I really think people should start posting pictures with their problems, because some of the things I see people are complaining about makes no sense. People reinstalling the game and no content, settings on ultra and it looks like it's on low, no trees etc. I wax in the alpha and even then I didn't have some of these problems I see people complaining about. Makes me think alot of these guys are just trolling 

20 minutes ago, Bottle said:

needs another 20 Gb to be manually downloaded through the content manager. So something is definitely screwy. The problem is, I've done three clean uninstalls and reinstalls already with the same result each time.

If a clean uninstall wasn't completely successful, there may be hidden files/folders left, and registry entries left on your system.  Unfortunately, there isn't an advanced uninstall guide that I know of so who knows where the registry entries and hidden files/folders are located.  These registry entries and/or hidden files/folders could affect you when you reinstall the game.  Other things may not have been removed if the clean uninstall was not successful, that would affect a reinstall of the game.

As you mentioned, a clean install of Windows should fix these problems because there won't be any MSFS registry entries and/or hidden files/folders on a clean install of Windows.  There shouldn't be any trace of MSFS at all on a clean install of Windows so an install of MSFS off a clean install of Windows is more likely to be successful.

1 hour ago, Bottle said:

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that out. I really appreciate it. Unfortunately, I tried it, plus a few variants just for good measure but all to no avail. At this stage I really am going to put my toy back in its box and move on.

That's a pleasure. I'm very sorry it didn't work out for you. I'm afraid I'm out of further avenues for you to explore to fix this.

Very annoying I'm sure.

On 10/4/2020 at 7:28 PM, Bottle said:

What a saga. I installed some software for a monitor calibrator that I borrowed from a friend. It caused a blue screen loop that I couldn't fix (no Windows access other than safe mode). So eventually I had to reinstall Windows and that meant reinstalling all my apps again.

Just asking because I`m curious why you couldn`t solve the issue in safe mode? The software just had to be uninstalled in safe mode, didn`t that work?

Also, as a tip from my side, try to boot from a bootable Linux OS, then you will have access to most files or any I think.

Edited October 5, 20205 yr by BigDee

FIXED!!! Release the doves!

My Zendesk query actually got a direct reply and it led me to a fix. I've posted this now to the Tips & Tricks section on Avsim. In a nutshell, despite the fact that my Windows Store, Xbox for PC and MFS were all logged in with the same credentials (e-mail address, gamer tag, etc.) I simply logged out and then back in to each of them in turn and hey presto, I was back to downloading Bing data, etc. I went for all of them rather than try each separately, it's possible I only had to do it for MFS but at this stage I don't care, it's fixed! On reflection I should have suspected this considering the Flightsim website/insider/forums login mess that happened during the alpha.

On 10/5/2020 at 10:19 PM, BigDee said:

Just asking because I`m curious why you couldn`t solve the issue in safe mode

I bought a new 1440p monitor (highly recommend the Dell 2721DGF by the way) and wanted to colour calibrate it using a colleague's i1 Display Pro by X-rite. I installed the software and it hung right at the end of the install. Then it blue screened and that was it, I was stuck in a cycle of blue screen crashes every time it tried to restart Windows. I tried to recover from a restore point but despite showing appropriate restore points it continually failed. I then booted into safe mode and tried to remove the i1 software but because the initial install had crashed before it had finished it had no uninstall data to use, so that failed. I therefore reinstalled the software and that still hung on install but this time it allowed me to uninstall it. So far so good, but it was still blue screening. I then notices that X-rite display services manager had also been installed but that refused to uninstall in safe mode (Windows gave a warning that it couldn't be done in safe mode and to tray again in normal Windows). I searched around to try an stop any X-rite something or rather starting on startup but there was nothing I could find to turn off. I installed a system fixer that showed me all of the X-rite registry entries but wouldn't remove them unless I payed, so I manually removed 140 odd entries from the registry and deleted associated folders/files. Still didn't work. I suspect the original install installed something (a driver perhaps) that there was no obvious record for and that was causing the crash. I possibly could have gone further, but by that time I'd spent most of a day on trying to fix it and I really need my PC for work now. So I bit the bullet and reinstalled Windows plus all the programs it uninstalls during that process. The system is now stable (and in fact running a little faster) but MFS was borked. Finally after three days of pulling my hair out that is now fixed (see above).

I mentioned this to a colleague and he told me that he had also borrowed the same screen calibrator from the same colleague and it has messed his system up as well. The original colleague who owns the calibrator used to repeatedly ask me for help because his system would hang and not boot into windows. Now I know why!

Take home message; avoid anything to do with the company X-rite.

1 hour ago, Bottle said:

FIXED!!! Release the doves!

My Zendesk query actually got a direct reply and it led me to a fix. I've posted this now to the Tips & Tricks section on Avsim. In a nutshell, despite the fact that my Windows Store, Xbox for PC and MFS were all logged in with the same credentials (e-mail address, gamer tag, etc.) I simply logged out and then back in to each of them in turn and hey presto, I was back to downloading Bing data, etc. I went for all of them rather than try each separately, it's possible I only had to do it for MFS but at this stage I don't care, it's fixed! On reflection I should have suspected this considering the Flightsim website/insider/forums login mess that happened during the alpha.

It‘s only the game. I‘m not an IT guy so I explain it to myself that with your login you place a cookie or draw an number etc and if that cookie expires it usually gets reset automatically. But sometimes this might fail for various reasons and you need to login again and the magic continues. Pity I haven‘t seen your topic before 🤦🏻‍♂️ Anyway, good you‘re back flying

Good that it worked and thanks for the explanation of the problem. Windows does have some of its quirks. 

On 10/4/2020 at 5:54 PM, Noncon said:

It appears there are many reports of the Steam file integrity check erasing critical files resulting in re-installing MSFS.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/steam-version-and-packages-folder-content-deleting/286450

I wish I had seen that before last night.

Went to do a flight and MSFS kept hanging half way through loading towards the main menu (past the press any key screen). I had made a change to a livery aircraft.cfg and didn't connect the dots that was it. After the third time having to kill the process I decided to run the Steam file integrity check and then when I launched MSFS it started downloading an update. I thought great, there's a new update and maybe that's what was hanging the launch.

After a bit I realized it was instead installing the game again (95GiB). So I let it run for a couple hours and after install, noticed most stuff was missing. So I went into my profile and selected all content and let it download that.

That put me right back to where I was before I had any problems. All content present and my settings and controller settings remembered but started hanging on loading again. Removed everything from community and then it loaded fine. That's when I connected the dot that it was the aircraft.cfg I had changed and changed it back.

All that (complete reinstall) because of one change to a mod. If I had know about the Steam integrity check causing problems, I would done a lot more diagnosing before trying it.