K5083
SOH-CM-2024
Are you a victim of "Your packages need updating" yet?
In recent days, many (most? all?) MSFS users have been confronted while in flight by a message that "Your packages need updating" and giving you a choice of Yes (to go back to the sign-in screen and restore online function) or No.
If you pick No, the sim boots you offline and you get to experience the nostalgia of flying over the FSX world, with no access to online functions.
If you pick Yes, the sim does nothing for a long time, with no progress or status bar, making you think it might have crashed. Then it resets your sim, having wiped your log to zero hours, returned most of your options and settings to defaults, and it is not clear what else it wipes. It does not, thank goodness, uninstall your mods or delete your controller settings.
I got the error a few times over the past week but was not foolish enough to click "Yes" until today.
There is a long thread with hundreds of posts about this on the official MSFS forum and no useful answers from the devs.
If you have not encountered this yet, you are lucky, but it may be a matter of "when," not "if."
My advice, if you get the "Your packages need updating" box, is to do the following:
(1) Delete MSFS from your system permanently and go back to playing a proper program such as Prepar3d.
(2) OK, just kidding. When you get the message the first time, click "No." You'll then be offline.
(3) Open all of the options screens you can think of and write down or take screen shots of all your settings. That would include, at a minimum, your video, audio, accessibility, traffic, misc, and all of your assistance (i.e. realism) settings.
(4) Go to your Options/Data screen. You'll see that online functionality has been turned off. Turn it on again. Continue your flight.
(5) Pretty soon you'll get the "Your packages need updating" screen again. This time, select Yes. Ignore the fact that the sim seems to freeze up. Wait it out. Eventually you'll get the theme music you probably turned off ages ago, a lot of pretty splash screens, and eventually you'll be returned to the Accessibility settings menu (for interface size, etc., etc.) just like the first time you ever started the game. Everything will be reset to default. Use the screenshot you took in step 3 to restore your preferred settings.
(6) The game will then start. Your log book will be at zero hours, all your flights are gone forever, sorry about that. Go through all the options and settings menus and restore everything to the values on those screenshots from step 3.
(7) Go to your content manager, you'll probably need to update a few things.
(8) Go back to enjoying your sim. If you get the "Your packages need updating" screen again, click No, quit the sim, and go back to playing a proper program such as Prepar3d - this time I'm not kidding - until Asobo and MS figure out how to stop breaking your game.
Enjoy the weekend, everyone!
August
In recent days, many (most? all?) MSFS users have been confronted while in flight by a message that "Your packages need updating" and giving you a choice of Yes (to go back to the sign-in screen and restore online function) or No.
If you pick No, the sim boots you offline and you get to experience the nostalgia of flying over the FSX world, with no access to online functions.
If you pick Yes, the sim does nothing for a long time, with no progress or status bar, making you think it might have crashed. Then it resets your sim, having wiped your log to zero hours, returned most of your options and settings to defaults, and it is not clear what else it wipes. It does not, thank goodness, uninstall your mods or delete your controller settings.
I got the error a few times over the past week but was not foolish enough to click "Yes" until today.
There is a long thread with hundreds of posts about this on the official MSFS forum and no useful answers from the devs.
If you have not encountered this yet, you are lucky, but it may be a matter of "when," not "if."
My advice, if you get the "Your packages need updating" box, is to do the following:
(1) Delete MSFS from your system permanently and go back to playing a proper program such as Prepar3d.
(2) OK, just kidding. When you get the message the first time, click "No." You'll then be offline.
(3) Open all of the options screens you can think of and write down or take screen shots of all your settings. That would include, at a minimum, your video, audio, accessibility, traffic, misc, and all of your assistance (i.e. realism) settings.
(4) Go to your Options/Data screen. You'll see that online functionality has been turned off. Turn it on again. Continue your flight.
(5) Pretty soon you'll get the "Your packages need updating" screen again. This time, select Yes. Ignore the fact that the sim seems to freeze up. Wait it out. Eventually you'll get the theme music you probably turned off ages ago, a lot of pretty splash screens, and eventually you'll be returned to the Accessibility settings menu (for interface size, etc., etc.) just like the first time you ever started the game. Everything will be reset to default. Use the screenshot you took in step 3 to restore your preferred settings.
(6) The game will then start. Your log book will be at zero hours, all your flights are gone forever, sorry about that. Go through all the options and settings menus and restore everything to the values on those screenshots from step 3.
(7) Go to your content manager, you'll probably need to update a few things.
(8) Go back to enjoying your sim. If you get the "Your packages need updating" screen again, click No, quit the sim, and go back to playing a proper program such as Prepar3d - this time I'm not kidding - until Asobo and MS figure out how to stop breaking your game.
Enjoy the weekend, everyone!
August
It's these slightly throwaway lines that creep up and get you in the funnies. 
