Flight Sim 2020 keeps crashing even with the a beast of a PC and Video card?

Why the *requirement* to install a 150+Gb game on the C: drive? A great many people (myself included) have installed small size NVMe SSDs as system disks (e.g. mine is 240Gb). I don't have the space to install on the C drive, given the room that Windows takes up...

Is this something to do with pathing to DRM or game certificates. If so, what needs to be done is for that to be fixed, not to suggest that you should only install the game on the C drive...

There is no requirement to install to the C: drive. While I have tried installing it to my C drive to see if that had anything to do with the crashing it does not and will fix nothing. Don't bother wasting your time with most of that post you are responding to. It's just the normal blanket statement from someone who has no idea what the issue is.

Hi,

I am Sumit, an Independent Advisor and a 3 year Windows Insider MVP here to help.

Copying the support doc for you. Make sure Windows is updated.

https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/ar...

On occasion, you may experience crashes during your flight or on the menu screens. Below you will find a list of common troubleshooting steps that have been known to reduce or eliminate CTDs entirely.

NOTE: If the crash happens at the same place in the world/the same zone, file a bug report (please include the coordinates)

Make sure all the updates in the Microsoft Store are installed.

In the top right-hand side corner of the Microsoft Store, click on the Arrow icon or the three-dot menu > Downloads and updates. Then click Get updates > Update all

Note: You can turn on automatic updates in the Microsoft Store to make sure you won't miss future updates.

Select the Start screen, then select Microsoft Store

In Microsoft Store at the upper right, select the account menu (the three dots) and then select Settings.

Under App updates, set Update apps automatically to On

Run as admin

Type "Flight Simulator" in the Windows search

Select Run as administrator

Reset your copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator (Windows Store Version)

Uninstall the game

Press the Windows Key

Type in wsreset

Right-click and select run as administrator

Once complete perform a system reboot

Press the Windows Key

Reinstall the game (Please install the game to your C drive)

Type in Apps and Features

Find Microsoft Flight Simulator on the list

Select Advanced Options

Select Reset

Verify integrity of local game files (Steam)

In Steam, right click Microsoft Flight Simulator from your games list

Select Properties from the context menu

From the Properties menu select Local Files

Click 'Verify Integrity of Local Game Files...'

Use Game Mode

When you’re playing games on Windows 10, Game Mode makes gaming your PC’s top priority, so you get the best possible game performance. For more info, see Use Game Mode while gaming on your Windows 10 device.

Update your graphics drivers

When your graphics drivers are either not up to date or suffering from some form of corruption, this can also cause crashes during gameplay. We recommend that when trying this step that you completely remove your old drivers before updating to the latest versions. To remove your old drivers and then update to the latest:

Press the Windows Key

Type Add or Remove Program

Scroll down the list and find your graphics driver

Click the driver once and select uninstall. Confirm this by clicking Uninstall again.

Once complete reboot Windows

Download the latest drivers from here:

Nvidia - Click Here

AMD - Click Here

Install to the latest driver and then reboot your PC again

Increase the Virtual Memory (Pagefile) on your system

In the Windows Seach bar, type Advanced system settings and open the Control Panel.

Make sure you're on the Advanced tab.

Click the Settings button from under the Performance

On the Performance Options box, go to the Advanced tab > Performance

Click on Settings

On the Virtual Memory box, uncheck the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives

Click to select the drive on which Windows 10 is installed (by default C:)

Click to select the Custom size radio button.

In the now-enabled fields, type the minimum and maximum size of the Pagefile in megabytes (MB) according to the physical memory present in your computer.

Click Set and then click OK.

Restart your computer.

Additional Troubleshooting steps:

Below we have listed further solutions that we have confirmed have solved this problem for other users. This includes:

Disable Intel Speedstep on your Bios overclock menu

Lower or disable your CPU overclock values

Disable GPU overlocking for your Microsoft Flight Simulator game profile on Radeon Software or Nvidia nTune (this applies to custom user overlock settings, not for factory overclock settings of the manufacturer)

Close unnecessary background applications while running Microsoft Flight Simulator

Disable any overlays while running Microsoft Flight Simulator (Steam, Discord etc)

Finally, if the problem persists, reinstall Microsoft Flight Simulator

Make sure that you've backed up any in-game settings before following these steps.

Uninstall Microsoft Flight Simulator

Sign in to your Microsoft account on your Windows 10 device.

Select the Start button in the lower-left corner of the main screen.

