FS9 after HDD Failure Question.

[G-SWSM 1]

Hi All.I have a scenario for you all, and wondered what your thoughts were.I had a kind of hicup with my HDD, and since then it keeps telling me that there are loads of system32 files that are missing, and other video issues as well, plus the HDD is making weird noises too.So, I have bought a New and Bigger and Better HDD, and after installing Win XP Pro, and up-dating as necessary I will be installing my favourite games again.No biggie, but, I was wondering what would happen if I did the following.I install FS9, then the 9.1 patch, This is the point where it gets tricky, and I could really use your thoughts.I have a lot of add-on aircraft, such as the LDS 767, PSS Fleet, and the PMDG Queen, and other progs such as ASV6.5.What would happen if I dragged / copied these files over from the old but still usable drive to the new HDD, and pasted the files in the relevant locations.Do you think that they would work.I also have GE Pro, but wondered if I simply copied the Texture folder from the old HDD with FS on, and pasted these Texture files into the New installation on the New HDD.( I know it won't give me the different looks from cloudy and clear etc, but at least it will be better than the default FS ground textures, and still be fully global.)Do you think that this would work?Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome.Thanks very much.PS can I now simply delete the folder called Windows from the old HDD now that I have XP running on the New one.Thanks again.

[Guest lgvpilot1]

SteveYou may find you will have validation issues with some of your payware aircraft for example The PMDG , you might find the displays black out after a minute or so , its quite a common post on their forum.As far as GE Pro is concerned im sure you can backup ,save and then transfer all the texture sets you have generated but again it may be worth a quick look on their forum as well .I hope it works out well for you ,good luckMark

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,Active Sky and GEP need to be reinstalled from scratch.Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[timers15 11]

There's this stuff called "SMART" on newer drives. It does a bunch of tests and can be set up to log errors. I've used smartmon for linux, I'm not sure what the Windows equivilent is.When I thought my HDD was going bad I used this to find out it wasn't.Maybe do this to make sure your drive is really sick before you get a new one. It's a real pain to reinstall everything, even though that's definitely the preferred procedure.

[Guest ThrottleUp]

I had to do a similar thing although my issue was that I was running out of space on my old drive. So I bought a new 500GB Samsung HD and *did not* want to go through the hassle of reinstalling all my addons (payware & freeware).So what I did was install a fresh copy of FS9 on the new drive and then pretty much cut-paste the entire copy of the old FS9 into the new installation overwriting as needed.Worked like a charm - including GEP, Flight Environment, BEV..everything. Never had to reinstall anything. I then deleted the old FS9 folder and cleaned up the old disk with CCleaner (its registry cleaner does a good job).

[G-SWSM 1]

Hi Nevin.So you did not have any issues with registry problems after copying the files from one HDD to the new one then.Thanks for the reply.

[Guest ThrottleUp]

So you did not have any issues with registry problems after copying the files from one HDD to the new one then. No, didnt have any problems! I forgot to mention this though: after I moved my installation to the new drive I ran the TweakFS Registry Utility to make sure the new registry path was reset. Very quick and easy and the tool is free as well.Once I did the above all new installers found the new path no problem. In fact I didnt even *need* to set the path but I just did it to make sure :) Does no harm!Go here and scroll down to the "Flight Simulator 2004 Utilities" section. Download the FS9 Registry Utilityhttp://tweakfs.com/news/free_files.htmHope that helps!

[G-SWSM 1]

Hi Nevin.Sorry to be a pain.But could you give me a few pointers as to what to do exactly please.I have installed FS9 and the 9.1 on to the New HDD, but don't know now what to do with my aircraft collection, and scenery collection and GE Pro etc.I know it's probably pretty easy as you suggest, but if you have never done this before it all seems complicated.Thanks again Nevin, it's very much appreciated.

[Guest ThrottleUp]

No worries, I know how it is! Here is what I did step by step:Before any of this make sure you have backups of all critical folders. Ideally the backups will also be on CD/DVDs as well. 1. Rename the CURRENT Flight Simulator 2004 installation to "Flight Simulator 2004.OLD"2. Install a fresh FS9 onto the new HDD & name it "Flight Simulator 2004.NEW"3. Move Flight Simulator 2004.OLD to the new drive****4. Delete "Flight Simulator 2004.NEW"5. Run a Disk Cleaner & Registry Cleaner (CCleaner is great), run chkdsk (on boot)optimize & compact the Registry & reboot.6. Open Application Data folder and delete the fs9.cfg (so a new one can be generated)7. Run the FS9 Registry Setting tool I mentioned in my earlier reply.****If you prefer you can use COPY instead of MOVE. This will leave a backup of FS9 on your old drive.CCleaner - clean the HDD & the Registry (free):http://www.ccleaner.com/Registry Compactor & Optimizer (free)http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/NTRegOpt/ntregopt.htmlThe above method worked perfectly for me. I had to make some changes to FSGlobal entries in the scenery.cfg but that was all. Again I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a hard copy (CD/DVD) of your important folders :)

[G-SWSM 1]

Hi Nevin.Many thanks for the information, but, before I do this can you have a look at this thread I have just started, as I am very confused as to what has happened.Thanks.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=41539&page=