Safe Mode permanently disabling ALL add-ons (is not useful)

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
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When starting the MSFS 2024 in Safe Mode all 3rd party add-ons are permanently disabled. I am sure that is a “feature” and not a bug, but it is wasting time for users that have more than a few add-ons.

I activated a few new add-ons, after which I got an “unusually long loading time” message and had to stop the loading of MSFS 2024 using the task manager. After that I started MSFS 2024 in Safe Mode (for the first time) to disable the add-ons I had just activated to see if that fixes the problem. However because Safe Mode deactivates everything permanently I now have to go through more than a hundred (actually more like 200+) add-ons and activate them again individually. Add-ons that have worked fine for me.

Doing that once is annoying, but since it is highly likely that there will be more add-ons causing problems in the future, it becomes the one issue that actually causes me to question if MSFS 2024 is worth my time. at least for now.

Obviously there are still lots of other problems, but those can usually be avoided or ignored. I don’t need to do everything at once, I have been having fun with 2024, and I am sure a lot of the issues will be fixed in time. However especially those basic “quality of life” issues make a bad impression.

I file this as a bug although it could be considered a feature request, because bad user interfaces and other design decisions, especially the once wasting users time, are bugs (in my opinion).

Thank you for all the development effort. The new simulator is often quite amazing. :slight_smile:

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Basically it would be useful to have more states, than “enabled” and “disabled”. I mean “not available” is already a third state. At least two more states like “temporarily disabled (safe mode)” and “hidden” would be useful. “Hidden” could be used to hide add-ons from active management, that are not needed anymore in 2024 or that currently have non-sim-crashing bugs like invisible terminal buildings in airports. Right now I have to remember the add-ons that have major visual issues.

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3

The sim functions as designed in this respect, so this is not considered a bug.
Any desired changes should be submitted to the Wishlist category.

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4

Don’t use safe mode, use addon linker instead to manage your community folder.

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5

Thank you! However my add-ons are mostly Marketplace bought, because I started on XBox before getting a PC. I am still flying on both systems.

Also, while I see the potential problems with the new streaming approach of MSFS 2024, it has freed up a lot of space of my drives and overall has been working pretty well for me. So there isn’t much that can be managed locally.

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Thank you, I will create a Wishlist topic. I assume there is no way to move this topic to the proper place.

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I use addon linker in 2020, to LINK folder of downloaded content to my community folder (as well as some to official).

But how does a linker work with content that has to always be downloaded .. ? or is that a limitation of addon-linker with 2024

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It only works with items in community.

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I think, if you read the advanced section in the documentation, addon-linker can also link folders into Official.. at least it can in 2020
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I agree with OP this is a terrible design. I had the same problem and also have many marketplace addons. The new library is worse than the old content manager which is really disappointing because we really needed something better to manage hundreds of addons.

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Inside the FS24 AppData there is a file LocalCache/Content.xml which is where the sim stores the enabled status of each addon. Back this up before enabling any marketplace addons and then if you get a startup hang or crash then simply copy back your backup to overwrite the original, and avoid safe mode at all costs. This will reset you to a working state and let you try again without starting from scratch.

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Many thanks for this.
I have just spent time re-enabling all my aircraft
and knowing this has allowed me to backup the Content.xml file for
the next time.

I can’t help but think that as with MSFS 2020, starting again in the full mode would be far better implemented if it re-enabled everything that it disabled.

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So there isn’t a way to “turn off” safe mode once it’s been activated? I tried launching in safe mode earlier today to try to fix loading crashes and can’t get out of it. I have a ton of add-ons, both payware and freeware that I now can’t access. What a load of BS! Asobo needs to fix this!!!

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As above, it is a nuisance, but it’s not too hard editing the content.xml file
to reactivate everything.
Using the “Replace all” function in your text file editor will make the task
much quicker.

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OK, I think I’ve got it. I’ll try later on today - many thanks!

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Well, the only way I can actually launch and run to a flight is through safe mode - even after using the recovery procedure in this thread. When I try to run with my community folder add-ons intact, all’s I get is either a hang at ~55%, or it will load with only aircraft add-ons in the community folder but won’t actually run. Just the spinning circle at the bottom right of the screen.
Really frustrating. Thinking I’m going to have to do a re-install.

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Hi, don’t forget to vote for this at the top of the page. At 14 votes right now, nobody’s going to fix this. This is a huge pain for me, too.

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Yep I voted here ages ago. 14 is low :frowning:
Sadder thing is this was their “design decision”. Clearly not thought through as to how it would work for us players. I doubt it will get changed. Best you can do for now is make a copy of your Content.xml (in the supposedly fixed SU2 where it won’t duplicate rows, even tho they said that was already fixed but it’s not) and keep that safe to restore if you happen to lose all your enabled selections again.

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19

For some reason sim was a no go yesterday and as a result had no choice but to start via safe mode to start the sim (2024!) … ARG.. And found out that all my add-ons got permanently disabled.. and the only way to reactivate them was to enable each manually via my library and content.xml. Safe mode should only disable for that start up and NOT permanently disable all the add-ons!

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It is what it is but you can mitigate the task of editing the Content.xml file by using the “Replace all” function in Notepad:

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