CTD during initial sim loading

[TacomaSailor 192]

The sim (1.21.18.0) was running great this morning when real life interfered and I had to take the G2 goggles off.   Now, when I start the Sim (steam) I see the  "FlightSim.exe has stopped working"  message exactly 29-seconds from pressing Play in Steam.   Or - 4-seconds after the mystery 30-second pause during which time flightsim.exe issues no commands to windows. 

I run ProcMon to capture ALL system events and then narrow down to the interesting stuff.  I can see the command where Windows loads wersvc.dll (windows error reporting system) at 29.0xxx seconds.   

The flighsim.exe commands just prior to that call to WER are actually issued by Milviz_WASM_Helper.exe which issues 10 consecutive calls to read SimConnect.cfg with a result of NAME NOT FOUND each time.   It tries to find the ,cfg file in users\Public Documents (no such folder) and Windows\System32 (no file found).   I cannot find simconnect.cfg anywhere on my system - is it necessary and is it the root cause of my intractable CTD during loading?

After those 10 attempts to find SimConnect.cfg FlightSim.exe tries to DELETE a file named \MicrosoftFlightSimulator\? (where ? is really a symbol I have never seen before) - Windows responds NAME INVALID

FlightSim.exe then reads an AMD64 driver named nvldumdx.dll ( directX driver) and dcomp.dll (creates registry entries) 

Windows kernel then does 20 svchost calls resulting in the reading of the AVAST (my security system which is supposed to be inactive - it's menu says it is) journal and database followed immediately by a call to open WER.dll (windows error reporting)

How else do I determine what is causing my load to fail?  At the point it fails - flightsim.exe has made no attempt to read any data files in packages or in Community.  

Community Folder is empty and Content.xml does not exist before I start the sim.  

Edited January 7, 2022 by TacomaSailor

[TacomaSailor 192]

SOLVED! (but don't understand why my actions solved the problem?)

I tried everything recommended to solve the CTD during loading:

- disable full screen optimization

- run as administrator

- two prior Nvidia drivers, reinstalled current Nvidia driver

- emptied Community

- emptied content.xml

and the sim kept crashing BEFORE it read a single data file.

Finally told Steam to create a NEW library and move the existing Steam copy of FlightSim into that new library.  When I then started FlightSim thru Steam - Installation Manager said it had to update 30GB and I told it to Update - that update was done in just a few seconds and the Sim started normally.  But, had lost all my control setting and general options.  I shut down the sim and restarted it at which time Steam told me the current files were out of synch with the cloud backups and did I want to use the cloud.

I told Steam to download the cloud files and Viola - all my control and general settings were restored and the Sim runs perfectly again.

No idea what caused the problem or why moving to a new library (kept all down loaded content) fixed anything. 

[btacon 1,888]

PFM

Regards,

-B