Select Settings > Apps >Apps & features.

Locate Microsoft Flight Simulator, and then select Uninstall two times.

Reinstall Microsoft Flight Simulator

Sign in to your Microsoft account on your Windows 10 device.

Select the Microsoft Store icon in the taskbar or Start menu on your device.

Select See more (...) in the top-right corner of the screen and then select My Library.

Select Install next to the game you want to install.

You’ll only see a certain number of content items listed in My Library. If you scroll to the bottom of the current list, more content will appear.

If none of the above solves your issues please contact the Xbox Support team at support.xbox.com or contact the relevant hardware manufacturer.

Today I requested a refund - there are 14 days to do this

Luckily you can do this from Xbox if logged in.  It seems that MS give you 14 days from purchase to reject the software.  Unfortunately for pre-orders they date the 14 days from the pre-order and not from the actual download which is pretty annoying.

In my case I downloaded on the day of launch (18 August 2020) so I'm within the 14 days IMHO.

My daily routine since download on 18 August 2020

This is a sad story.  First thing was to check this forum to see if there have been any breakthroughs or fixes I could try.  Then to check https://forums.flightsimulator.com/ to try to discover how the people there who discuss the running of MSFS 2020 in detail could possibly have got it working on Windows 10.  Then to go back to the troubleshooting page at https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/ and run through all the recommended steps again to check I have implemented them.  The annoying thing about that page is that some options there do not appear on my system or are obscure.  For example it says add an exclusion in Windows Defender but it doesn't tell you what you are supposed to exclude.  Anyway I was satisfied that MSFS 2020 was excluded from the firewall.  Then to try MSFS 2020 again to see if maybe when it says "checking for updates" it will actually find one.

Then to find a way to drown my sorrows.

But yesterday I thought I found the answer

I remembered I had read somewhere that MSFS 2020 ought to be installed on drive C:. The article said "please install on drive C" and "some games won't work if not on drive C" implying that MSFS 2020 should be run from drive C. On my machine it was on drive E: a 1TB SSD!  That must be the problem!

My drive C: was not big enough to take MSFS 2020, so how to fix this?  Of course!  Back up my data files, make windows installation media, and install the Windows boot up partition on the existing drive E.  It will become drive C:, then reinstall MSFS 2020.  Brilliant! Problem solved.

A day later, I have a clean new Windows 10 machine all with the very latest updates, with no apps other than the Xbox stuff, a brand new download of MSFS 2020 and a brand new up to date graphics board driver.

***Guess what! Even with this clean machine, MSFS 2020 crashes even earlier than it used to before.***It checks for updates, then appears to load but as the progress bar reaches the end it gives me a blank screen (mostly pink these days).

Just for the record here is my set up:-

ASRock X570 Steel Legend motherboard with new Ryzen 5 2600 CPU and 32GB memory. All new.

GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB

Two monitors

Fresh Windows 10 installation version 2004 and updated again today

Latest driver for the graphics card (this driver is said to be compatible with MSFS 2020)

Fresh installation of MSFS 2020 on drive C:

Fresh installation of all Xbox stuff

Nothing else loaded to interfere with anything

Tried of course, running MSFS 2020 as administrator, either by itself or via Xbox (checking that I was logged in) or via the GeForce software.

MSFS 2020 does not work.

I too have a similar beast of a PC with pretty much the best parts I could buy as of last month. Not overclocking, no overlay running, just the sim. Crash to desktop happens almost everytime I Fly. Sometimes during flight and sometimes when moving between menus. I first noticed this when I was doing the tutorials and I would select "Next lesson" and CTD would happen 100% of the time so I started returing to the main menu instead. This worked for the Lessons part of the sim. Pretty dissapointed with the amount of crashes at this point. I hope there's an update soon.

Have the same issue. Just installed it via the player pass option on Xbox PC. Full download done. All installed on c drive. It crashed the first time whilst loading the game. Tried again. I was able to spend about 4 minutes in one of the tutorials. And again, stopped running and left me in the main desktop screen. No crash warnings, no codes. Just not running anymore. tried it a third time, now putting settings below the ultra settings that were recommended (to medium). Played another tutorial and crashed almost instantly after loading. Tried a fourth time, now selecting free flight. Loaded up the 747. Got as far as trying to release the breaks and it crashed again. 

Spend hours and no luck. Tried reinstall, tried latest drivers, tried all tips and tricks. Nothing works, it just keeps crashing for the 5th, 6th....99th time. It's just bad software.