MSFS 2024 Keeps Crashing? How to Find and Fix the Cause

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 crashes more than any sim should, and the official CTDs sub-forum is the single highest-volume support category on the entire site. The good news: most CTDs fall into a small number of categories, and you can usually identify which one in under five minutes if you know where to look. This guide is a tactical walkthrough — no "have you tried turning it off and on" filler.

Before you start, accept one principle: do not change two things at once. If you reinstall a driver, move the Community folder, and lower textures in the same session, you will never know which fix actually worked, and the next CTD will reset you to zero.

How do I find out why MSFS 2024 crashed?

Every CTD on Windows writes an entry to the Application log. That entry tells you which DLL the process died inside, which immediately narrows the problem to one of three categories.

Open Event Viewer (Win+R → eventvwr.msc) and navigate to Windows Logs → Application. Sort by date, find the most recent Error with source Application Error, and look at the description. You are hunting for two fields:

• Faulting application name: almost always FlightSimulator2024.exe
• Faulting module name: this is the diagnosis

Here is how to read the module name.

ucrtbase.dll — runtime / locale / audio

ucrtbase.dll is the Universal C Runtime. When MSFS dies inside it, the sim has thrown an unhandled exception that the runtime caught. The official MSFS support thread for this exact module identifies two dominant root causes: a missing English (US) language pack and a non-English system locale for non-Unicode programs.

Fix in this order:

1. Settings → Time & Language → Language & region → Add a language → English (United States), then install the full language pack (not just the display).
2. Control Panel → Region → Administrative → Change system locale → English (United States). Reboot.
3. Reinstall both x86 and x64 Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables (latest version from Microsoft).
4. If you still crash, do a clean boot (msconfig → hide all Microsoft services → disable the rest) and test. Common culprits flagged in the official thread are Nahimic audio, MSI Afterburner, and Corsair iCue. Realtek HD Audio Manager is also frequently reported in separate forum threads.

nvwgf2umx.dll or atidxx64.dll — GPU driver

These are the NVIDIA and AMD user-mode display drivers (for DirectX). A CTD inside them means the driver crashed, not the sim. This is overwhelmingly a driver problem, not a sim problem.

• Note your current driver version (NVIDIA Control Panel → System Information).
• The MSFS forum has multiple long threads where specific driver versions are reported as problematic — check the forums for the current known-bad version before updating. If you are on the latest Game Ready driver and crashing, swap to the matching Studio Driver — it is the same hardware support with more conservative validation.
• If neither works, use DDU in Safe Mode and roll back to a driver from one or two releases earlier.
• If you use VR and crash on entering VR mode, try disabling Foveated Rendering in OpenXR Toolkit — some users have reported that VR foveated rendering can trigger nvwgf2umx.dll crashes.

FlightSimulator2024.exe itself or a WASM module name

When the sim is its own faulting module, the crash is inside the engine — usually an add-on aircraft, a corrupted scenery package, or a SimConnect-using utility. Skip to the Community folder bisect below.

Other modules (ntdll.dll, KERNELBASE.dll)

These are generic Windows DLLs that show up when the real cause is one layer deeper. They are not diagnostic on their own. Use Event Viewer's XML view (right tab when an event is selected) — sometimes a more specific submodule is named there. Otherwise treat it as "unknown" and start with the Community folder bisect.

Is an add-on causing the crash?

The single highest-yield troubleshooting step in MSFS is moving add-ons out of the way and adding them back in halves. The sim will let you do this without uninstalling.

First, find your Community folder. The location depends on store:

• Microsoft Store / Game Pass: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Limitless_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community
• Steam: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024\Packages\Community (some installs use the older Microsoft Flight Simulator folder name — check both)

If you moved it to a custom drive during install, check UserCfg.opt in LocalCache\ — the InstalledPackagesPath line points to it.

Close MSFS 2024 entirely. Move (do not copy) the contents of Community into a temporary folder somewhere outside the sim's directory tree. Launch the sim.

