Here my experience in short:

Bought Premium Plus both via MS Store plus Aerosoft (yes!). Preinstalled 1 GB to L:\ days ago. When starting to complete installation (not from Kiribati but Germany) yesterday it was claiming files are missing on C:\ After some experiments I uninstalled all MSFS pre-installation in the hope to reinstall it. Uninstall icon under CP/Apps vanished, but files and desktop icon remained. No way to complete uninstallation. Right mouse over the icon in the program start (still there) to "uninstall" does nothing.

Reinstall via MS Store doesn't work either and leads to 0x80073D05. Yes, I sent an error protocol which didn't help me, though. Googled for the error with plenty of suggestions from several games. Tried a long list (clear cache, reset store...), neither helped.

Made a plea to Zendesk. Zendesk sent me list of solutions -  identical to the ones I've already seen. At this point Zendesk decided to mark the issue as "solved".

My last hope was the Aerosoft DVD edition which arrived today so I could continue. Disks took some time and at Disk 3 I got a CRC error. So I started over with disk 1. Already Installed files were NOT recognized, and this time I was lucky to reach disk 5 - where I ran into a CRC again.

I am not a beginner and was in the alpha without any issues. Obviously, I have a buggy DVD drive, Windows installation and Internet connection at the same time. At this point you may understand I fully agree to Anton.

I've thrown the towel now. I'll resist the temptation to buy it a third time on Steam. I know, MSFS is great, but obviously not for me.

Kind regards, Michael

21 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Not at all, just before the DL started, I had to click through four points of a pre-install menue. There, the installation path is visible and can be changed by clicking on it. The explorer opens and you can select whatever drive and folder you want. Only issue: the first time I clicked on it, the explorer opened in the background and I had to manually switch windows. 

I did manually choose the drive to install it on and it started to install some Asobo assets then froze. I tried again and the same thing happened. I then directed the install back to the C drive where MS had originally asked for and it installed everything quickly and efficiently. Just to the drive I didn't want.

3 hours ago, Paladin2005 said:

The installation and the hidden files and folders is the reason not to buy it in the MS store.

Always prefer a Steam solution...

It's the same for all installations of FS2020 whether purchased on Steam or the MS store: core files are UWP, the rest aren't.

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by spacedyemeerkat

I'm worried about the streaming service and how long will they choose to support it since it's for sure a lot more expensive than the usual game servers.

22 minutes ago, pmb said:

Here my experience in short:

Bought Premium Plus both via MS Store plus Aerosoft (yes!). Preinstalled 1 GB to L:\ days ago. When starting to complete installation (not from Kiribati but Germany) yesterday it was claiming files are missing on C:\ After some experiments I uninstalled all MSFS pre-installation in the hope to reinstall it. Uninstall icon under CP/Apps vanished, but files and desktop icon remained. No way to complete uninstallation. Right mouse over the icon in the program start (still there) to "uninstall" does nothing.

Reinstall via MS Store doesn't work either and leads to 0x80073D05. Yes, I sent an error protocol which didn't help me, though. Googled for the error with plenty of suggestions from several games. Tried a long list (clear cache, reset store...), neither helped.

Made a plea to Zendesk. Zendesk sent me list of solutions -  identical to the ones I've already seen. At this point Zendesk decided to mark the issue as "solved".

My last hope was the Aerosoft DVD edition which arrived today so I could continue. Disks took some time and at Disk 3 I got a CRC error. So I started over with disk 1. Already Installed files were NOT recognized, and this time I was lucky to reach disk 5 - where I ran into a CRC again.

I am not a beginner and was in the alpha without any issues. Obviously, I have a buggy DVD drive, Windows installation and Internet connection at the same time. At this point you may understand I fully agree to Anton.

I've thrown the towel now. I'll resist the temptation to buy it a third time on Steam. I know, MSFS is great, but obviously not for me.

Kind regards, Michael

Did you try uninstalling it by hitting the Windows Key + I

That will give you a clean uninstall.

