Ok, This is what worked for my setup. The issue I had was that DCS would crash on loadup and the log file identified 'edcore.dll' as the reason.
The issue was that my Antivirus software (Bitdefender) only created a rule for DCS UPDATE.exe and not the DCS MT exe file. Once I added the DCS MT exe file in my antivirus sofware as an exception through the firewall - no more issues.
Hopefully this is helpful to someone !
Happy New Year to everyone !
Shack's post in Suddenly DCS is crashing ... was marked as the answer