Corrupted SCENERY.CFG means potential end of simming

[Guest Nealoc187]

Farking wonderful... I installed a new freeware airport scenery and downtown buildings scenery from the file library last night. Installed as normal in my addon scenery folder - something I've done a million times.Started the sim to activate the sceneries and then exited. Started the sim again and got the blue screen of death. Strangely it was the really bad blue screen of death. If you have been heavily involved in computers you know what I'm talking about - not the 'normal' BSOD but the one that has a little different font to it. Anyways, it gave me that and I had no option but to shut the computer down. The error cited in the message was some computer jibberish that no normal person understands.I tried starting the comp and the sim again and got an error saying I did not have a valid SCENERY.CFG file. Checked the directory and the file is there, but obviously it's not as it should be. I tried pulling the scenery.cfg file off of the CD. This enabled the sim to start though it gave me abotu 25 error messages, each one i had to click 'ok' out of. And when it did start obviously none of my scenery was installed. I then tried renaming the "OldScenery.cfg" file as "scenery.cfg" and tried starting the sim that way, and bam... blue screen of death again. So obviously something's up with that file. Now I've never poked around in Scenery.cfg with notepad before, but I have poked around in other flight sim *.cfg files, and assuming it's in the same format I'm going to see if I can find what section references those two addon sceneries I just installed and see if that doesn't help matters.The thought of reinstalling hundreds of airports, aircraft, sceneries, utilities and files in a fresh install of FS9 is too much right now, and I honestly think that if I can't figure this out it may be the end of FS9 simming for me. At least for a good long while.Any advice is appreciated.NC

[Mike T 208]

NC:Man you are truly having a bad week. Assuming you didn't totally replace the "corrupt" scenery.cfg file with the one from the CD, you are fine and no reinstall is necessary. Simply open the bad scenery.cfg file and you should see the last sceneries that you installed noted at the END of the file. Simply delete the entries for the newest scenery and save. Also, uninstall / delete the files you installed.HTH,Mike T.

[Opa 6]

Interesting -This same question was asked earelier today on the Flightsim forums and I provided the same advice along with a couple of other ideas.I guess the poster has not checked back at Flightsim for replies.

[Guest Nealoc187]

>Interesting ->>This same question was asked earelier today on the Flightsim>forums and I provided the same advice along with a couple of>other ideas.>>I guess the poster has not checked back at Flightsim for>replies.>>I posted this here hours before I posted it on flightsim...I read your ideas and appreciate your input. When I'm in the mood to mess with it I'll be giving your ideas a try.

[Guest Nealoc187]

Well I narrowed the problem down to an issue with the Mach1 BNA2007 scenery just a little bit ago. Not sure what the problem with that scenery is, but my computer doesn't like it for some reason. Strange because I have a bunch of other M1DG sceneries and they work just fine. I emailed the developer a little bit ago to see if he has any insight.I replaced my scenery.cfg file with an older copy (one of the many copies that have been made automatically by the varies addons I've installed over the past year) and Fs9 is starting up just like normal. I duplicated the problem 4 or 5 times with the BNA2007 scenery, each time I try to "add scenery" and then restart fs9, I get the blue screen of death and the computer has to be restarted. Each time I replace the apparently corrupted scenery.cfg with an older, good copy, the problem goes away. So for now I'll avoid installing that scenery. Thanks for the advice on how to fix the problem everyone.

[Guest belga1]

Hi,Maybe it's a duplicate ***.bgl problem.Cheers.

[Guest magnum_force]

>Farking wonderful... I installed a new freeware airport>scenery and downtown buildings scenery from the file library>last night. Installed as normal in my addon scenery folder ->something I've done a million times.>>Started the sim to activate the sceneries and then exited. >Started the sim again and got the blue screen of death. >Strangely it was the really bad blue screen of death. If you>have been heavily involved in computers you know what I'm>talking about - not the 'normal' BSOD but the one that has a>little different font to it. Anyways, it gave me that and I>had no option but to shut the computer down. The error cited>in the message was some computer jibberish that no normal>person understands.>>I tried starting the comp and the sim again and got an error>saying I did not have a valid SCENERY.CFG file. Checked the>directory and the file is there, but obviously it's not as it>should be. I tried pulling the scenery.cfg file off of the>CD. This enabled the sim to start though it gave me abotu 25>error messages, each one i had to click 'ok' out of. And when>it did start obviously none of my scenery was installed. I>then tried renaming the "OldScenery.cfg" file as "scenery.cfg">and tried starting the sim that way, and bam... blue screen of>death again. So obviously something's up with that file. >>Now I've never poked around in Scenery.cfg with notepad>before, but I have poked around in other flight sim *.cfg>files, and assuming it's in the same format I'm going to see>if I can find what section references those two addon>sceneries I just installed and see if that doesn't help>matters.>>The thought of reinstalling hundreds of airports, aircraft,>sceneries, utilities and files in a fresh install of FS9 is>too much right now, and I honestly think that if I can't>figure this out it may be the end of FS9 simming for me. At>least for a good long while.>>Any advice is appreciated.>>NCYou would quit simming over a configuration error.?How funny.I have been through H@ll and back, formats, unistalls, etc, but just to quit simming over a small problem, thats a hoot.You need to not take things too seriously, there is always David "Opa" Marshall, there is always hope. : )

[Mike_CFII_MEL 788]

Hi,I can see why it would be so disheartening having to start over, to the point of quiting. I have over 60 Flight Simulation Add-on CD's and just the thought of starting over gives me the chills. Last time I lost my system it took over 16 hours to reinstall FS9 with all my addons.Guess if your just installing FS9 and a few addons its not that big of a deal. However, if you are a flight sim enthusiast with thousands of dollars invested in hundreds of addon programs, it becomes a big deal when you have to spend 16+ hours reinstalling everything.Quiting over a configuration error is "NOT" what he said, he said the thought of reinstalling everything is the reason he would quit simming for a good long while.Personally, I don't see anything funny about his entire situation.To the original poster, I feel for ya, I know exactly what your going through.

[Krister 51]

The solution is very simple - get a program that creates a mirror image of the partition, create a second partition on the hard disk or buy another disk, create the mirror and move it to the other disk/partition. Whenever the flighsim starts to act up because of some newly installed that you can't exactly pinpoint, simply restore the created image and everything is nice and dandy. There are several of those programs available and the one I'd recommend (well, the only ones I've tried) is either Ghost or Trueimage. For me it takes about 40 minutes to restore an image that covers some 50-60 GB's of data.

[Mike_CFII_MEL 788]

Hi,I'm running a RAID 0 system, trying to get every bit of speed out of my system that I can for FS. Last time I lost my system I lost both HD's, so that option may not help me.Since I have FS9 setup the way I want, What I may do is purchase another HD and copy FS to it and store the drive in a safe place.