Well, good news so far. I’ve seemed to have avoided a total nuke-and-restore on my system.
What I did:
- Ran the system file checker by executing the following in an elevated command window:
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
sfc /scannow
DISM is a necessary prerequisite for SFC, as it creates a coherent “recovery” source library that SFC can use to actually fix things.
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Temporarily disabled my anti-virus and ran a System Restore to a restore point made about three days ago.
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Re-ran the commands at #1 after the system restore successfully completed. It found things to fix. . .
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Reinstalled the anti-virus. (Anti-virus programs are particularly allergic to system-restore-type operations and it confuses them terribly.)
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Removed and reinstalled the X-Box app and Microsoft store as noted at:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-uninstall-and-reinstal-microsoft-store/ddb7e1e0-5b65-45dc-9921-1f2784351265
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Restarted and re-installed the X-Box App installer downloaded above.
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Reinstalled both certain X-Box dependencies and the Microsoft Store from with the X-Box app.
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Reinstalled MSFS-2020 from within the store and launched it to verify it would launch and take me to the updates screen.
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Updated my AMD Radeon RX 68000 video driver, restarted, and tried the MSFS launcher again. It worked.
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Reinstalled MSFS-2024 from the Microsoft Store. (It’s an 10-or-so gigabyte download! and is taking forever!)
Side note:
Watching the loading animation of a helicopter carrying a huge honkin’ rooftop AC unit that’s swinging around at the end of what appears to be a thin thread always puts a knot in my stomach. “It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie It’s only a movie. . .”
Note:
First boot of MSFS-2024 buzzed and crashed to the BIOS in exactly the same way it did before.
- MSDS-2020 started up successfully. What I’m going to do now is fully install MSFS-2020, (letting it run overnight and then most of tomorrow), move it somewhere safe, and then install MSFS-2024.
More later,