Hi Gang.I had a hardware hi-cup a few days ago, and have had to re-format and re-install Win XP Pro. I have done this and installed all the usual things such as MOBO drivers, sound card, graphics card etc etc. I then installed SP3 and ran the MS Up-Date etc.I am now running a fresh install that is fully up to date and want to put FS back on.Now, before the Full re-format I made a copy on another internal HDD of the COMPLETE FS9.1 folder, not sections or parts of it, but the whole thing.My question is this. Can I install a fresh copy of FS9, then add the 9.1 up-date and then fire it up to make sure all is well, then delete the newly installed one and replace it with the Whole FS9.1 back-up one?I know of course that I will have to re-install the items such as FE, GE Pro and ASv6.5 because of the registry entries etc, but will the rest of it be okay do you think.Thanks for any thoughts or advice.

Yep you can, been doing that for a long time, just for registry entries. I even only rename the existing folder, and let FS9 install into "original" folder. Delete the new one, rename old back to "original".But mind you, about the HDD hick-up, why don't you get a Norton Ghost, its the one tool that has saved me numerous times. I have my whole partition backup on my external disk which is stowed away, both FS9 partition and XP64 partition. And each 2-3 months I make a new backup. And I always keep two, delete the 1st when 3rd is made. Takes me about 150gb in total.I had a minor crash of a disk, actually it lost some data, couldn't read etc, even notepad wasn't working when I managed to boot up. Exchanged the disk, put my old installation back, just installed applications which I installed in the meantime (can't be that many) - I had to re-register those Flight1 products because of the new HardwareID, and voila - I was back and flying again.Try it, I know I don't regret it!

Hey SteveWhilst respecting everything Word Not Allowed has said about re-installing a full FS9 (exactly the same info I got when I asked pretty much the same question here a little while ago) I would suggest you be carefull with Norton Ghost. You might want to do a search here and other forums because there has been a lot of talk about how it can often do more harm than good, and how incredibly intrusive it is and how much resources it sucks from your machine.Its good that Ghost has helped Word Not Allowed and its good to see him reporting positively about Ghost - its just that I have seen a lot of horror stories about it.I too am looking at a new XP install to try and solve OOMs, and I am glad to have found out that I can use my "old" FS9 which is on a separate HHDD.Good luckNicholas