For what it’s worth, I just finished a second reinstall. No change in the error status.
Might be totally unrelated but I’ll pass it along anyway. After the install finished and I got into the UI I was met with the Essential Packages missing error as before.
This time I chose the Install Later option instead of the Update option. I then loaded into a flight at KATL. Once in I noticed that there was a lot of AI traffic. Went into settings and RealTime Air Traffic was turned on (I had it off) and the Ground Density slider was set to 50.
I turned off the traffic and set the slide back to 0. Resumed the flight but the AI was still there. Restarted the flight and no change. The AI was still active (I did recheck the options and they were Off and 0).
Jumped out and closed the sim. Restarted and now it is requiring the update and forcing a quit as before.
Just thought I’d put it out there.