Problem Re-installing EFB on new hard drive

Ok, finally got to the bottom of the problem.

After the steps above I tried both Sim EFB and a flight recorder program that both try and connect to MSFS2020 using sim connect, both were not working as they said they could not connect via Sim Connect.

I downloaded the SDK and tried to run some of the EXE's that were included within the SDK, they complained about missing DLL's, searched these down and it seems they get installed as part of a VC_redist install. Searched down the vc_redist.x65 and downloaded this from Microsoft's site. It seemed to need at lead the > version 14, you can get the redist from this page docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170.

Once that was installed both the Sim EFB and the flight recorder program started working properly.

Think there needs to be comments put into the installation instructions or the install process changed to flag up its missing and how to get and install it. Spent too many hours chasing this down, what a PITA.

Also, beware of when downloading the SDK from within MSFS2020, unless you have IE6 set as the default browser, the download popup screen will never pop, yet another PITA that just should not happen.