WTH!!!!!

Brian_Gladden

Brian_Gladden

SOH-CM-2025
So... I hadn't loaded 2020 in a few days. When I went to install something I downloaded today... And my community folder went POOF!!! Empty, NADA Gone.... The official/onestore folder went bye-bye too. 15 months of downloads gone. All the "stock" sim updates are gone. Thank goodness all my aircraft payware purchases are through the marketplace but what a pain!!! I'll have to hunt down dozens of downloads from Discord and other less known locations. I'll basically have a brand new blank install. It'll take me days of downloading to even get my setup close to what I had it at even the other day. I'm ready to tear out what's left of my hair....:mad::mad::mad:
 
Ugh, so sorry that happened. I back up my Community folder every month or so. Back before I started using Windsailorbto automate downloads from flight sim.to, I would keep the original Zips.
 
Brian_Gladden said:
So... I hadn't loaded 2020 in a few days. When I went to install something I downloaded today... And my community folder went POOF!!! Empty, NADA Gone.... The official/onestore folder went bye-bye too. 15 months of downloads gone. All the "stock" sim updates are gone. Thank goodness all my aircraft payware purchases are through the marketplace but what a pain!!! I'll have to hunt down dozens of downloads from Discord and other less known locations. I'll basically have a brand new blank install. It'll take me days of downloading to even get my setup close to what I had it at even the other day. I'm ready to tear out what's left of my hair....:mad::mad::mad:
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Same thing happened to me about a year after buying MSFS2020. I never did find out why - fortunately, I didn't have that many add-ons to worry about.
 
Just to be sure...check that MSFS hasn't just invented a new community folder in a new location and your existing folder is STILL on disk where it always was. It does that sometimes.
 
Yep - open Explorer to the root of your C: drive and use the search tool to look for a known file name. It may take a while for the search to run, but if it's there, it'll find it.
 
I'm running a backup of mine now. 191GB going to a 2.5" external spinner will take a while, but it's what I have at the moment.
 
Yeah, reading about this and realising that my last backup was at least 2 months old, I'm running a backup now.
 
SeeRyFly said:
This is a great reason to use add-on linker. The actual add-on files are stored anywhere you want on your PC, in a place the game can't touch them if it goes awry while the community folder is full of links that can be recreated instantly
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I have an external hard drive, would it work if I had the community folder on that and linked it via addon linker?
 
joe bob said:
I have an external hard drive, would it work if I had the community folder on that and linked it via addon linker?
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It would not. You can never have the access and read speeds on an external drive that internal drives offer. Especially if you have an internal NVMe, external drives, even SSD's can never rival those speeds. Use the external drive for backups.

Priller
 
For one reason or another my MSFS2020 install refused to completely load 2 days ago and would "hang" after about 90% load. I tried several actions, but in the end I chose to uninstall and RE-INSTALL. Fortunately I'm ethernet to my router and it only took about 18 hours to download / install on my system. I renamed my Community file before uninstalling MSFS2020, but haven't yet looked at what the "new" Community file contains. What will I find? Can I use my old Community file? I think I'll be cautious and re-install one add-on at a time in the new Community file. Is now a good time to start with Add-on linker? Thanks.
 
rvn817j said:
For one reason or another my MSFS2020 install refused to completely load 2 days ago and would "hang" after about 90% load. I tried several actions, but in the end I chose to uninstall and RE-INSTALL. Fortunately I'm ethernet to my router and it only took about 18 hours to download / install on my system. I renamed my Community file before uninstalling MSFS2020, but haven't yet looked at what the "new" Community file contains. What will I find? Can I use my old Community file? I think I'll be cautious and re-install one add-on at a time in the new Community file. Is now a good time to start with Add-on linker? Thanks.
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18 hours??? That's like when I installed P3D back when I was on DSL. I've got wireless cable Internet and basic Fs 2020 took about an hour to install.
 
rvn817j said:
For one reason or another my MSFS2020 install refused to completely load 2 days ago and would "hang" after about 90% load. I tried several actions, but in the end I chose to uninstall and RE-INSTALL. Fortunately I'm ethernet to my router and it only took about 18 hours to download / install on my system. I renamed my Community file before uninstalling MSFS2020, but haven't yet looked at what the "new" Community file contains. What will I find? Can I use my old Community file? I think I'll be cautious and re-install one add-on at a time in the new Community file. Is now a good time to start with Add-on linker? Thanks.
Click to expand...
It certainly could be a good time, you simply store the files for your add-ons anywhere you like (your renamed folder could be fine) and then linker will create links in the actual community folder that the games follows to get there.

It presents a list of add-ons that it finds and you can toggle any of them on/off with a click, or even set up sub-folders or preset lists that you can toggle. So finding a troublemaking add-on is much easier too since you don't have to move any files to do so!
 
Honestly, this is the 21st century. People, ALL people, especially those involved in flightsim, should inform themselves about computers, networks and the programs/games they're running.

Where files are stored and so forth. It's important people.

Jan
 
You can inform yourself all you want. But if you live where bandwidth is limited, you're still stuck - something MS didn't seem to understand when they came up with their on-demand streaming system for the latest sim.
 
18 hours was overnight and it could have been less...I just woke up and it was done. I think my basic MSFS2020 install was about 130GB. After the basic install was complete, I selected another 50GB of MSFS2020 store stuff that I wanted to reinstall and that took only 90 minutes. I have Xfinity and have never really had an issue with my speeds (it's usually the site sending the files...not my ISP).

That's the first reinstall I've had in years, so I was only wondering if anyone else had the issue because it seems to occur just after MSFS2020 had sent an update. Oh well, it was time for a "freshening" and I can also try linker now.
 
Keep in mind that the base install for FS2020 is 137GB. For FS2024, it's 50GB. So depending on your flying habits, if you download your plane and region, it could actually be an improvement.

But the TL;DR here is "back up your Community folder to an external drive." I ran the script that copies mine from my sim drive to my NAS again right after reading about Brian's unfortunate occurrence.
 
I loaded no add ons into my Community folder and started with Add On Linker. The first couple uses / Add Ons (for me Flow Pro is a necessity for sim ease of use) seem to be working just peachy. I'm going to try that map thing in Add On Linker over the next couple weeks...I'll report back.

I don't load the entire world (just North America and Caribbean - I know I'm missing a bunch of good flying), so my base load is smaller than 137GB. A back up folder is a necessity...I still have all my FSX purchases on a hard drive laying around somewhere.
 
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