Desperate for help... MSFS broken...

[KevyKevTPA 46]

48 minutes ago, David Mills said:

Have you tried shutting off your modem, waiting 30 seconds, and then rebooting? 🙂

By modem, do you mean the cable modem where the Internet comes in the house?  I haven't done anything like that, but certainly can, but I'm not sure I see what it is you're trying to test.  Or at what point you want me to turn it back on?

Overall, thanks for the help so far guys, off the wall potential solutions for an off the wall problem.  I like the approach, even if we haven't nailed it yet.  I think one thing that's clear is that it's SOMEHOW related to my gamertag account, but aside from this (and the fact that it doesn't show MSFS as an option in the XBox app to start it from there), it seems to be working fine.  I was using it on my actual XBox yesterday or the day before, I'm getting no credential errors or anything like that, so I don't know what, if anything, that tidbit of information does to help point us (yes, us, I'm officially drafting all of yous onto my tech support team) in a useful direction.

In the meantime, the download speed on the game I'm trying to download from Steam has crawled to dial-up speeds, so I'm going to reboot real quick to if doing so might help loosen that up.  Otherwise, it's gonna take a long, long, long time.

But  I'll be back shortly, so by all means keep the suggestions coming!

[KevyKevTPA 46]

Well, it seems like my system was the bottleneck on the download, so it's back up to about 60MB/s, with about 3 minutes estimated as the ETA.  I don't remember what we were trying to prove (or falsify) by doing that but whatever it is, it'll be very soon!  I crack myself up...

[JimBrown 596]

1 hour ago, KevyKevTPA said:

By modem, do you mean the cable modem where the Internet comes in the house?  I haven't done anything like that, but certainly can, but I'm not sure I see what it is you're trying to test.  Or at what point you want me to turn it back on?

Cable modems (and routers) are like any other computer (most of them run some flavour of Linux). Then can get messed up for any number of reasons. Rebooting them every month or several helps clean out any cobwebs that may have accumulated.

For most modems and routers, a reboot consists of unplugging it from the main power, waiting 30 seconds, and plugging it back in. Then wait a few minutes while it boots back up.

Good luck!

...jim

[Boeing_Driver 76]

Give this a try, it totally worked for me;

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1250410/discussions/0/3110267314124649440/

[Fielder 3,673]

I have a hunch Boeing_Driver suggestion will cure the problem. Backing up the whole MFS folder and its subfolders to desktop and then booting up MSFS and letting it update.

C\Users\ your name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community

Edited February 6, 2021 by Fielder

[Fielder 3,673]

Another thing to try is to get a decent filesearch utility (such as Search Everything) and find the folder that holds all of your controller profiles. I had failure to start MSFS a few months ago, uplugging controllers did not help. But backing up and then removing the profile folder allowed MSFS to boot.

Then I added the profiles back half of them at a time to find the bad ones. MSFS then booted up fine.
On steam the folder where my profiles are: (it may be slightly different on other installations, but the same file name types will be in some similar folder).

C:\Steam\userdata\94959374\1250410\remote

The files in that folder will all have names similar to this: inputprofile_########## You can read them in notepad to see the profile name etc.

 

 

 

[himmelhorse 1,276]

KevykevTPA,

I think this is a long shot but, for those who suspect it may be fans and or temperatures, google and download a small programme called "Speccy" 

This free programme will give you access to all your components temperatures.

I am with the "Community Folder" people.  I suspect that following Boeing_Drivers advice will sort out your problems.

Tony

[stephenbgs 169]

It’s a long shot but a quick and painless exercise try reinstalling Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable worst case scenario your told there up to date but no harm trying 

[KevyKevTPA 46]

3 hours ago, JimBrown said:

For most modems and routers, a reboot consists of unplugging it from the main power, waiting 30 seconds, and plugging it back in. Then wait a few minutes while it boots back up.

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately no help.  I also took the opportunity to try the 2.4GHz radio instead of the 5 (as it comes up faster), but again, no change.

 

3 hours ago, Boeing_Driver said:

Give this a try, it totally worked for me;

No go.  That portion of the directory tree doesn't even exist yet, as it was a virgin install and that only happens once you make it past the point where mine bombs out.

 

On a whim, I decided to search ALL files modified or created at about the same time FS2020 unceremoniously dumped me, and though I found a few (including some .pf files that I learned are "pre-fetch" related, and got a reader for.).  Unfortunately, none stood out as real potential problem issues, BUT I'm also FAAAAAR deeper into the weeds at this point than my expertise gives me reason to even be looking for problems, much less finding them.

