Scenery indexes - still safe to delete?

[Senchay6131]

Hi guys.

For the last years after bigger MSFS updates i always did the following routine:

• rename Community folder
• delete scenery indexes (i do this mostly because i use addon linker and often a completely different set of scenery is active, compared to what is in the scenery indexes folder)
• delete Rolling Cache and set it back up
• start the sim

That always prevented me from having update issues and sometimes it also fixed them, in the case i didnt do it.
I think this is also some form of a suggested routine, ive seen it in Zendesk.

Now the issue, if it is one, is the following. The last two times, for the last 2 msfs updates i did this too but both times i ended up with a corrupt Sim.

With corrupt i mean it goes into the state ppl call OOBE (out of box experience, many topics here). The Sim starts asking me to setup accessibility settings, and all the stuff one has to do on first startup.
Then it asks for mandatory missing packages and is basically stuck in this loop, until one does quite a handful of steps to fix it.
On this forum are tons of topics about this issue but so far i thought this happens with corrupt cloud saves.

So my question is: was these both times coincidence and i had another bug at the same time the updates appeared or is it not safe to do this routine anymore, especially the Scenery Indexes part?

I ask this because its in this file where all that “missing base content” is set-up. So it looks a bit that it could be that this is the reason i got into that corrupt state?

[Senchay6131]

There is one addition to that question already^^ Why do the sceneries that are uninstalled still show up in scenery indexes?

Lets say i delete Asobo EDJA because i have payware. Still i see EDJA in the scenery indexes. Is that intended?

[AncientDisc6642]

I suspect that you are overthinking this.
Scenery .dat files can still be deleted and in fact doing this whenever something is added, or taken away from the simulator is, as you say, recommended practice.
If you still see Asobo EDJA after deleting it, it is most likely exactly why the scenery .dat files should be deleted after a change.
If you only see your addon EDJA, that is how it should be.

[Senchay6131]

I’m overthinking this because it caused me PTSD tbh. It took hours to get the sim back into normal state, from "missing base packages. And I still don’t really know how I managed to get back.
It’s just weird that it’s happened both times after doing this.