URGENT ISSUE - MSFS 2024 Phantom Update Resets Everything Xbox & Windows PC (not steam) 3/21/2025 (~23:30 UTC)

Indeed. I back up my C: and D: drives using a Monthly Full/ Weekly Differential/ Daily Incremental (Macrium Reflect) routine.

It’s saved me several times - mostly recently yesterday, when out of the blue Windows would quit and the computer would restart after being logged in to the desktop for 30 seconds.

I have a WinPE recovery partition (created by Reflect) that I can choose instead of running Windows. Once booted into that partition I was able to restore to a few days ago and didn’t lose anything of consequence.

Honestly, with the price of drives these days it makes no sense not to have a backup plan in place on an expensive gaming PC. And before anyone says, “But not everyone has an expensive gaming PC”, that’s true. But time is money, and having backups of our gaming computers simply makes sense.

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Same here. Wasn’t part of the Beta group. I haven’t seen the update.

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Same for me, I end up with two installations: I:\2024 (the location I chose) and C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.Limitless_1.3.23.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.
I’m wondering how to clean and remove all that to do a clean reinstall.
If anyone has any advice, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks,

Hi all,

Please may I ask whether those of you who encountered this automatic update via the Xbox App were all remained opted into the SU1 Beta via the Xbox Insider Hub? For those of you who have experienced this reset and are now back in the simulator, are you able to enable any content that was disabled in the FSLibrary?

Thanks
The MSFS Team

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  1. Encountered the automatic update; was/still am opted into the Insider Hub SU1 Beta.
  2. Was able to ward off it’s ill effects by applying @hobanagerik 's intervention above, so no content was disabled for me as a result.
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Yes i can enable the content in fslibrary again. Some addones (fenix,inibuilds and some other) i had to reinstall. Alsol i had to add my add-ones in community again. Not to bad, but all my photos i have made in MSFS are gone…How can i have these back?

Yes, I was still enrolled in the SU1 Beta when the automatic update deployed to my machine. The auto update had deleted my community folder - I looked for it before taking any other action.

Did you have your community folder set in the default location or did you create a custom path for it?

I lost mine in the default location. I have subsequently moved it to a custom location. I am still enrolled in the beta.

It was in the default location.

I was still enrolled in the SU1 Beta when the automatic update deleted community foleder that was in default location.

Luckely i had the folder on a different drive, so the files are there, but i have to install some add-ones again (i think the .exe file was deleted…). Also i have to point my sim again to this diff folder. After the update the pad was default…

Is there a reason it didn’t affect Steam users as much. I believe there was the odd few.

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I was enrolled in the SU1 Beta when the update deleted my community folder. My community folder was not in the default location and it was deleted. I left the insider preview and reinstalled MSFS24, it has been fine since.

@Sirrajf, was the entire contents of your community folder deleted if installed in a custom path, or was it not enabled via the settings option in the FSLibrary? I’m seeing some contrasting comments on this thread where some users are saying their community content is fine if installed to a custom path, whilst others such as yourself state it’s all been deleted. I’m wondering whether it is simply a case of needing to point the simulator to the custom path via the FSLibrary.

I’m still catching up on all of the comments in this thread, but I’ve not yet seen any reports of Steam users being affected. Would you be able to help point me in the direction of these comments if you have seen any?

Thanks very much!

I am using Steam and have no issues. From what I’ve read, Steam users seem to be OK.

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From all the reports on Avsim, those affected were all on MS Store version, and were still in SU1 Beta. Luckily for me ( MS Store version) i had nipped onto Avsim, and saw the first reports coming in of the issue. It was quite quickly found that if you met the two issues above, ie MS Store version, Still in SU1, and efault location for the community folder, you were hit with this update issue.
Luckily for me, having seen the info explained above, i left SU1, right away. then loaded the sim without issue.

Good! This really should not have happened and an explanation and apology to those affected appears to be in order.

Same.Comunity Folder was completely deleted by the Update.(Custom Location on D:)