Is anyone else having problems launching MSFS2024? Been trying for an hour to launch the sim - it just stays on the initial launch screen with "loading game" and will not start.

This is in the UK, at 22:40z

Well, 5 hours of trying everything I've learned in 6 years about fixing such problems and I'm no further forward. MSFS2024 just hangs on "launching game" and never launches it.

I've tried uninstalling, reinstalling and repairing Gaming Services, I've logged out and back into MS Store and Xbox app (and having them both open while 2024 launches), I've tried Fast launch via Powershell, I've tried removing then restoring the internet while loading 2024, to "force a reconnection to the authentication servers", I've tried a repair from the Xbox app, an unistall and reinstall from both the MS Store and the Xbox app.

Still, every time I launch the sim, it just hangs on "launching game" and doesn't launch.

I've also lost the 768 items that were in my Community folder, because I renamed it to CommunityBAK before the unistall / reinstall and the Xbox app then deleted the whole MSFS2024 directory, including my renamed Community folder. A really bad day.

If anyone has any other ideas on what I could try, I'd be very grateful.

Other than that, I guess I'm on a forced break from the hobby.

@JYW I sure wish I had something to offer you in the way of assistance. This sounds like a very frustrating situation. I will keep racking my brain and see if I can think of anything.

I had this once or maybe twice and what helped is launching the game through the XBOX app. However, seemingly you tried this? Saved me from logging out and in - let alone reinstalling MSFS altogether

The issue I am having on occasion is when I'm at the "World Map" from "Free Flight", it just doesn't zoom in to the airport. It just hangs there waiting. When this happens, I need to back out of it a few times like 2-3 times and then it zooms into the aircraft and it is now ready to fly. It's happened before with me, but I've never had it this bad.

Thanks both.

The more time I spend on this, and the utter puzzlement at why it won't launch, I'm starting to think it's some sort of missing Windows or Xbox dependency. The obvious one is Gaming Services but I have tried everything; uninstall / reinstall and using the dedicated MS Gaming Services repair EXE. My internet is running as normal and is a wired ethernet connection, so no Wifi or networks to cause problems. After hours of headscratching, I thought the only explanation must be that the service is down.... but as no-one here has the issue and the Xbox service shows no issues or outages, it can't be that.

The incident itself, and the actions I've taken so far, trying to resolve it (including deleting cloud saves) already mean that even if/when I get it working, I've lost the entire contents of my Community folder and all of my settings (including all control and hardware settings).

I've literally gone back to MSFS2024 day 1.

5 minutes ago, F1Fan said:

The issue I am having on occasion is when I'm at the "World Map" from "Free Flight", it just doesn't zoom in to the airport. It just hangs there waiting. When this happens, I need to back out of it a few times like 2-3 times and then it zooms into the aircraft and it is now ready to fly. It's happened before with me, but I've never had it this bad.

I'd suggest starting your own thread for that, as it's completely unrelated to the sim failing to even launch.

Edited September 19Sep 19 by JYW

are there any windows update pending?

Do you have any overlays enabled? Like MSI Afterburner, GPUZ etc?

I had an awful time just like this in 2020 when I switched PC hardware. Sometimes I just miss the CD-ROMs LOL.

edit: Wait, did you try to Delete your Cloud Saves? This is what fixed it for me a while ago

https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/17060350083612-How-to-delete-a-cloud-save-to-fix-some-loading-or-crashing-issues-Crashing-on-the-identity-screen-spawning-inside-buildings

Since you lost your Community folder anyway at this point I'd just uninstall it, make sure everything is gone and reinstall. (I wasn't sure if you meant that you already uninstalled and reinstalled the Xbox app or MSFS itself, but I'd just nuke the sim and start over)

Edited September 20Sep 20 by ryanbatc

Try starting from Windows Safe Mode.

Other than saying I have just started fine in the UK so it isn't msfs servers I can't offer much help. I would suggest though when you get it working again use addon linker for your mods.

if all else fails by doing a uninstall/ reinstall of the sim than it points to your windows which is causing the issues, did you get a recent update of windows? than maybe you can roll back one when you knew everything was fine. the worst case is doing a reinstall of windows

Have you been using Map Enhancement App? If so, it most likely changed a file in your windows system files that FS is looking for

Edited September 20Sep 20 by Bigmack

I'm back! 😎

It took a full reinstallation of Windows 11 and fresh install of MSFS 2024 to get me back in the game (pun intended).

I isolated the exact cause of the issue. I had been forced into an upgrade of the latest version (7) of CCleaner and it is absolutely revolting - constant up-sell prompts, paywalls and it installed AVAST without my permission. Some features have even been removed from the old free version I used to use (v4 I think).

So, I googled "alternatives to CCleaner" and Google recommended something called Fluent Cleaner. I installed it. It's UI is a carbon copy of the older ccleaner UI. I ran one clean on it and immediately noticed that it hadn't even emptied my recycle bin. I looked in the options and the recycle bin was selected. I ran it again with the same results. I then immediately started having problems with credentials and saved forms and passwords. Upon further investigation, 'Fluent cleaner' had removed all of my Windows credentials, lots of (active) registry items and a whole host of other content that definitely doesn't fit into the 'junk files' category, that it was supposed to be cleaning. As well as MSFS2024 refusing to start, I lost access to some music production software that I've had installed and used for many years.

In summary, 'Fluent Cleaner' absolutely trashed my PC, from a software and configuration perspective.

As part of my attempts to resolve the problem, before I discovered the fluent cleaner issues, I had deleted all of my MS cloud saves, which meant that all of my controls settings would be lost. I use a lot of hardware and had many profiles for lots of different aircraft. The last time I set up my controls in MSFS2024, it took around 5 hours!

After a full Windows reset (all files lost) and reinstallation of MSFS2024.... I got back in! .....and was absolutely ecstatic to find that - although all of my other settings were reset - all of my control profiles were preserved!

This was a lesson in trusting both AI and free software apps, without question.

The worst part of the whole ordeal was that I lost the 967 items in my Community folder. I was not aware that when MSFS2024 in uninstalled, the Community folder is deleted (or certainly it was in this case, but I had renamed it to "Community_BAK"). I am up to around 8 hours total time of locating, downloading and installing as many of those freeware and payware files as I can remember. But I don't care, after an unexpected week of no MSFS2024, I'm absolutely loving being back in it 😎

7 minutes ago, JYW said:

The worst part of the whole ordeal was that I lost the 967 items in my Community folder. I was not aware that when MSFS2024 in uninstalled, the Community folder is deleted (or certainly it was in this case, but I had renamed it to "Community_BAK").

This will happen if you put your community folder inside your MSFS folder. For instance, if you install MSFS to D:\MSFS2024 and then point the community folder to D:\MSFS2024\Community, it will be wiped out if you uninstall and reinstall the sim. I'm not sure if this was always the case or if a recent SU changed things around. For the example above, the safest option would be to point the community folder to D:\MSFS2024Community. I found this out when uninstalling/reinstalling just last week, but I use the marketplace for everything so the only thing wiped out were temporary caches.

At any rate, glad you were able to get back up and running! A good warning as well for anyone using "cleaner" software... it can often do more harm than good.

@JYW Welcome back! Sorry to hear what happened and caused this major issue for you, but good that you were able to figure out the root cause.