I just started up MSFS and was presented with an "update" screen. It said my "update" would be about 120GB. I looked in the MSFS folder and virtually all of the program files were missing! What happened? Has anyone else experienced this problem?

And the few files remaining in the default folder are all dated today (January 14, 2022) rather than my original installation date. What's going on? I did just update my Nvidia driver, but I can't imagine that this deleted MSFS. Did it?

You are not the only one.  But all files are deleted and you need to reinstall  😕

Thank you, @Greazer. I appreciate your response. 

It is really getting strange.  i have had a crystal sharp sim with consistent settings since the Beta, and release of the Beta. Flew with no issues as recently as yesterday.  Today I flew from KIOW (Iowa City) to KSUS (St Louis Spirit).  As I neared the St Louis area the near scenery below went blurry on me.  Past about 3 miles or so the scenery was still sharp.  I Esc into General Options and dialed back some settings, expecting that to help salvage the flight.  Back live.  No change, still blurry below and close, but not blurry several miles out in the distance. 

Continued through approach and landing.  Very vague scenery,  Runway was pretty well defined but taxiways were vague and much less defined, and though static aircraft were sharp and vivid, none of the buildings were present.  No hangars, buildings, or tower.

I taxied to a good parking area and shut down.  Then I checked settings.  Multiplayer was On.  I never turn it on.  Rolling Cache was off.  I never set it off.  Changed those two settings and resumed to my parking spot and over the next two minutes all the detail I would expect from true 4K returned.

How did this happen?  Not only from yesterday to today, but from the hour long duration of my flight to the final 5 to 10 minutes, when is only when it changed.

Edited January 15, 20224 yr by fppilot

1 hour ago, David Mills said:

I just started up MSFS and was presented with an "update" screen. It said my "update" would be about 120GB. I looked in the MSFS folder and virtually all of the program files were missing! What happened? Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Were you part of the BETA?

Others had problems like this after the new update going back from BETA. I think especially if you had custom Community folder installation.

I decided not to try the BETA because there was a warning about possible having to reinstall the whole sim after going back.

Edited January 15, 20224 yr by 177B

2 hours ago, fppilot said:

It is really getting strange.  i have had a crystal sharp sim with consistent settings since the Beta, and release of the Beta. Flew with no issues as recently as yesterday.  Today I flew from KIOW (Iowa City) to KSUS (St Louis Spirit).  As I neared the St Louis area the near scenery below went blurry on me.  Past about 3 miles or so the scenery was still sharp.  I Esc into General Options and dialed back some settings, expecting that to help salvage the flight.  Back live.  No change, still blurry below and close, but not blurry several miles out in the distance. 

Continued through approach and landing.  Very vague scenery,  Runway was pretty well defined but taxiways were vague and much less defined, and though static aircraft were sharp and vivid, none of the buildings were present.  No hangars, buildings, or tower.

I taxied to a good parking area and shut down.  Then I checked settings.  Multiplayer was On.  I never turn it on.  Rolling Cache was off.  I never set it off.  Changed those two settings and resumed to my parking spot and over the next two minutes all the detail I would expect from true 4K returned.

How did this happen?  Not only from yesterday to today, but from the hour long duration of my flight to the final 5 to 10 minutes, when is only when it changed.

You stayed away from the beta and your still having problems.  This is why I hate this Cloud concept.  They can just tinker with the sim at will. Every day you load it up and you never know what you're going to get.  

Edited January 15, 20224 yr by Dillon

1 hour ago, David Mills said:

I just started up MSFS and was presented with an "update" screen. It said my "update" would be about 120GB. I looked in the MSFS folder and virtually all of the program files were missing! What happened? Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Did you participate in the beta? You aren't the first to report problems today. I believe they took folks out of the beta today if you didn't already opt out. The wiping of files is well known in that instance if you didn't follow the instructions very closely. Couple of posts recently on the subject.

I

4 hours ago, Dillon said:

This is why I hate this Cloud concept.

I am sure you are aware that this concept is the only way for us to enjoy (normally...) detailed and realistic world sceneries. How else would you have that on your hard disk? We have sometimes to accept some degree of compromise. The alternative is to go back to P3D and/or XP.

Whilst parts of the sim may have needed reinstalling or updating after the beta, was it really necessary for Microsoft to delete the entire content of of a 1TB drive?

Yup, happened to me to, the automatic opting out of the Beta went terribly wrong this time....For future reference, the way around would be to reinstall the game in a custom location.

1 hour ago, cianpars said:

Whilst parts of the sim may have needed reinstalling or updating after the beta, was it really necessary for Microsoft to delete the entire content of of a 1TB drive?

Nothing changed and needed to be reinstalled after the beta. The build number is the same, no modifications were made. I simply opted out and the sim started as usual without downloading anything.

Those who had their files deleted would have probably avoided the disaster by moving the package files to a custom location as suggested by MS, but surely this is not a justification for MS/Asobo. When such things happen, it's because of extremely bad design of the application / installation process.

6 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

. When such things happen, it's because of extremely bad design of the application / installation process.

Add to that they call the beta of a flight simulator a "flight" to finish to confuse people. As the French colloquialism goes, smarter than that and you die.

But we know it after 17 months, don't we ? During the holidays, there was kind of a peer pressure to go to the beta to bypass SU7 weather 'features'. My philosophy in the matter is when I see people get their hand burned on a stove for as long as an year and a half, I don't try myself to see whether it is hot enough 😇

26 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Add to that they call the beta of a flight simulator a "flight" to finish to confuse people. As the French colloquialism goes, smarter than that and you die.

But we know it after 17 months, don't we ? During the holidays, there was kind of a peer pressure to go to the beta to bypass SU7 weather 'features'. My philosophy in the matter is when I see people get their hand burned on a stove for as long as an year and a half, I don't try myself to see whether it is hot enough 😇

Jummivana posted that, and she's American... but why waste a couple of minutes doing some proofreading on something that your French colleagues sent you to share with million people? 🙂 After all she just works for the biggest software house in the world.

I jumped into the beta because I was sick of those clouds hugging the ground and I have a 600 MB connection, but yeah, I understand why many people were afraid. 

1 hour ago, leprechaunlive said:

Yup, happened to me to, the automatic opting out of the Beta went terribly wrong this time....For future reference, the way around would be to reinstall the game in a custom location.

I did Lep!  But still had problems.  

My installation was on the F drive.  It found my install when I pointed it to that location, verified the files, and was happy with them.

However, it still took out my WpSystem folder.  On first startup, a lot of my settings were changed, I had an 8GB cache that I never asked for, and all of my custom camera positions for aircraft were gone!  

I made a backup of the userconfig.opt in the same folder (userconfig.opt.bak), but that didn't save me as it seems to wipe the whole folder WpSystem and start again. 

Not the worst issue to put right, but still, it shouldn't happen.  I will make sure this folder is backed up on another drive next time.

Edited January 15, 20224 yr by bobcat999