However, should anyone who reads this find that something like that is within your skillset, I'll be happy to send you whatever you might need to offer assistance.

I have also seen some things that lead me to believe the OXR and WMR apps might have *something* to do with my problems, so I'm going to try uninstalling them to see what happens.  If I break it, I suppose I can start all over again with another fresh Windows install, which I don't want to do as I've been starting to rebuild some things (like my Office apps, other games, etc.), but what the hell, I've already done it like 5 times at this point.

So all in all, I have zero clue if we're making any progress here, but at least I'm learning a thing or two.  Whether or not that knowledge turns into something useful it's way too soon to have an opinion about.

[KevyKevTPA 46]

OK, it seems I've broken things, so reinstall #6, coming up!!  Or am I up to 7 now?

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

good luck !

 

try installing the game on a clean windows with nothing else

[Maxis 1,864]

10 hours ago, ctdlg said:

Memory test ? write an usb key with clonezilla or any linux install image ... boot your fresh usb key, simply select Memtest

 

Did you check all your fans (power supply, motherboard and graphics card ?)

Yep im suspecting memory issue here as well. Can you provide us with detailed system specs? Do you know what im talking about when i say turn off your xmp/docp in bios and then try to start the sim ?

I would be less inclined to say psu because when that starts to fail usually it just switches the entire system off.

[rickjake 243]

Just a stab in the dark here, but when you re-install windows, are you signing in  with your Microsoft ID? or a local account?
When I did a reinstall, using my Microsoft Id, The windows installation put all my  "my documents, my downloads, etc" files on OneDrive instead of the normal c:\user\yourname\ folders.  

This cause some programs not to install correctly,  I did not have any CTD, but I would install some addon, and it would not show up in the menu. Took me quite a while an trial and error to figure it out.

I did another fresh install of windows 10, but this time,  I created a local log in, I did not use my Microsoft ID to log in.  Once windows was fully installed, you can go into settings and switch your local account back to a Microsoft ID, so you can re-validate your copy of windows. When done this way, it will leave your user folders in the original location. 

There may be lots of people who installed windows 10 and on first log in, setup with the windows ID and had no problems. But for me, I did have issues. So setting up a fresh copy of Windows first with a local account worked for me. 

I hope you get it sorted out.  These types of issues can be so frustrating. 

 

[himmelhorse 1,276]

1 hour ago, Maxis said:

Yep im suspecting memory issue here as well.

As far as I know, if you have memory (RAM) problems, your computer will not boot. When I had many many power problems in Indonesia, if the computer did not boot, the first thing I did was to unplug all USB devices. If still not booting, next step was RAM and clean contacts with eraser. and if that still did not work, I did the same with the GPU.  Generally it was the RAM which caused the problem.

In the OPs case though, his problem is with MSFS only as far as I can gather, because his computer is booting without a problem, and if this is the case, I can not see how RAM is affecting him. I also generally note when I am troubleshooting MSFS, that until MSFS is actually in "fly" mode, RAM use and GPU use is minimal. Before actual start up, I am getting up to 598FPS (cannot crack the 600 LOL) and this, to my mind, is saying that input load to the computer is minimal. After reaching the welcome page, FPS drops to about 120 and then on clicking the second "fly" button, FPS drops to about 50.

If he has no community folder (and I would be doing an intense search on all drives looking for that) I am at a loss to proceeding further with advice, and for this I am sorry.  

I really hope that you can solve this, and I strongly suggest if you do, despite it being a "one-off" problem, you should publish the solution on the zendesk forum. 

Regards

Tony

 

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

28 minutes ago, himmelhorse said:

 

In the OPs case though, his problem is with MSFS only as far as I can gather, because his computer is booting without a problem, and if this is the case, I can not see how RAM is affecting him.

 

 

It is feasible.

For example static damage often only manifests above certain temps or frequencies or in an area of ram quite high that few programs use (hence the myth that modern ram does not need static precautions but that discussion is a different topic for another thread) so damage ram may only fail if a program (like MSFS) gets it to heat up or uses a high part of the register that other programs never access, but otherwise will seem to be fine. Hence the need for ram tests that stress the ram and try all registers.

That said it seems unlikely ram would cause it to fail right at login before the game does much, but still worth checking.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Glenn Fitzpatrick