Yet another reason why I stay far  away from Betas. 

12 hours ago, Silicus said:

I got this when I uninstalled certain default aircraft that I never use, that are part of some 'Bush trips' or 'Challenges'. I got a hangar full of aircraft that I never use, endlessly scared that I will screw up my fine installation.

Been thinking about this. I’ve removed a lot in content manager that I don’t need - bush trips, scenic flights, flight training and most default aircraft. Also quite a few airports, as I have 3rd party that replace them. 

Now I’m afraid to remove anything from my shiny new installation. So I’m wondering:

• what packages are “essential to run MSFS”? 
• what packages are “essential to ensure the best gaming experience”?

This ordeal reminds me of the memorable soup kitchen episode from Seinfeld. If you end up doing something that conflicts with the extremely rigid rules that Microsobo have forced upon us, then “No flight simming for you!”

 

Edited March 29, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

4 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Been thinking about this. I’ve removed a lot in content manager that I don’t need - bush trips, scenic flights, flight training and most default aircraft. Also quite a few airports, as I have 3rd party that replace them. 

Now I’m afraid to remove anything from my shiny new installation. So I’m wondering:

•  

I remove stuff all the time in and out of Official. But I never use content manager to do it. I use Addon Linker set to move stuff in and out of Community, but also set to move stuff in and out of Official.

So if MSFS won't boot, I click on Addon Linker and put everything back into Official. Moving links is faster than moving folders full of files. And I can do it when MSFS is not running, even if it won't boot.

To set up Addon LInker to move in and out of Official as well as Community, you need to make sure the MSFS content stored in Addon Linker folders relating to Official is stored far apart from the AL folders relating to Community. For instance one cannot be a subfolder of the other. But AL will pop up a warning window to guide you if you try and create a forbidden file structure.

I never left the beta in Xbox insider, I keep a backup of my f:\mfs folder in an external disk, that I keep with the latest stable release, and I always reinstall from there...

It's rather fast, less than 1 hr...

2 hours ago, Fielder said:

I remove stuff all the time in and out of Official. But I never use content manager to do it. I use Addon Linker set to move stuff in and out of Community, but also set to move stuff in and out of Official.

So if MSFS won't boot, I click on Addon Linker and put everything back into Official. Moving links is faster than moving folders full of files. And I can do it when MSFS is not running, even if it won't boot.

To set up Addon LInker to move in and out of Official as well as Community, you need to make sure the MSFS content stored in Addon Linker folders relating to Official is stored far apart from the AL folders relating to Community. For instance one cannot be a subfolder of the other. But AL will pop up a warning window to guide you if you try and create a forbidden file structure.

I did that when going in and out of SU11 beta and it worked well (I had a 1yr+ break from flight simming). Following your advice IIRC.

But this time it's like my MSFS suddenly got corrupted, without me messing around with the Official folder. 

54 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

my MSFS suddenly got corrupted, without me messing around with the Official folder. 

I attribute such issues to Microsoft's extremely tight Xbox DRM. If there is even the slightest suspicion that files have been tampered with, it is: GAME OVER. no matter if something is missing or got corrupted during download etc. I once had a problem where I had inadvertently deleted a component of the Xbox Live Game services. there was no way to restore/recover from it and MSFS would never start again, no matter what. fortunately I had an image backup (Macrium) of my SYSTEM partition. would be interesting to know if similar issues exist with other Xbox games?

Edited March 29, 20242 yr by turbomax

Is this another MS Store version debacle?

35 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

Is this another MS Store version debacle?

I've got the MS version since the beginning yeah. 

I believe there are two installation types - the older "encrypted" one, and the newer one with the FlighSimulator.exe in C:\XboxGames\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Content (non-encrypted). I've got the latter. 

The whole ordeal that I had to go through was pretty rough though... The Official folder with all WU's occupies 347GB on my SSD. Imagine downloading all of that with a slow internet connection... 

Edited March 29, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

8 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

what packages are “essential to run MSFS”?

C:\XboxGames\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Content\FlightSimulator.exe  

but I could be wrong.😃

2 minutes ago, turbomax said:

C:\XboxGames\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Content\FlightSimulator.exe  

but I could be wrong.😃

That's the "base" installation, around 2GB I believe. I think something got messed up in my C:\MSFS\Official\OneStore folder that caused some kind of corruption that I was not able to troubleshoot. I did try though 😅 

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I think something got messed up in my C:\MSFS\Official\OneStore folder that caused some kind of corruption

since you didn't have a backup of that folder from when it was still intact, you couldn't restore it. might want to include that in your backup strategy?

" I still got the "missing packages" error message"

now I remember I had a similar problem long ago and could not recover from it, I don't think it has anything to do with being on the beta or not. if during a download a  file gets corrupted/only partially downloaded, this can cause serious trouble and hints to a problem in their download manager. if you can identify the file in question perhaps one can remove it manually and restart the download:

DELETE THE PACKAGES

• Close the sim
• Navigate to the Package installation folder
• Delete the packages named *.fspatch or *.fspackage

on my pc it is here:

H:\FS2020\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Content\Packages

should you still be interested, here for your reading pleasure:

https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016844080-Basic-troubleshooting-How-to-troubleshoot-packages-installation-decompressing-issues?input_string=problems+with+installer+downloads

https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/qjbt4r/partial_install_loop_for_update/
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/stuck-on-decompressing-fspatch-files/274024/21?page=2
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/my-download-is-stuck-help/162020/62?page=4
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/stuck-on-essential-packages-update/544990/24?page=2
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/sim-update-1-14-5-0-re-downloading-all-the-time/376129/21?page=2

 

Edited March 29, 20242 yr by turbomax

3 hours ago, turbomax said:

since you didn't have a backup of that folder from when it was still intact, you couldn't restore it. might want to include that in your backup strategy?

Absolutely. The first thing I did after the complete installation was to make a backup copy. 

3 hours ago, turbomax said:

now I remember I had a similar problem long ago and could not recover from it, I don't think it has anything to do with being on the beta or not. if during a download a  file gets corrupted/only partially downloaded, this can cause serious trouble and hints to a problem in their download manager. if you can identify the file in question perhaps one can remove it manually and restart the download:

Thanks for the advice! Hopefully it won't be such an ordeal next time it happens. Or even better - I hope it never happens again 😅 And thanks for the links - I'll look into them.