Sorry to bother you, but I seem to have joined the ranks of people who can’t get FS2020 to start up.
I’ve been running it more or less since the Steam release, but on a pretty sub-spec PC. It worked, but not terribly well - though I went into that eyes open. After a CPU/RAM upgrade things improved quite a bit. Today I installed a new GPU which I’d hoped would at least make it possible for me to switch the sky back on (volumetric effects were murdering my previous 2Gb GPU so I generally flew with them off).
Unfortunately, I’m now unable to start FS at all. I’ve tried loading from Steam, via desktop icon, and through the Radeon management app. In every case, I get a cursor “wait” swirly for a few seconds, then just nothing. In Steam, I get a window saying “Preparing to launch”, which then disappears, the green Play button becomes the blue Stop button for about a minute, and then it just clicks back to Play again. In Task Manager, the flightsimulator.exe process starts up under Steam, goes to around 11% CPU usage and a solid 343.5 Mb RAM, stays there for about 30-60 seconds or so, then shuts off.
I’ve tried various ‘fixes’ I’ve found on forums including checking installation integrity via Steam, reinstalling the XBox PC app to make sure Gaming Services is up to date, and finally uninstalling FS and redownloading from Steam. (I can’t do a full reinstall because the game doesn’t get far enough to trigger one.) The only suggestion I’ve found that I haven’t tried is switching back to the old card - but to be honest I’d rather avoid that if possible. The whole point was to make FS work somewhere approaching properly. But since the card works fine for everything else, I think if I’m forced to choose, I’ll keep the card and ditch FS.
But I’d rather not have to choose. So, forum - does anyone have any other suggestions? Anything else I might try?
(PS - For info, the old card was a GeForce GTX 960. The new one is a Radeon RX 580 with 8Gb which I’d hoped would be an improvement. The CPU is a Ryzen 5 and the PC has 16Gb RAM - but again, only the GPU has changed since it last ran okay.)
Maybe have a look at Windows event viewer and see if there is any additional information on why it doesn’t start? It sounds like maybe a MSFS configuration file is not compatible with the new graphics card but I don’t know.
You might try renaming this directory to see if it gets running:
C:\Users<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator
Thanks for the replies. I’ve got to be honest I didn’t know the Event Viewer was there. I’ve checked that and there are some error details but they’re pretty technical - I’ll paste them in a moment.
I’ve set the page file to between 4-20Gb as suggested. The error still occurs but I’ll leave it at that setting to be going on with. I have indeed uninstalled the Nvidia stuff including the drivers and GeForce Experience app, etc. The other games I play frequently seem to have adapted to the change without issues.
MalexPrime, I have to be honest I’m not sure what you mean for me to rename the folder - as in, from what and to what. That folder does exist - are you suggesting to rename it just to something else so that FS can’t find it, for example? I have run a complete uninstall and reinstall of the basic program from Steam, and as part of that I did hunt down and delete any FS-related folders I could find in AppData but the reinstall did set them up again.
And the Event Viewer does log an error which looks like this:
From searches I understand that exception 0xc0000005 is a memory access violation - but I’m afraid that’s beyond my expertise so I don’t know what might be a sensible thing to do about it.
Well, if you did an integrity check via steam, that deletes MSFS.
If you did get it re-installed, did you try logging out of X-box and logging out of the Microsoft Store,
then logging back in on both?
That has helped others who couldn’t get it to start, but may not do much if yours is related to the upgrade.
You changed your Videocard and uninstalled the previous one right?
Did you use the default uninstall option from NVidia?
When you originally installed FS2020 the program probably checked (and registered) your hardware. There is a good chance FS doesn’t recognize the GPU change in the whole application. I can imagine FS only reads the active configuration files.
I’m not sure what you mean in this line.
I think a reinstall / repair is the best option:
You could try to navigate to your configuration screen (I’m translating from Dutch so I hope it has the same name). Then navigate to Programs (installed programs). Scroll to Microsoft Fs2020, right-click your mouse and select “repair”.
Best case scenario is that the basic FS files are checked and replaced if necessary.
If this doesn’t work you’ll probably need to do a full uninstall of FS2020.
Hi RadYew. Thanks for replying. I’ve actually already fully uninstalled Flight Sim and tried a reinstallation. What I meant in that line was that the flightsimulator.exe program won’t run at all, so although I can install that little file through Steam - about 1.5Gb - because it won’t run, the actual Flight Sim (~90Gb) never gets downloaded at all.
I think in the end, given I lack the technical skills to follow any but the most step-by-step instructions, which would just drive more skilful users here crazy, I’m just going to conclude that FS is incompatible with my PC, and go back to X-Plane. It’s just not as pretty.
But thank you all for your suggestions, I appreciate them very much.
Well, I don’t know if your system meets the minimal requirements but I assume it does, as you already used FS2020 using your previous GPU.
I think the problem can be solved by reinstalling the (I know it sounds scary) the whole 90GB as that’s where the files are located that probably are still assuming you use your previous GPU. But I can imagine this will be quite an operation. This doesn’t have to happen today so if you’re willing to go the extra mile just let me know and I’ll (try to) assist you.
not sure, because you wrote its worked former, but a guess might be also to check the anti-vir protected. Add MSFS Game folders ( steam lib and content folder ) into AV axclusion list.
Hello! Yesterday I had the same issue, in the morning I made a flight, and after that I closed the game and when I try to launch it again it was crashing to desktop on loading screen, and I could not do anything, I uninstalled the game but was not able to trigger the download again, so I went to “C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator” and deleted that folder and launched it again and after that I could trigger the download again, maybe some file got corrupted.
I hope this help!!!
Greetings!.
EDIT: I do not know what happend but the only thing I did was updating the nvidia driver, and after that I could not launch the sim.
Hi there! I already replied what I did to fix this issue, but to the wrong person, Just try to delete this folder “C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator”, I did that and I could launch the sim and start downloading again the game.
