First installation here, same problem, I don’t know if it makes a differrence but I have chosen the Packages installation location on another drive than the Roaming folder is located, but it’s the same drive on which the Steam installed the MFS.
Everytime i reinstall FS, a new issue pops up, but they all feel the same.
How to solve the problem if I only got an Helium folder where wgs should be?
I have the same issue. I wonder, if this applies only to people downloading from Microsoft Store/Xbox App or also for people who bought the game from Steam?
Hello Folks
You wanna fly, and you face missing packages quit message? Don’t uninstall…Do the following steps…
@baghead2004 already posted this. Thanks to him.
Step One:
navigate to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages \Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official\OneStore
Step Two: Look for the folder fs-base-history. It is small…under 10MB. DELETE IT.
Step Three:
Launch the game. It will ask to to re-download the deleted folder. Go ahead, install.
Step Four
And this is important. When asked to update. Choose Install Later.
Enjoy flying…Do the same if until they fix. But you don’t have to miss the fun of flying starring missing packages.
Cheers.
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I use microsoft store…but if you are on steam…just look for a folder fs-base-history…delete it, then restart the sim…and reinstall that deleted folder…and then choose install later when offered to update ,
In this way, you can use the sim and enjoy your flight. You dont have to install and uninstall…I did that and it is huge pain.
I am using retail version, but I thought it was store dependent. Nevertheless I did as you said and works
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This worked for me also. Thanks a lot. I had reinstalled the whole thing 3 times.
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Does anyone know what to do when the Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe file is not even in the packages folder?
Do you have the Steam version?
Depends on whether you are on steam or Microsoft store…
Just search for fs-base-history, delete that folder and start the sim…accept the installation (takes 4-6 seconds) and choose install later for the update. In this way, you can enjoy your flights while they find a fix. And when you are done and exit the sim, should you see the missing package message, repeat the above steps and fly. Cheers.
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Hey fellaz, I think it is fixed now. Update working normal…no more missing packages…Thank you MSFS Team.
So, I found a solution that worked for me:
Install the sim on C: and then select for the Updates (the main part of data) to be in a folder on another drive instead of just installing the entire sim on a secondary drive in the first place
The problem is not happening anymore on my system 
Hi can you explain to me
so you install the launcher on C ( 1,8 Go) and the rest on an other disk correct ?
I’m now running into this issue YET AGAIN with version 1.29.30.0 after performing an update in-game at launch. I just get the infamous “essential files are missing” warning and only the option to quit (can’t get into launcher).
I’ve deleted everything and reinstalled without luck, checked integrity of files, checked the config file to ensure it’s pointing to the correct packages directory all without luck. However, I did notice that my drive had 120GB free space so was curious if perhaps a game this large just didn’t realize that there’s not enough space on the drive. Once I cleared out older games, I now have a different reinstall screen and appears to be downloading.
Is it possible the game is just too dumb to realize that the updates it wants to install, or attempts to install, won’t fit on its installation drive, and once you free up some space it has no issue?
UPDATE: CONFIRMED FIX!!! Seems like it’s not properly detecting that the drive lacked space enough for all the updates, tried to update, and then always errored out. Moving some games to my backup drive to free up 250GB on my SSD main drive resolved it and can now be opened without issue!!!
Read my last post. May be a download size issue and the game isn’t appropriately checking beforehand since they download a stupid amount of updates/files.
Yes because until it knows where your ‘official’ folder lies it assumes you need to download all mandatory content. Editing UserCfg with the folder’s correct path before restarting again would usually solve the problem.
Please see my prior posts outlining how I fixed the issue. They should probably make the installer smarter so users without solid troubleshooting abilities have a shot at knowing what’s wrong and then are able to hopefully work around this issue. The installer clearly knows where the official folder is, there just wasn’t enough space to download the full packages and it doesn’t seem to assess that there’s not enough space prior to attempting download/install; I’ve never really run into an installer/updater without the ability to assess if there’s enough free space to actually perform updates it’s trying to download, ha ha ha.
Ah now I get you … One way to try would be to point it to a drive with enough space and as soon as it starts downloading close the sim and then edit the Cfg. The few files that got through first can be safely deleted as they will be added to the right place with the next start.
Of course MS could change this behaviour with a pre-download file checker but that would mean added install time for everyone.
Unfortunately for me it didn’t work. I freed up over 160GB on my primary SSD / C Drive. And the drive where the game is installed on has more than 1TB left of free space. Yet I am still met with this frustrating error. I wonder where the threshold lies of how much free space is required since I’m not sure if can free up over 250GB
-edit-
Managed to squeeze up to 220GB of free disk space, but that’s it. Still no luck.
-edit 2-
Finally decided to do a complete reinstall, and now it works. I do hope though that this isn’t going to be customary to have to do a full reinstall of the game after each update, since it took two days for the whole thing to download…