The "checking for updates" screen is shown and the icon isnt rotating (freeze). Is there any server outage on MS' side? A few hours ago MSFS started normally....

According to the mods on the official forum you may need to sync your clock in Windows;

 

Synchronize your Time and Region settings.

Press the Start button on the taskbar, type settings, and select Settings.

Select Date & Time and toggle the “Set time automatically setting" and “Set time zone automatically” to ON.

Click on Synchronize your clock to synchronize your system’s clock with an Internet time server.

Then click Region, and double-check that your country or region is correctly set up (for example if you live in Canada, make sure that the region didn’t switch to USA or vice-versa)

Edited June 3, 20242 yr by MarcG

all good, it works now. thanks.

Having correct time synced doesn't fix the issue for me.

Bruce

On 6/3/2024 at 9:18 AM, MarcG said:

According to the mods on the official forum you may need to sync your clock in Windows;

 

Synchronize your Time and Region settings.

Press the Start button on the taskbar, type settings, and select Settings.

Select Date & Time and toggle the “Set time automatically setting" and “Set time zone automatically” to ON.

Click on Synchronize your clock to synchronize your system’s clock with an Internet time server.

Then click Region, and double-check that your country or region is correctly set up (for example if you live in Canada, make sure that the region didn’t switch to USA or vice-versa)

The last 3 days this was driving me crazy, i even reinstalled msfs (this worked till today), your recommendation worked for me fortunately. I had my region set to USA, which was not the correct one, when I switched it to my country's, I had 3 consecutive msfs boots without "checking for updates" freeze. So thanks a lot for posting this.

Update: it happened again. So what I did was, signed out of xbox and microsoft, rebooted, re-signed in to both. Rebooted again, then it worked.

Edited June 5, 20242 yr by SN737

Right-click on the MSFS icon and select "Run as administrator" to ensure the game has the necessary permissions to operate correctly.

On 6/3/2024 at 7:18 AM, MarcG said:

According to the mods on the official forum you may need to sync your clock in Windows;......

 

So many people had this system time issue very early after release back in 2021, I suggested to @Bert Pieketo make a post to the Tips sub-forum here at Avsim.... the post is buried in there somewhere.  Funny to see mods on official forum finally recognizing this problem and offering better assistance than a complete "re-install".

Amazing that in 2024. Microsoft can't even sync system time correctly, even though a user has elected to do so in in the time settings.  Can't blame Asobio on this one.   

On 6/3/2024 at 2:15 PM, Soulflight said:

The "checking for updates" screen is shown and the icon isnt rotating (freeze

I had the same yesterday, but during this the sim downloaded about 3 Gb of data. After finished download, about 10 Min. later, the sim loads and runs normally without any problem. Strange 😶 

5 hours ago, mwe_EDVK said:

I had the same yesterday, but during this the sim downloaded about 3 Gb of data. After finished download, about 10 Min. later, the sim loads and runs normally without any problem. Strange 😶 

Having the same problem, sometimes loads without a problem and and then it gets stuck on checking for updates for many minutes while transferring lots of data. I am trying to build and test a small bush strip and its driving me nuts. Focus has now shifted to MSFS 2024 and we are stuck with this poor performance.

I had it too a couple of times, but shutting down MSFS and restarting was always the solution. The freezing seems random.

I had this last weekend, Dr. Google was my friend:

https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407168022418-How-to-get-past-the-Checking-for-Updates-screen

"restarting was always the solution. The freezing seems random."

Same thing here.

I've had this happen when something in my community folder is causing an issue.  Try renaming the community folder and see if it starts then (if so, you then have to go through the process of which add-on is causing the issue).

Did everything listed here and still had issues, what finally fixed it, was changing the DNS servers from my ISP to google ones.

Mine did this yesterday. Task Manager showed it was hammering the network so I left it and went and did something else. Came back about half an hour later and it had progressed through to the start screen and hasn't happened again.