I haven't been on my sim for a number of weeks. To be honest, I'm starting to lose patience. Since SU8 I started to have stutters that I hadn't experienced before, so I thought I'd pass on things for a while. However, yesterday I thought I'd fire up the sim and update to SU9. I started up the computer and found I couldn't launch MSFS. 😠 I mean what the hell is this about? It worked fine about eight weeks ago, and now nothing has changed, and I can't even launch the sim. The crazy thing is, I can't even launch the sim after having run my backup from January. I made both a Windows backup and a MSFS backup as they are both on separate drives. I've spent the best part of yesterday and this morning with no luck. I've signed out and back into both Xbox gamebar and MS store, but I simply can't get MSFS to launch. Any ideas fellas?

Edited April 28, 20224 yr by Rockliffe

8 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

I haven't been on my sim for a number of weeks. To be honest, I'm starting to lose patience. Since SU8 I started to have stutters that I hadn't experienced before, so I thought I'd pass on things for a while. However, yesterday I thought I'd fire up the sim and update to SU9. I started up the computer and found I couldn't launch MSFS. 😠 I mean what the hell is this about? It worked fine about eight weeks ago, and now nothing has changed, and I can't even launch the sim. The crazy thing is, I can't even launch the sim after having run my backup from January. I made both a Windows backup and a MSFS backup as they are both on separate drives. I'v espent all morning with no luck. I've signed out and back into both Xbox gamebar and MS store, but I simply can't get MSFS to launch. Any ideas fellas?

Does it show up in windows task manager?

have you tried disabling anti-virus temporarily?

Something to see in the windows logs (eventvwr.exe) ?

 

A potential work around until you find an official fix could be to use the Addon Linker from flightsim.to - launch the sim from that instead and see if it works.

1 minute ago, shamrockflyer said:

A potential work around until you find an official fix could be to use the Addon Linker from flightsim.to - launch the sim from that instead and see if it works.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've tried that. It won't fire up from the default program icon on the Windows start menu, I can't start it from Addon linker or via FSUIPC. It's a big bummer this, as it worked fine the last time I flew, which was about 6 weeks ago, I mean, what could have changed?!

 

Have you tried navigating to the flightsimulator.exe location and clicking directly from there?

29 minutes ago, tamsini said:

Have you tried navigating to the flightsimulator.exe location and clicking directly from there?

Yup, done that, but the exe. file is showing 0kb ????? When clicked on the little timer icon just spins round and round  ??

20 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Yup, done that, but the exe. file is showing 0kb ????? When clicked on the little timer icon just spins round and round  ??

Probably won't make a difference but the one I have in content folder is 184,370 KB. I have two others, like you, at 0kb. Not sure why we have to have so many.

54 minutes ago, tamsini said:

Probably won't make a difference but the one I have in content folder is 184,370 KB. I have two others, like you, at 0kb. Not sure why we have to have so many.

Hmm, so have I tried to start from the wrong exe.?

5 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Hmm, so have I tried to start from the wrong exe.?

maybe try to launch from msstore (if you have the msstore version), that way you should at least catch the right exe. just a thought

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

Yup, done that, but the exe. file is showing 0kb ????? When clicked on the little timer icon just spins round and round  ??

If you cant find any solution and think that a reinstall is in order do this first...go into LocalCache - Official and copy the OneStore folder to your desktop. Uninstall MSFS then reinstall, let it run up to around 2% and then close the install process. Then add the OneStore folder back into the Official folder and restart the install process. That method should save you from hours of downloading the bulk of the data that is in that OneStore folder.

Install the Xbox app and the Microsoft gaming services.

27 minutes ago, DAD said:

maybe try to launch from msstore (if you have the msstore version), that way you should at least catch the right exe. just a thought

Thanks Phil, tried that, no success.

20 minutes ago, shamrockflyer said:

If you cant find any solution and think that a reinstall is in order do this first...go into LocalCache - Official and copy the OneStore folder to your desktop. Uninstall MSFS then reinstall, let it run up to around 2% and then close the install process. Then add the OneStore folder back into the Official folder and restart the install process. That method should save you from hours of downloading the bulk of the data that is in that OneStore folder.

If I reinstall I will lose many of my thrrd party addons, except for the ones that are solely located in the community folder, yes?

I experienced this once. I fixed it by delete and complete reinstalling. I know it's long and sucks but it fixed problem

 

I dump MSFS( full version on Steam) for this very same reason. After 2 months without using it, I couldn't launch it. I tried all suggestions I could find for zero result. I reinstall MSFS totally after cleaning all remaining folders a week ago and this time I was pretty optimistic...you know what, I got the very same result, the game crashed to desktop when updating(always) and again tried all suggestions available for the same zero result. Finally I decided to uninstall it! Finally my Xplane 11 is not so bad!

Have you tried deleting the content.xml yet? That is a good first step to try and solve a lot of issues like this. Once deleted, MSFS will generate a new one. Sometimes the order of things in the content.xml file gets messed up and that causes CTD's, freezes during startup, unable to load flights etc. It is located here: 

AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Content.xml