• If the sim is stable: the crash is add-on related. Move half the add-ons back, launch again. Repeat the halving. You will isolate the offending folder in roughly log₂(N) launches — six add-ons becomes three launches, sixty becomes six.
• If the sim still crashes: the problem is in the core install or external to the sim entirely. Move on to the next step.

Safe Mode is the official version of the same thing

The sim creates a running.lock file at launch and removes it on clean exit. After a CTD, the file remains because the clean exit never happened. On the next launch the sim detects this leftover file and offers you Safe Mode, which disables every Community folder package and every Marketplace add-on for that session. If Safe Mode loads cleanly, that's confirmation the issue is in your add-ons even before you start the manual bisect.

You cannot manually trigger Safe Mode in the stock sim — there is a community-maintained PowerShell tool (MSFS-Safe-Mode-Switch on GitHub) that creates the running.lock file for you on demand.

Can VRAM or the rolling cache cause crashes?

A second-biggest category of CTDs is VRAM exhaustion. The sim does not gracefully degrade when it runs out of VRAM; it crashes. Symptoms: the crash happens minutes into a flight, not at launch; happens at busy airports, complex weather, or after panning the external view; Task Manager (or HWiNFO) shows VRAM usage at or near your card's limit just before death.

The two settings that drive VRAM hardest are Texture Resolution and Terrain LOD. Community reports suggest Ultra textures need approximately 8 GB VRAM minimum and can use 10–12 GB in dense areas. If you have 6 GB or 8 GB and you crash mid-flight, drop Texture Resolution one tier first. See the graphics settings guide for the full picture of what each slider costs.

Reset the rolling cache

The rolling cache stores streamed scenery and occasionally corrupts. Delete and rebuild it:

1. Close MSFS 2024.
2. Find ROLLINGCACHE.CCC — the default location depends on your install and whether you moved it. Check in-sim under Options → General → Data for the current path, or look in your packages folder (e.g. C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\MSFSPackages\).
3. Delete ROLLINGCACHE.CCC.
4. Launch the sim — it will rebuild on next streaming load.

If you moved the rolling cache to a custom drive, check that drive hasn't filled up — a full cache drive is itself a CTD cause.

Can OneDrive or antivirus cause MSFS 2024 to crash?

This is the most underrated CTD category. MSFS 2024 stores a lot of state in AppData and reads UserCfg.opt at launch. If anything else is touching those files at the same time, the sim crashes.

OneDrive sync of the Documents folder

If your Windows Documents folder is redirected to OneDrive (the default on most fresh Windows 11 installs), and your sim install path or any add-on path lives under Documents, OneDrive will lock files mid-write and MSFS will CTD. The forum thread "Need help with UserCfg.opt issue" is a textbook example — the user's OneDrive sync was rewriting UserCfg.opt while the sim was reading it.

Check: open Settings → Accounts → Windows backup → Manage sync settings. If Documents is being backed up to OneDrive and any MSFS path passes through Documents, either:

• Stop syncing the Documents folder, or
• Move the MSFS Community folder and any add-on package paths out of Documents entirely.

The sim's default LocalAppData install is not affected by this, but plenty of users have manually pointed the package path at Documents\MSFS2024 for convenience and inherited the problem.

Antivirus quarantine

Real-time scanning on the install path causes both stutters and occasional CTDs when a streamed scenery .bgl or .ccc file gets quarantined mid-read. Add the following to your AV's exclusion list (paths approximate — adjust for your install):

• The MSFS 2024 install directory (Steam or MS Store package folder)
• C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Limitless_8wekyb3d8bbwe\
• Your Community folder, wherever it lives

Windows Defender is generally well-behaved with MSFS; third-party AVs (Norton, McAfee, Bitdefender, Kaspersky) are the usual offenders.

Run as administrator (once)

If you suspect permissions, launch the sim once as Administrator. If it loads, the problem is a write-permission failure somewhere in the install path. Fix the permissions properly — don't permanently run as admin.

