I tinkered two (2) days with CMD prompt and partition software tools, through an Win10 install boot USB and from a separate backup vanilla Windows boot partition to repair the Windows partition boot.
I finally decided to ‘ah well’ to restore the partition with a - too old - backup from before my latest Windows Upgrade (a lot of tinkering after the 20H2 upgrade).
In the final backup software I noticed I could as well chose only to restore the ‘system reserved partition’ of the Windows drive, which hold nothing but a boot pointer (I figured that out in 2 days) and to not restore the old Windows partition by a hunch ‘let’s try this and see what happens’.
Voila, boot.
In two days I found DOZENS of mentionings of ‘after DDU I could not boot into my windows drive’, with the usual boot repair ‘advise’, none of which worked in my case. How insane is this, when dozens of MSFS are busily changing and trying to find the best driver for optimal (VR) performance (that it appears, still is 457.30 for VR).
you were tinkering with too much stuff at the same time.
DDU will boot into safe mode to clear out all remnants of the drivers, and then reboot into regular windows again so you can install the fresh drivers.
If you were messing with boot drives at the same time it’s no wonder things got messed up.
I don’t use DDU as I find just doing a clean install using the Nvidia installer works quite flawlessly and I’ve never had a problem. I’ve just cleanly installed 457.3 drivers in place of the latest 460 drivers. No problems found.
Using DDU is being a bit OCD in my opinion. If you say you HAVE to use it, I’d say there’s something else in the system causing problems.
nvidia clean installation is not as clean as ddu, registry traces are always left behind.
but i do just like you because it works great here too.
also update drivers very irregularly
I been using DDU for years and never had any issues.
Most of the problems are user made.
Here’s how its done.
Start DDU and follow prompts.
Once it says you need to start Windows in safe mode.
On search box type msconfig, then select Safe Boot.
Restart computer and DDU will do the rest.
What does an issue with DDU have to do with MSFS?
You should be posting to a forum about DDU or contacting the developers or support for that 3rd-party software/tool.
As I posted, that is what I did boot in Safe Mode.
I also posted there are plenty posts where from safe mode, the computer did not boot any more after DDU.
If DDU works 99% of the time, that is not good enough, at all, whatsoever.
Many, including myself, are coming into this discussion confused because it has literally nothing to do with MSFS.
The OP should contact the DDU support/developer directly or start a discussion on the DDU forum if one exists.
