Mairnan

Hey Auldrick, thank you so much for your help and advice so far and I appreciate that the tracker is for bugs, not my issue! It would make sense that packs licensed and created for older versions on Minecraft may have caused issues brought forward into new Minecraft versions. I’m not sure if everyone experiencing this issue will have the same pack but it possible everyone with this issue could have a legacy pack installed or connected to their account. I hope others reply here with some more data to enlighten us all further. Thanks again!

Thanks for the recommendation Ryan and the continued support Auldrick! I have encountered some very strange things trying these suggestions. I tried taking my laptop and switch to a friends house to see if it may have been my router settings, and the problem persisted, so I don’t think it’s specifically my router, and I asked a friend to try and connect to the realm on their device using my router and the problem wasn’t present. I also have some devices, my ipad and phone, that can connect to the realm no issue on my router.

However, I then tried using a VPN on the effected laptop and it worked! This narrowed down the issue and I decided to turn it off again and investigate my network settings to see if I could work out how to get it working without a VPN. Opened up all the network settings to do with Minecraft and saw no issues being flagged, the app had the permissions to send and receive on my private network, tried turning off both the in-built windows defender firewall and my antivirus firewall and that didn’t solve the issue. I also tried resetting the effected devices’ network settings entirely, no dice. I’m looking into changing the ports Minecraft uses or trying to discern if my router is blocking certain ports Minecraft uses, but, why would a factory reset on my switch resolve the issue on that device if the issue was based in my router? Why would the issue persist to other routers (such as my friend’s) on affected devices if it were a blocked IP/Port on my router? Why would the Minecraft realms connections my friend’s devices and my unaffected devices make not also get blocked, even using my router? What do resource packs have to do with any of this? Every time I feel like I get one thing narrowed down I get many more questions! 

With all these findings all piled up together and as well as the last couple posts worth of toribleshooting, I can’t help but feel that unexpected disconnections while on a realm can cause some kind of corruption of Minecraft’s network data or in some way corrupts/changes/messes with a specific device’s network connection/settings for Minecraft, that then persists even if that device is used on other networks, and only deep resets or bypasses of this issue can fix the problem. But that doesn’t really account for why once one device was affected, it quickly spread to almost every other device I play Minecraft on (affected devices are Win10 Laptop, Win10 Desktop, Playstation 4 and Switch). The only constant factor across this entire thing has been that all these issues have been from one account, I have another account so will try to see if that also has the same issue, but if it is my account, why on earth does a VPN connection rectify the issue? 

I should mention I am not using any sort of resource pack, and the realm has no pack on it either, but I do have two packs in the ‘My Packs Section’ that seem corrupted (the names are often just a jumbled series of numbers and letters that look like hash codes). These are the Super Mario Mashup pack and the Natural Textures pack, the latter has been brought up in earlier comments but not sure how relevant that is. 

Thanks for the continued responses. I have retried many many many times, and have tried waiting it out. As described in the main post, 9/10 times I try and retry it just pops up with the error ‘unable to connect to the realm. Please check your internet connection or network settings’. My internet is fine and I can play online (not on realms) with friends with no issue.

The other 1/10 times I wait, I’ll get into the realm but only the chunks I was in/nearby when I logged out last will load, I can’t open the inventory or place blocks and I don’t hear any sounds when walking or mining. I can see my friends moving in real time but for them I’m standing still where I last logged out. 

Thanks for the info, have joined the discord. 

This problem does persist for several months after any kind of update, on every device I log into with my account. Seems to be something I have purchased on my account or is connected to my account, the workarounds I have found are always temporary and the issue comes back if triggered by updates or any changes to my resource packs. So far the only workaround has been completely deleting the app and save data and again, this is only temporary. Hope this helps the devs even further. 

Just a small addition, the issue has now come back yet again on my switch. It appears to be triggered by being kicked from the server when the server updates in some way. Today my Minecraft app updated and then less than 30 mins later I was kicked from the server with the words ‘disconnected from server’ in-game, and ‘a communication error occurred’ through the Switch interface. Then the issue returned. 

Hey all.

So, I've been struggling with this issue also and have spent almost a year now trying every workaround I can think of (some of them briefly successful, listed below) and have found a bunch of interesting parameters that may either be useful for further fixing attempts for smarter people or useful for devs fixing the bug. I have literally created an account here just to post my findings. I will add that I primarily play on Nintendo Switch, where I first encountered this bug, but it seems to have spread to my PC, Phone and PS4 versions of Bedrock Edition, so it appears to be an issue with my account or the world file or a mix of both. Local worlds work fine, and I can even play online multiplayer, just not on the realm. I also just want to point out before I begin that out of every few tries detailed below, if I left it long enough it would eventually log me in, however it would only load the chunk I was in when I last played, not all sounds would work, and I couldn't access the inventory or crafting screens, other players couldn't see me (though I could see them moving in real-time) and any blocks edited would be reverted when I next logged in, I felt like a ghost.