Does my hardware cause the crash?

There are a few hardware-specific CTDs that have been officially acknowledged.

More than 32 logical CPU cores: Threadripper and high-end Xeon systems crashed at the 87–90% loading stage on launch. Microsoft acknowledged the bug in the official Known Issues article and a fix landed in patch 1.2.7.0 (December 2024) — if you are on an older build with a 64-thread CPU, update the sim. The interim workaround used at the time was to disable cores in BIOS to bring active count to ≤32.

Beta SimConnect crashes (SU3 build 1.5.10.0): Beta participants saw CTDs tied to SimConnect-using third-party tools. If you are opted into the beta channel and crashing, the first thing to test is opting out.

Sim Update 3 (1.5.27.0, August 2025): Fixed crashes in the airport system, path following, VR entry/exit, model behavior parser, WASM gauge corruption, and a glass-cockpit external-view exit crash. If you are still on a pre-SU3 build and hitting any of those scenarios, updating is the fix.

What if a specific aircraft add-on is crashing the sim?

Complex third-party add-ons (PMDG, Fenix, iniBuilds, FlyByWire) carry their own CTD diagnostic flows on their vendor support sites because they integrate deep into the sim's WASM and SimConnect layers. If you have isolated the crash to one specific add-on via the bisect, go to that vendor's support hub directly rather than the MSFS forum — they will have the current known issues for their product.

• PMDG: PMDG support forum
• Fenix: Fenix Support Hub
• FlyByWire: their Discord and GitHub issues

A generic principle: an add-on that worked in MSFS 2020 and was ported to MSFS 2024 sometimes ships with stale dependencies. After every Sim Update, check the vendor's site for a 2024-specific build. Running a 2020 version inside 2024 is a top-three cause of recurring CTDs.

How do I reset MSFS 2024 without reinstalling?

When you genuinely have no idea what broke, Microsoft's official restore to vanilla state procedure is the nuclear option. It walks you through clearing local cache, removing add-ons, and rebuilding a clean state without a full reinstall. Do this before a full reinstall — it almost always achieves the same result faster.

When should I file a support ticket, and what should I attach?

If you've worked through the steps above and still CTD, file a ticket at flightsimulator.zendesk.com. A useful ticket attaches:

1. DxDiag output — run dxdiag from the Start menu, click Save All Information.
2. Event Viewer XML — right-click the relevant Application Error → Copy → Copy as XML. Paste into a .txt file.
3. A list of every package in your Community folder — a simple dir > community.txt is enough.
4. The exact reproduction steps — aircraft, departure airport, weather, time of day, where in the flight the crash happens.
5. What you have already tried — the bisect result, driver versions tested, whether Safe Mode is stable.

Tickets with detailed diagnostic information are far more likely to receive timely attention than bare "the sim crashed" reports.

How much RAM and VRAM do I need to stop crashing?

A surprising amount of CTD frequency comes down to having enough headroom. 16 GB of RAM with MSFS 2024 in a busy airport is already at the edge — once Windows starts paging to disk, instability follows. 8 GB of VRAM at Ultra textures is similarly marginal.

If you've fixed the software side and still see occasional crashes in demanding scenarios, the airliner hardware guide covers the practical RAM, VRAM, and SSD thresholds where instability mostly disappears. None of it makes a buggy add-on stable, but it removes the resource-exhaustion category of CTD entirely.

Summary: The Diagnostic Order That Actually Works

1. Open Event Viewer, identify the faulting module.
2. If it points at a runtime DLL, fix locale and audio drivers.
3. If it points at a GPU DLL, fix or roll back the driver.
4. Otherwise, bisect the Community folder.
5. Check OneDrive and antivirus interference.
6. Reset the rolling cache and lower texture settings.
7. Use the official vanilla-restore procedure.
8. File a Zendesk ticket with the diagnostic artifacts above.

Work the list in order. Change one thing at a time. Note what you did. That alone solves the majority of CTDs without ever needing a reinstall.