I've just tried the procedure again. Everything OK until the final step.

Complete map : with 817 meta .dct OK
I complete map: 102294 meta .dct error

Could the meta data be corrupted somehow? As no problem with the navcore update.

Are you sure that FA has updated the meta...so after selecting option 1 the updated meta.txt is dated 10/03/2020 16:44 EEST ?

ive had a look in the updated_meta folder.

Its dated 16/04/2019 and the latest meta data seems to be:
D1 FC EB 24 FC 9B DD 03 E3 16 F2 E2 5C 0A 49 EA United_Kingdom_and_Republic_of_Ireland-101852.meta ; United_Kingdom_and_Republic_of_Ireland 1025_9386
E9 99 05 E3 B8 14 D5 7C 7C 4D E5 DF E0 61 26 9F United_Kingdom_and_Republic_of_Ireland-101897.meta ; United_Kingdom_and_Republic_of_Ireland 1025_9432

I'm after the data for the 1045 map, right?

when i select update FA it appears to download an updated version but it still shows the april 2019 version

That's nearly a year out of date...no wonder you're having problems!

Selecting option 1 should update it as per my screenshot above so download another copy of FA in case it's corrupt by clicking here

Extract it to your device and select option 1 which should look like the above > then select option 2 to activate the map

it seems to be hanging at step 2. how long should it take?

Only a few seconds...

i left it 10 minutes. no message to say everything ok etc but it seems to have the map on!
its easy when you have the right tools. Thank you for your help and patience.

Just a quick tip if anyone else is struggling to download the fastactivate. Try to right click and "save as" it seemed to get around the browser scanning and deleting the downloaded file.

Hooray...I suspect you accidentally scrolled down when activating the map and was looking at the blank screen below the activation readout but anyway, you finally got there

Btw, all you need to do is to temporarily turn off 'Windows Defender SmartScreen Filter' to download files that Defender doesn't like