Anyway, from the very beginning. this issue appeared out of the blue after a couple months of owning a realm, I was not using any resource packs (none 'active') but had some packs attached to my account in the 'My Packs' section from my Xbox360 minecraft days. These included the 'Super Mario Mashup' resources pack and 'Natural Textures' Pack.

Since it stuck on 'loading resource packs' I tried replacing the texture pack on the realm with one that I had gotten free with Realms Plus, I noticed that I had two copies of 'Natural Textures' resource pack in the 'My Packs' section, and the titles were scrambled into what looked like hashcode (0x_ random string of numbers and letters). This change of resource pack however worked and I continued my merry playing.

This issue reared up again several months later and I still couldn't pinpoint anything that felt like a particular cause. I tried the same fix and swapped out the resource pack, noticing now that ALL my resource packs, including all of the realms plus ones, had scrambled titles and this time this fix didn't work, I tried reloading the game a couple times and also noticed that any changes to the realms settings were reverted upon going back to the worlds screen, and so I figured that the resource pack changes I was making weren't actually changing server side, only client side.

I then tried changing the pack and clicking play on the same settings screen without going back to the world select, this worked intermittently but I would have to do this every single time I played, and it wasn't guaranteed to work, the times it succeeded decreased exponentially and eventually stopped altogether. Then a small miracle, I was trying this method when I received a pop-up that said 'this realm uses a resource a pack. Do you want to download it?' or something similar, I clicked yes, it did the download and I was in! It then continued to work as normal for another couple of months⚠️ and I thought it had been fixed entirely, but then it came back yet again randomly. This is the point where I noticed it could be being triggered by my console going to sleep while logged into the realm.

For another couple of months I fought with it, and every time that same pop-up appeared, it would lead to a month or more of completely normal functionality, but I could not find a reliable method of forcing it to appear, and clicking 'force players to download resource packs' tickbox didn't seem to effect the odds. I found changing my global resources in from the main menu (not for the realm) had no effect on the odds of this popup appearing. I did however find that the process of deleting the currently active resource pack (using the little green tick on the right) and then installing and activating another (all in the same session) seemed to improve my chances. Then the green tick stopped appearing (instead replaced with a little loading animation), but I found that installing the effected pack again via the store page would allow me to then delete it, leaving the 'active packs' section empty for a new one to be installed and activated. This was exhausting but at least I could play again.

Finally, after several more months of random periods of functionality, all of these workarounds stopped working and the resource pack pop-up just stopped appearing altogether. It was during this time that I also tried completely deleting and uninstalling Minecraft from all affected devices, I tried wiping all my save data, I moved all of my worlds onto a USB and wiped literally everything. I then reinstalled, logged back in on each device and all of them were still affected (even before I moved any worlds or other data back).

It was then that one of my friends who had listened to my rants about this issue offered to buy a realm and upload my world file onto it. I accepted and we did all the transferring. Sadly, this initially did not fix my issue which doubled down my belief that it was my account or the world file or both. I retried ALL of these fixes again, not a single one of them worked, which nearly caused me and my friends to walk away from realms entirely, and Mojang support endlessly repeated that it was not possible for them to troubleshoot individual realms and could not help. I had no other options left and almost gave up, but then my subscription ended, my realms content was removed and I had one final idea. I tried uninstalling and wiping all my Minecraft data, including my save data (backed it up elsewhere) on my Switch now that I had none of the online elements still attached to my account and suddenly it started working again like normal and has not yet returned, even though I have occasionally let my Switch go to sleep when logged into the realm!

At the time of writing it has not returned at all on my Switch, however, every other device still has this issue and I believe it's due to my inability to fully wipe all of Minecraft's data from them. I have tried uninstalling the Win10 App but have noticed that when I re-download it, I'm already logged in and deleting the app's files from the correct area of the AppData folder (not the .Minecraft in 'Roaming', it's under 'Packages' in 'Local') does not change this or fix the issue.

I really hope this helps in some way!

TL;DR

-Try changing your realm's resource pack, if that doesn't work

-Try changing the texture pack and clicking play from the settings screen, if that doesn't work

-Try the above AND accepting the popup that asks you to download said texture pack, if that doesn't work,

-Try deleting any installed texture packs using the little green arrow to the right of the deactivate button and installing a fresh one, if that doesn't work,

-Try installing, activating and deleting a texture pack and then installing and activating a different one. If that doesn't work,

-Try wiping Minecraft from your affected device entirely, even save data (back it up!), if that doesn't work,

-Try to find a friend or relative who will use their Minecraft account to run your realm from, if that doesn't work,

-Try waiting until your subscription ends and realms plus content is removed, then try the above steps again. If that doesn't work

-Try upvoting and commenting here with how your issue arose and help the devs fix this once and for all!