ‘Set Your Experience’ screen, the game tries to download packages but the progress remains at 0%. The status message constantly changes (each half of a second!) from ‘Please wait…’ to the name of the package it’s trying to download. The appdata folders are empty and the network activity also remains at 0% when the game tries to download the files…
IMPORTANT: The first time I ran the game it actually managed to download 50% of the files. After a brief restart of the game I was prompted to set up the preferences. during this process I’ve set the game’s network data limit option active. When the game continued to download the rest of the packages it prompted the message that the data limit was reached and from then on it stopped downloading anything. I’ve disabled the data limit and even reinstalled the game three times but it won’t download anything anymore… I can’t find any support article or someone that describes the same problem I’m encountering so help will be much appreciated!
What I tried so far without succes:
Reinstalled Flight Simulator
Cleared temporary files and all files from Flight Simulator
Changed the install directory
‘Reset’ the app in Windows 10
Run the game as administrator
Run the game without internet (doesn’t work at all)
Disabled firewall and anti-virus
Updated windows 10 to the latest build
Switched between wired and wi-fi network to ensure the best internet speed
Problem seems to be solved when you put aside a CDN node that may be failing or is slow, as I found on MSFS zendesk forums
Using resource manager I was able to find then endpoint that was slow to download from. So I edited the hosts file and pointed its DNS to 127.0.0.1, then restarted the app for it to restart the current filepart download, and then it found a new CDN endpoint, and download speed bumped to 100% speed for me (260/280mbps).
You point your slow CDN endpoint to 127.0.0.1 by appending below entry in C:>\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file, replace with your own slow node
127.0.0.1 server-13-32-87- 115.mia3. r . cloudfront . net
you can find it in resource monitor, by filtering FlightSimulator.exe and under the Network tab
thanks for the reply.
The problem is not a slow download. It simply doesn’t download anything. There is no network activity coming from the program…
Re-installing the game changes nothing, deleting all the files changes nothing, even trying a wired connection changes nothing… The game just keeps showing an empty progress bar and keeps showing messages each second like ‘please wait’ or the name of the package it’s trying to download…
I tried starting the game also without internet connection just so I can reach the game settings to see if the data limit is still blocking, but of course the game doesn’t load at all without any update so that’s a no-go…
The issue that I’m encountering is also shown is this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYqSsG0avM
It’s been 1.5 days that I’m trying to install this game, but it’s simply not working at all. Very disappointed!
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!
I have the same problem, i have a 100 Mb connection and only get around 10Kb download speed.
I am allready downloding the entire day and still need 63 GB to download. So slow to download fix it.
That is another issue. Mine does nothing. I have a wired connection at full speed so that ain’t a problem at all. The problem is that the game just doesn’t download nothing at all. It keeps flashing between the message ‘Please wait’ and the package it’s trying to download. (see the youtube link listed above for example)
2 work days in and still the same problem, any help still welcome!
3 days later, still no improvement. The update is still flashing between ‘please wait’ and the package it’s trying to download… Logged a ticket for this with Microsoft but of course no reply as could’ve been expected. I suppose the game is just unplayable and will stay that way until they bother to provide an update.
In all honesty I’ve never seen such a broken game launcher that renders a game fully unplayable for multiple days (or weeks)!
I’m still hoping anyone has any idea on how to fix this, I ran out of ideas. This is what I tried so far:
Reinstalled Flight Simulator
Cleared temporary files and all files from Flight Simulator
Changed the install directory
‘Reset’ the app in Windows 10
Run the game as administrator
Run the game without internet (doesn’t work at all)
Disabled firewall and anti-virus
Updated windows 10 to the latest build
Switched between wired and wi-fi network to ensure the best internet speed
Go to ‘settings’ app in Windows 10 and open ‘Privacy’. Then go to ‘activity history’ and click on delete activity history. You are redirected to your account settings in Microsoft. There I deleted all app permissions for Flight Simulator and the Xbox game app (since I’m using the game pass).
Also clear the FS app from the access list: (Website: account.microsoft.com/privacy/) - Scroll down to ‘Other privacy settings’ and click on ‘Apps and services that can access your data’. There you should also delete Flight Simulator (and perhaps Xbox, not sure 'bout that). Then uninstall the app after the changes and redownload the launcher. That should do the trick.
When starting the new installed launcher, it should thrown in an error that it cannot sync to the cloud (which is good in this case) and starts downloading the content.
Hopefully this provides a fix for everyone with this issue, do let me know if it works out!
I would not advise following the suggestions listed in this topic, as they are four years old and a lot has changed in MSFS since that time.
Right now, there are some known issues with MSFS that appear to be impacting various aspects of starting the sim & accessing content - see @NixonRedgrave’s post where he links to three topics that are discussing these issues:
The folks at Microsoft are very much aware of these issues & trying to fix them, and will communicate in these forums as information becomes available.
The MSFS team has also asked for feedback in this poll, if you care to participate:
Hi @MissTschai,
I think everyone on the forums understands how incredibly frustrating this is, especially if you only have a limited amount of free time to fly in MSFS & can’t.
FYI, in case you (or others reading this - perhaps new to the forums) are unaware, the Forum Moderation Team are all volunteer users. I was just repeating what @Chewwy94 posted here a few hours ago:
When it happens I go to the installed Apps and note that Microsoft Flight Simulator is “loading” . I go to advanced and reset the app. Then i restart the sim and it advised there is an uipdate but continues to load with no issue. Happens again though maybe two or three time after that start up.
