This is why joining a beta can cause issues, and did so in 2020 a number of times. MS even explained if you join the Beta, and your Community folder is the default, you can loss all your data. Granted , why this was deployed, as it wasn’t SU 2 , god knows.
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Folks please! Let us not go around the you signed up for a beta theme again! It has been done like half a dozen times in the past 2 days.
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It’s been an unpleasant experience for a lot of people so instead of yelling around let’s take a moment and think about what we can do to protect us from something like this in the future:
- Exit the Beta enrollment as soon as a Beta ends. It obviously is a factor contributing to this problem so it doesn’t help to discuss if a Beta was active or not.
- Make a backup of key files and folders, listed by helpful people in this thread. Yes, I do have backups of my community folders and even the 2020 official folder. There is no reason to not have at least one backup.
- Hope that the peripheral profiles are safe in the cloud (of course they are not) or make a backup using a tool or simply copying the files if you have a Steam installation. No idea if it is possible at all for Xbox users.
- Think about turning off auto-updates if possible.
We are all humans and mistakes happen. We make mistakes just like everyone else does. The mistakes should not happen, but they can. This was very unpleasant, yes, but did it burn down our houses? No, it did not.
Now let’s find something that makes us smile and move on.
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Well no, I didn’t say any of that - you made that up yourself.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a serious or urgent issue at all, but what I did say was that it might be a consequence of being signed up to the beta branch (because that’s what happens sometimes).
I did say previously that IF it had happened on the stable branch their response might have been a little more urgent.
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Please Steve, please let’s not go around this one again!
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Btw folks, a great way to avoid this is to simply set all of the folders in the game to non-default locations. This both makes them way easier to find and also makes your install more resilient to sim updates/reinstalls. Idk why you’d ever want to use the default cache and community folder locations given how hard they are to find
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Why? They’re trying to make sure folks don’t have their installs wiped if they used default locations. People can click a button if they need to get back into the beta
This did not work. I need to reset everything.
A little advice to everyone who opt-in for the beta - don’t forget to immediately opt-out with a preview as soon as the patch is released! This will save you from many similar problems. This is not the first time and will not be the last.
P.S. Opt out by the way also does not guarantee that you will not have problems with switching to the release branch. So if you contacted the beta - be prepared for trouble.
P.S.S. Although why am I saying this, a new release of the next SU can just as easily break everything. Don’t forget who you are dealing with =)
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This was the last time I ever did a beta.
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I’ve been hanging off launching the sim all weekend after reading your posts. Today I did back ups, and left the Xbox insider app, rebooted windows and launched sim and everything is fine, no updates presented themselves. Thanks for the backing up hints for user profile data. Very useful to know. Hope you all get your installs/profiles back working soon.
It would be quite reasonable actually to provide some sort of compensation for this. Like credits for the store. This is really unbelievable.
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On Friday, March 21 a majority of those who participated in Sim Update 1 flighting on Windows PC received an automatic update to 1.3.23.0.
This is false, i’m not in the insider program, never were, and i got the update.
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So I saw news of the update causing issues for people and immediately left the beta, considering SU1 had been released I didn’t think this could cause any issues, boy was a I wrong. Leaving the beta deleted the sim off my system! I’ve since done a reinstall but I can’t load into anything on the sim and it’s completely bricked 2024 to me. What do I do?
I saw this topic yesterday almost as soon as it was created, so did not start MSFS 2024 over the weekend.
Since my Windows / MS-Store / Xbox Apps settings all have automatic updates disabled, I avoided having the update being applied in the background.
I have now followed the instructions in Official Microsoft Flight Simulator > News & Announcements
And MSFS 2024 has started without any issues. All my graphics, controller and other settings are intact.
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Thank-you, thank you 
Noted the previous post from Jumivanna - removed myself from the Beta, restarted the PC..
Restarted XBOX - updated 8.6Gb..
Restarted PC.
Another update - 8.7Gb.
Going round in circles. Give me strength..
Thanks very much x
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I now cant get into MSFS on the X Box. It has started as if its a new game. Im not going to do anything, I don’t know what to do.