[KG64_Cnopicilin]

Somehow, after I installed this, I started CTDing at 60% during the startup load

Welcome to the forum!

1. Do you have a mod pack or a custom install?
2. Did you follow the instructions precisely?
3. Do you have the latest buttons file?

first of all, thanks.
I have the custom install, I followed the install instructions precisely, and I tried downloading and applying the buttons file multiple times.

So it has to be air.ini problem. From SAS~Cirx's guide:
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the 60% crash troubleshooter

This article assumes that you have a modded version of IL2 that worked in the past, but that now crashed to desktop at 60% load after you installed a new plane.

Here is a step by step guide that will get you out of it 99.9 % of the time.

The 60% crash explained :

60 % crashes are caused by a broken chain of reference between your games air.ini file, the contents of your mods folder, and your buttons file.

When you load the game, it boots up these three things in the following way.

1) It loads the air.ini file, which tells it what planes to load.
2) It then goes to look for these planes, first in your mods folder, and if it doesn’t not find them there, it looks for them in your game’s own “SFS” files.
3) When it finds the plane, the plane’s files will tell it which Flightmodel data’s needed for that plane. Flightmodel data is contained in the Buttons file.

If at any stage in this process, the game is told to look for something and it cannot find it, it will crash back to desktop at 60% loading time.
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So check your air.ini