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by skully

What an S#%^ show. Catch 22, can’t buy it on steam because they won’t give you what you paid for, can’t buy it on MS store because it won’t let you install it on the drive of your choice. 
 

this is why you don’t pre-order folks. 

14 minutes ago, UAL4life said:

can’t buy it on MS store because it won’t let you install it on the drive of your choice.

I still don't understand where this is coming from, you can definitely choose the drive where the launcher/core files will be installed (sure, you will find a "Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe" folder in "C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\Local\Packages" but all it contains are symbolic links to the actual drive you chose), and then on first game launch you have the choice once again to select any drive you want for the content files so... 🤷‍♂️

23 minutes ago, UAL4life said:

What an S#%^ show. Catch 22, can’t buy it on steam because they won’t give you what you paid for, can’t buy it on MS store because it won’t let you install it on the drive of your choice. 
 

this is why you don’t pre-order folks. 

You can install on any drive you wish. After the installation of the core file the game will launch and at the bottom of the screen you can select any folder or driver you want to install too.

38 minutes ago, skully said:

Did you try uninstalling it by hitting the Windows Key + I

That will give you a clean uninstall.

Thanks, will try this.

Kind regards, Michael

8 hours ago, skully said:

One can easily select the drive folder once you install the initial file and launch the sim.

At the bottom of the screen once the sims starts you can select the driver folder of your choice.

Thanks Skully you are right but just to clarify slightly, you can choose a drive to install to, but not a folder of choice,

9 hours ago, MattNischan said:

This is the new world. You're not just supposed to head into your executable install folder and start jamming on config files in Notepad. People need to start thinking differently.

• The Windows Store install is very reasonable. The part of the sim that it installs is just the executable portion, not the actual game, aircraft, and scenery packages. There is zero reason to care where that goes, from a performance perspective. That data is not paged in and out during flight. Put it wherever the default Store install path is.
• If you truly feel the need to change the drive it resides on, head to Apps & Features in Settings in Win 10, find Microsoft Flight Simulator, and click Move. There you can change the drive it resides on. The Store will still manage the specific folder.
• When you actually launch the game for the first time, then you will be prompted to download the game packages. You can put those in any place on your machine with zero limitations. This part is no different whether you're on Steam or the Store. Put those on your best SSD or M.2 NVMe disk. The structure of those folder is somewhat similar to the old FSX folders, at least once you get into each package folder.

I have almost all my catalog on Steam, and Steam is a great platform, but the Store is plenty nice. Just slightly different, that's all.

Matt. How big is the initial MS store install? I would be ok with that on my C-drive, and the rest on my D-drive. It sounds like you can do this.

46 minutes ago, JerryT87 said:

Matt. How big is the initial MS store install? I would be ok with that on my C-drive, and the rest on my D-drive. It sounds like you can do this.

I think the initial Store or Steam install is just under 1GB. Being on your main disk shouldn't be an issue, as long as that's an SSD of some sort.

Once you start the sim, it will ask you where to download the packages. That can totally be on whatever drive you like. Again, SSD or NVMe for sure.

13 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

I think the initial Store or Steam install is just under 1GB. Being on your main disk shouldn't be an issue, as long as that's an SSD of some sort.

Once you start the sim, it will ask you where to download the packages. That can totally be on whatever drive you like. Again, SSD or NVMe for sure.

Thx. In the store under manage should i just hit install on the Premium Delux Edition?  All the other stuff appears under Bundle contents. Deluxe and Premium Deluxe show that they do not work on this device. All my stuff is up to date so I'm confused about this issue.

37 minutes ago, JerryT87 said:

Thx. In the store under manage should i just hit install on the Premium Delux Edition?  All the other stuff appears under Bundle contents. Deluxe and Premium Deluxe show that they do not work on this device. All my stuff is up to date so I'm confused about this issue.

Yeah, if I remember correctly I just hit Install on the main sim, and not the content packs.

2 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

Yeah, if I remember correctly I just hit Install on the main sim, and not the content packs.

So just the basic Microsoft Flight Sim one, not the Premium Edition. OK Thx.