I've been flying fsx standard with SP1 and SP2 for months and love it. I just bought FSX Gold Edition to get the 172 with a glass panel, but it won't install because it says that there is a later version already on the system.I contacted Microsoft and their remedy is to delete the old game using their special Windows Installer Cleanup Utility and then delete all the game folders, which means I would lose all my aircraft and saved flights.Anybody have a solution?thanks!

You can backup all of your saved flights, flightplans, logbook and rewards. What aircraft are you worried about loosing? They will all be reinstalled when you install the deluxe version. And by the way the procedure Microsoft gave you is exactly correct and your one solution.Regards,Bob

Whenever I have to re-install something, I use REVO Unistaller. Normally if you use Add/Remove Programs, it won't clean the registry. Also if you don't know how to manually clean the registry of all FSX entries, sometimes when you re-install it some problems may arise. REVO will remove "everything" that was installed the first time, I mean everything (except addon files). So like sargeski said, backup all the files in My Documents (and move the folder to your desktop or somewhere else safe), and uninstall any Addons you have installed with an installer. Once you finish uninstalling and removing all registry entries, reboot your PC and then install your new copy of FSX. Once installed, then you may move your backup files back into My Documents.