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Is full clean reinstall better than just updating?


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Yesterday I was trying to install the update for Flight Simulator (2020) and at around 18GB downloaded it kept looping between 18GB-18.26GB at 312 of 353 and I let it go on for about an hour it the update download still kept looping at the same 2 items. The items were a couple of the the 747-8i patches. When it hit 18.26GB it went back down to 18.06GB and started downloading those items again and did this repeating until I quit the update download and decided to just uninstall Flight Simulator (2020) to do a clean install of the game and even then it would not respond when I clicked on play. I finally found out on my own that I had to install the Digital Ownership app before clicking on play. I also ended up reinstalling Windows 10 and removing the folders that the previous Flight Simulator installation left on my D: drive during the troubleshooting. Finally at this point I'm almost done downloading Flight Simulator. Is a full clean install more reliable than just updating Flight Simulator each time an update for Flight Simulator is released? I never had so much trouble installing Flight Simulator as I did today and the recent update that was released yesterday was the first time I could not update Flight Simulator from my existing installation of Flight Simulator.
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Sorry to hear of your problems. You should not have had to reinstall the software. The problem you had on the looping of the 1 or 2 items during the update, I have seen that before. There is some kind of interaction between the PC and the servers where it sees an error and starts over - back to 0% - and keeps doing that. When I had that problem I had to Reduce the download speed. Yes painful but necessary to bypass the error. I used Netlimiter to turn down the download speed. I think I set it from 20 Mbs to 10 Mbs. After the updates were successful I removed the limit. Others may know why this is a problem but I did the workaround when I had the issue. Doing a search on the search on the software name and the problem can quite often get an answer from the community somewhere.

My advice is that reinstalling the software should almost never be necessary. And reinstalling Windows should never be the solution unless there is a hardware problem that prevents getting to the desktop and using the tools.

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As an Alpha tester I would do a full install with every update. With the actual release version though you shouldn’t have to do that. But.. with this latest update being a big one, I decided to do it.. completely uninstall MSFS and reinstall it. I have quite a fast internet connection and it all went very smoothly, unlike the sim once I’d got it running. I removed it again late last night & let it reinstall while I went to bed. Again the installation was painless. I installed the extra stuff when I got up, but there were no problems.

I’m now going through my addons... slowing installing them & checking for crashes etc.

 

Regards

Steve

Intel I9-13900K - Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX - 64Gb DDR5 5600Mhz - Asus RTX4090 ROG STRIX 24GB

3x 43” Panasonic 4k TVs - Corsair RMx 1200W PSU - 2 x 2TB M.2,  2 x 4TB SATA III and 1 x 4TB M.2 SSDs.

Pico 4  VR Headset - Honeycomb Alpha Yoke - Honeycomb Bravo Throttle Unit

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And then there are those who have done a clean install and still can't download the sim :)
Windows 10 Pro, 32 gigs DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GForce RTX 3070, Intel I7 10700 running at 3.8, with Noctua NH-L9x65, Premium Low-Profile CPU Cooler-HP Reverb G2 for Virtual Reality
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And then there are those who have done a clean install and still can't download the sim :)

 

Sadly that’s true.

One thing to remember when uninstalling is that it doesn’t remove everything. There were still many gigabytes left on mine which I deleted before starting the reinstall. I always install to a custom folder though ( D:\\MSFS ) which makes it very easy.

 

Regards

Steve

Intel I9-13900K - Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX - 64Gb DDR5 5600Mhz - Asus RTX4090 ROG STRIX 24GB

3x 43” Panasonic 4k TVs - Corsair RMx 1200W PSU - 2 x 2TB M.2,  2 x 4TB SATA III and 1 x 4TB M.2 SSDs.

Pico 4  VR Headset - Honeycomb Alpha Yoke - Honeycomb Bravo Throttle Unit

Thrustmaster TPR Rudder Pedals - Saitek Throttles

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Sorry to hear of your problems. You should not have had to reinstall the software. The problem you had on the looping of the 1 or 2 items during the update, I have seen that before. There is some kind of interaction between the PC and the servers where it sees an error and starts over - back to 0% - and keeps doing that. When I had that problem I had to Reduce the download speed. Yes painful but necessary to bypass the error. I used Netlimiter to turn down the download speed. I think I set it from 20 Mbs to 10 Mbs. After the updates were successful I removed the limit. Others may know why this is a problem but I did the workaround when I had the issue. Doing a search on the search on the software name and the problem can quite often get an answer from the community somewhere.

My advice is that reinstalling the software should almost never be necessary. And reinstalling Windows should never be the solution unless there is a hardware problem that prevents getting to the desktop and using the tools.

 

I shouldn't have to artificially downgrade my internet download speed either to get a reliable download, especially using a 3rd party program to do it. Unless my internet connection is unstable at it's rated speed, such as getting packet loss during downloads, I really shouldn't have to do that, and even if I do experience unreliable internet at the speed I'm suppose to be getting, I should contact my ISP about it and not run a 3rd party program to artificially slow it down to get a reliable connection not to mention that downloading through the MS Store never gets even close to my full download connection speed anyways. I'm on a 100 mbps plan and the fastest download speed I ever got from the MS Store when downloading this game was 85 mbps for a bit and then it went quickly back down and it usually hovered between 7-8 mbps while download this game from the MS Store. Also I finally got MSFS installed yesterday and didn't even need to slow down my internet speed to do it like you suggested and this time without the looping issue during the download at that particular spot. Also I noticed that this time, the installation didn't create a Program Files, Window Apps, and WPSystem folders on my D drive this time. The D drive is where I have MSFS installed. The only reason why I reinstalled Windows was in case there were any traces of MSFS and it's associated files left that could have possibly interfered with redownloading MSFS. Also would edited camera files for aircraft in MSFS interfere with downloading updates? Could that explain the looping problem I had with downloading those updates to the 747-8i, which is one of the aircraft I edited the camera.cfg file? I read that some people had to remove mods to get this game to update successfully, and I'm wondering if that includes user-edited camera.cfg files?

Edited by Dave68
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