Sim Update from MS Store deleted my MSFS2020 copy

Yesterday, upon hearing about the release, I went to the MS Store to update the sim.

When the update started updating, I stopped the update because I forgot to remove my community folder.

From there it just went downhill and all of a sudden there was no update to be found just to realise I dont have a sim anymore.

The whole sim deleted itself!!! Why???

This is ridiculously stupid and need to be fixed. I dont have a 130gb just lying around to download a sim everytime it decides to go haywire.

Please can you provide feedback as to why this happend???

I think you already know WHY –

When the update started updating, I stopped the update because I forgot to remove my community folder.

But yes, stopping & then re-starting the update, SHOULD not cause you to have to re-install the whole Sim from scratch,

The even more frustrating part is that if you had continued, with content in Community, the update would most likely have been 100% successful.

Now the reality – You are HIGHLY Unlikely to get any meaningful help or response to your issue, apart from “Re-Install” MSFS, so you may as well bite the bullet and do that, rather than wasting time asking for help, that really nobody is able to give you.

BTW: about $50 buys you a 1TB HD these days, which you could use to IMAGE your current HD, so when things like this happen, you have both option to RESTORE from that backup, – which"may be" a lot faster than re-installing MSFS !!

I have really Lost Count of the number of times I have Re-Installed MSFS - typically every SU, but it always ends up being the best (and ultimately the Quickest) way to fix un-fixable issues.

GOOD LUCK

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Strange. I haven’t reinstalled the sim even once since installing the initial install almost 2 years ago. There was no issue in all that time that wasn’t inherent in the sim. Reinstalling just reinstalls these issues with the sim, until they get fixed by Asobo, so there is no point in doing that. :wink:

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A great memorable quote from the Ally McBeal movie -

John “The Biscuit” Cage:

I like a fresh bowl.

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Same issue. Getting error messages that an error was occurring on the MS side. So I shut down the store, rebooted. Now the store says I have use the x-box app. The x-box app says MSFS isn’t installed and is trying to download. But the download is stuck at 0.

btw, why can’t I submit new topics
I can only post replies.

Zendesk replied with a templated response. A bunch of checklists that include mucking around in the registry and uninstalling/reinstalling. But at the end, they say its not their problem. Its the XBox group’s problem and go talk to them. Useless. Does no one own this problem?

btw, I floowed their instructions to uninstall. Now it won’t reinstall. The XBox app manager just spins on download then throws an error. I now can no longer play at all. So much for mandatory updates.

Something is definitely wrong:

I downloaded the game again, closed and opened it to make sure the install was working. I then did two world updates and closed the sim again.

Then this is where it all happened again. After the install, the game version was 1.25.7 where the new update is 1.25.9 so I went into the MS Store, clicked update all.

Had no MSFS update but had two other updates, one being the Game Services update.

Then MSFS didnt want to open, not through the icon on Desktop or MS Store and XBOX app. I did a repair and reset through windows apps. The installation directory was again empty, and its gives the following error:

Windows cannot find ‘C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft~\FlightSimulator.exe’ Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.

I atleast copied the installation directory folder to an external as a backup.

Why is this happening???

Had a similar issue and it took me some time to figure out that “Gaming Services” was again the culprit. Although MS Store showed it as updated two days ago, Windows reliability monitor revealed the respective update two days ago failed twice. If you go into your Settings/Apps in Windows and look for “Gaming Services” and it shows 0 byte or only a few MB (full version is around 130 MB or so), you have the same issue.
It is at least the fourth time Gaming Serviced have failed me, but this time the symptoms were different, where before attempting to start MSFS via Desktop icon would open the Gaming Services site in MS Store, while this time the desktop icon was blank, nothing happened upon clicking it and it seemed something has deleted my whole WindowsApps/MSFS-folder (packages are on a separate drive and seemed unaffected). Wasn’t the case though.

From this site I did the " RESET THE MICROSOFT STORE CACHE" procedure, followed by the " REINSTALL GAMING SERVICES" procedure - and everything was as before.

Hope it helps


If anyone wants to fund a class action suit for wasted time against MS, I’m in. The update deleted my MSFS install and after four days of screwing around, going through checklists, etc., MSFS finally started downloading. 10 hours later it seems to be running. I swear I have an hour of troubleshooting for every hour of downloading, for every hour of actual flying.

btw, none of the checklists action did anything. The download just started randomly this morning.