I am having an issue with Microsoft Flight Simulator, and have had this same issue for a while now. the simulator deletes its entire Community and One Store folder on its own whenever there is an update. in fact, just today it said there was a mandatory update. upon it’s completion of installing said update, I got the same screen when starting the sim. checking to see if I gained disk space, I find that the sim deleted itself again.
I am running the microsoft store version, and have only had this issue since the sim began using the xbox app. its a complete piece of garbage honestly, I can’t even make a good flight without the sim uninstalling itself.
to reproduce, simply force the game to think there is a mandatory update and then install said “UpDaTe” through the microsoft store.
this has been experienced since SU5 or 6. I missed one of them due to being away for a little while.
In any case, I have given up on MSFS for the time being as any ability to make a flight on it is quickly shot down. Asobo please fix this quickly. I’m quite fed up having to reinstall this entire simulator every other dang week. its getting old real fast and has become a usless waste of disk space.
No I’m not a beta tester, and that doesn’t help much since I had nothing in the community folder anyway (from the reinstall last week) and what good is it if the sim uninstalls randomly? why bother even installing addons? I need to be sure the sim will work before spending hours going and installing stuff. Base issues first, then eye candy.
Yes, MSFS 2020 has been known to suffer an uncommented uninstall. This has happened to me and many others. I have a theory that it is a third-party ‘Community’ folder add-on manager that is the culprit. MSFS addon-linker is OK in my experience however, I would be cautious about using any other software to manage add-on’s in MSFS. I don’t think the cause of this problem was ever truly identified. In my case the simulator disappeared entirely leaving the executable and it’s related folders and files on my C drive. I have the simulator installed on a dedicated drive. You will find many references to this problem in this forum.
I have heard of it, but not associated to an addon manager.
I set my PC up to make and use symbolic links, at least a year ago, and they work flawlessly.
Thanks for the info, really appreciated.
symbolic links? I only have one drive on my laptop and don’t have an option to put it anywhere else. It really needs to be looked into why this happens. I don’t have an addon manager installed so I don’t think this is the case for me.
If you weren’t a beta tester, and you don’t use a library/addon manager, I’m at a loss on this one.
A symbolic link makes the computer think a file is in a certain location, when in fact it is in another spot altogether. Here is an article on how to do it.
That way you can store your files in any location, and use the symbolic link to make the computer think it is in the community folder.
It has the advantage of being able to make links for the addons you want to use for the session you are going to have, thus the PC doesn’t see all your addons in the community folder, and this decreases loading times - a lot.