How do I avoid a complete reinstall of FS9 from one C drive to the new C drive.

[flabberjabber 0]

My current system is struggling with system memory and needs upgrading. I have an:ASUS M/board with an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU,2.21 GHz 2GBs RAMA BFG GTX260 GPU2 SATA Hard drives. 80Gbs C drive and D drive 160GbsTAGAN TG700-BZ PSU. I am looking to change the m/board and CPU, the problem is I have over 26Gbs of FS9 on my current C dive. Is there an easy way of moving this onto a new larger C drive that I will purchase with the upgrade? I thought I could just add the existing drives to the new m/board etc and crack on, but apparently not as WinXP would be unstable. Any advice would be much appreciated.

[Bob Scott 7,720]

My current system is struggling with system memory and needs upgrading. I have an:ASUS M/board with an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU,2.21 GHz 2GBs RAMA BFG GTX260 GPU2 SATA Hard drives. 80Gbs C drive and D drive 160GbsTAGAN TG700-BZ PSU. I am looking to change the m/board and CPU, the problem is I have over 26Gbs of FS9 on my current C dive. Is there an easy way of moving this onto a new larger C drive that I will purchase with the upgrade? I thought I could just add the existing drives to the new m/board etc and crack on, but apparently not as WinXP would be unstable. Any advice would be much appreciated.

I've found that the best way is to install FS9 from scratch on the new drive, and then copy the old drive's contents over the newly-installed version. That lets the installer make all the needed registry entries. You will need to reinstall a bunch of your add-ons anyway...anything from Flight1, PMDG, Cloud9, FSDreamTeam etc...most of the copy protection schemes also need their installers to make registry entries and/or write key files on the new drive. It's an event like this that makes a guy appreciate the Flight1 wrapper.As far as the physical transfer of the files, I use either another networked PC or an external drive (a 1 TB WD MyBook I use for monthly backups) and move the files there for transfer. RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

[McCrash 3]

My current system is struggling with system memory and needs upgrading. I have an:ASUS M/board with an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU,2.21 GHz 2GBs RAMA BFG GTX260 GPU2 SATA Hard drives. 80Gbs C drive and D drive 160GbsTAGAN TG700-BZ PSU. I am looking to change the m/board and CPU, the problem is I have over 26Gbs of FS9 on my current C dive. Is there an easy way of moving this onto a new larger C drive that I will purchase with the upgrade? I thought I could just add the existing drives to the new m/board etc and crack on, but apparently not as WinXP would be unstable. Any advice would be much appreciated.

You could clone the 'c' drive to another empty drive.http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.phpIn some cases an add-on might have to be re-installed. Some software records the disk serial number.

[Max Kraus 339]

More often than not, trying to copy the whole FS9 over creates more problems and results in a longer process than if you just wiped and reinstalled from scratch - and I think reinstalling is the best option.Make a copy of your fs9 before you start though so you can cherry pick back in all your liveries and sounds etc.

[Mace 1,926]

Agreed....it will save you a lot of time, effort, and FS performance in the long run to simply reinstall FS9 on the new drive; then reinstall each of the add-ons one at a time. Tedious, I know. But it will save you work and fiddling in the long run. If you decide to clone, remember that the registry gets cloned too...that means all of the registry bloat/malware will be inherited from the old drive. Given that FS needs all the comp resources it can get, there is no substitute for a fresh OS and a fresh FS.