My cockpit stays dark and the yoke is deflected fully to the left
If this is the case, you are likely not using Prepar3D 4.5 Hotfix 2 (4.5.13.32097) or later. Please make sure to update at least your Prepar3D client to this version and then try again. This problem generally means that the CRJ gauge DLL could not be loaded due to a missing dependency (= another file that is required). Several customers reported that a reinstall of Windows fixed the issue for them.