I have never, ever had so many problems with trying to install an OS on my system!I previously purchased an OEM "Full Install Vista Home Premium" and after getting my Acceleration pack decided to install the Vista alongside my XP MCE2005! The dual boot seemed like a good idea and after installing Vista on it's own partition along side my XP, everything seemed just fine, both OS's booted independently through the Boot Manager that Vista installed. I decided to remove the FSX from the XP installation and reinstall it in Vista! Everything seemed to go well and the new FSX install and the Acceleration add-on installed and activated without any problems, a fast flight confirmed that FSX worked and the frame rates seemed much better under Vista and DX10!The Vista decided it was time for some upgrades and after letting it download them it started to install them. Well after it finished installing I received a message that the install couldn't complete and the system needed to be rebooted. Fine I let it reboot. During the reboot the checkdisk announced that Drive D(My Vista Partition!) had errors! it took the system a good fifteen minutes to correct what seemed to be thousands of errors and the system booted finally booted up. I went back to FSX and received a message that my Acceleration package needed to be activated (AGAIN?) I proceeded to activate it again and after the successful activation, It proceeded to load and then bam another error and "disc corrupted" notice. I decided to uninstall FSX try to re-install Vista. I re-formatted the D:Partition and reinstalled Vista, this time I decided to play it safe and hold off on installing FSX. Vista seemed to run fine.....until the dreaded updates. Same problem... "Corrupted disk, Disk Check and seemingly endless repair of files!After a couple more reinstall attempts, I finally gave up and got rid of Vista install renamed the Bootmgr (an encrypted file that cannot be deleted short of a reformat of C Drive!) and returned to XP only.Okay! time to reinstall FSX back into the old XP! Install started loading.. than BAM! an error appears: "This patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch exists and you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package. I:Microsoft Flight Simulator X.msi "I have tried everything, to reinstall it. Talked to MS Game support (nice people), removed and reinstalled the Windows Installer 3.1 pack, but am not able to install FSX! The FSX disc is fine, the installation runs without any problems on my other computer!XP OS is running just fine, everything is working, except the FSX install! If anyone has any ideas as to what might be going on, I could sure use some advice. I would really hate to have to reinstall my XP!Pete S.

There seems to be a very simple answer for your problem that can be narrowed down to two potential issues:a) Your disk is shot and needs to be replaced. Sad, but true. Hard drives do fail, although errors are relatively uncommon. chkdsk errors are usually a very clear and good indicator that your hard drive is failing.:( Something went with the layout of your partitions, possibly with the MBR, maybe something with the filesystem. Wipe everything and re-install the OS(es) from scratch.Given the cheap price for disks, I would recommend getting a cheap 160GB drive, which is more than plenty for FSX, but only after checking option :(.It might be also helpful to check your RAM with the included memory checker in Vista.Good luck,Pat

I agree with Pat. If you are getting hard drive errors, it is best to get a new drive and transfer anything you want to keep. The sooner the better.Gunner

That sounds spot on for . . . a disk failure, ie, a hardware problem. What can be so awful about those is the time you spend chasing phantoms until it finally sinks in: it's not a software problem!Best Wishes!Knock on wood, but I installed enterprise class SCSI 15K.5 drives which are warrantied for 5y. My first 3 drives are all almost 4 y/o, and always show 100% performance and reliability in their S.M.A.R.T. reporting. You pay more up front, but hopefully they will hold up better. Time will tell, but so far so good. I just bought another 73Gb Cheetah 15K.5. They have nice transfer rates, and excellent access times.Noel

Bad HD was my first thought as well. SMART does not report any problems. I also ran the WD disc check program on it and the Hard Drive passed all tests. It's like I said, every single program on that particular drive runs fine with the exception of Vista, and now FSX Install!What about the error I'm getting trying to reinstall FSX back, under the XP? It ran fine on this very same hardware for about 10 months!I have 3 SATA Hard Drives installed no Raid.A WD 250G 7200rpm with 3 partitions. XP Installed on itA WD 150G 10,000rpm 1 partition. Strictly for FSX and addons.A Seagate 250G 7200rpm with 2 partitions.System consists of:Intel D975X BX2(Bad Axe) MB.Intel DuoCore E6700 Processor2GB Corsair Extreme PC2-6400 800 DDR2 MemoryBFG 8800GTX Video.Put it all together less than a year ago, and haven't had any problems running FSX or any other program, 'till now!Could the problem actually be in the system BIOS? Wonder if flashing it will help?Pete S.

A hard drive failure usually starts with a few bad blocks that usually "expand" across your hard drive. The corrupted sectors are where your Vista installation is located, so logically only Vista is affected.Picture it as a smudge on a DVD where only certain parts of a movie cannot be viewed, but other parts earlier and later work just fine.Another thought: HDDs have usually a pretty good warranty of 1-5 years (depending on the manufacturer). You might be able to claim a new drive under warranty.Good luck!Pat

Thanks for the suggestions, but it was as I suspected. It was a bad XP MCE!I completely reformatted all of my drives, flashed the BIOS on my system!I then installed Vista on a separate drive from XP and everything now is working! The drives are all error free and looks like I am good to go..., as soon as I figure out why I can't log into this forum with my Vista.Pete S.