Hi,Recently my motherboard died. My motherboard was so old, there was no direct replacement available from a local store. I could scarcely even find one with LGA775 and still have enough plugs for everything. Very few available online, but could not wait for shipping. I ended up having to go with a board with only 2 memory slots.Since it was a totally new board, I couldn't coax Windows 7 into booting again.In order to not risk destroying all my data - running my business from this PC as well - I just used a separate empty HD I already had, got Windows running on it.I now want to recover my FSX installation. I want to keep all the saved flights, flight plans, mission completions, etc. I tried running FSX from the other drive, to no avail.While I'm capable of "probably" finding everything, and eventually getting it working again, I'm asking here since I'm sure many of you have had to do this before. Aptitude and skill are no match for experience and wisdom.So, what do I need to do to be sure I salvage everything?

The first think you need to do is buy yourself a second, larger, HDD (really cheap these days) and copy the contents of your HDD onto that second HDD, especially considering you are running your business off that HDD (never mind FSX).The second thing you need to know (disclaimer: I don't own Win 7) is that I understand you can change any components in your PC, pop-in your Win 7 DVD to "fix" your Win 7 install, and you're off to the races (you might have to re-register your copy of Win 7). Many simmers here have been able to migrate to Sandy Bridge CPUs and motherboards courtesy of Win 7 without having to reinstall anything at all.All in all pretty good news for you I'd say!Cheers,- jahman.

The first think you need to do is buy yourself a second, larger, HDD (really cheap these days) and copy the contents of your HDD onto that second HDD, especially considering you are running your business off that HDD (never mind FSX).The second thing you need to know (disclaimer: I don't own Win 7) is that I understand you can change any components in your PC, pop-in your Win 7 DVD to "fix" your Win 7 install, and you're off to the races (you might have to re-register your copy of Win 7). Many simmers here have been able to migrate to Sandy Bridge CPUs and motherboards courtesy of Win 7 without having to reinstall anything at all.All in all pretty good news for you I'd say!Cheers,- jahman.

I recently upgraded frpm an I7 to a 2600K cpu with a consequent change to a new mobo. I run W7 Home Premium. I just rebooted checked the BIOS to suit my old settings (turning on board audio off, setting up AHCI etc). When I got to the desktop I installed the new Mobo drivers, rebooted and was of to the races. I trust the OP checked his BIOS settings when installing the new Mobo.

If you had simply installed a new drive and wanted to copy fsx to it, it would of being a simple thing to just copy the fsx folder to it, use the path fix programme., delete the old one and maybe have to reinstall a couple of things but it would work, But since it is a new pc etc, you would be better off doing a fresh install as fsx will want to change a few things in the config. And you can simply put the old drive in to the new machine , and just install the new drivers. And for those who like to fiddle you may consider this after you have used an old drive in a new machinehttp://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/1107/Basically , when you use the hidden devices option in the devmanager window it doesn't show old cards etc that where removed, this will show up every device that had being plugged into your machine even usb devices that are no longer attached, and so you can now remove all the old obsolete drives, they show up as a lighter color, you will be surprised as too how many usb instances of old drivers you will find if you use a lot of usb devices.

Thanks for the replies.What I'm really hoping to find out is where all the files are. I don't mind making a new CFG file, but I'd like to make sure I don't lose my saved flights, flight plans, etc, and the mission completions.

The first think you need to do is buy yourself a second, larger, HDD (really cheap these days) and copy the contents of your HDD onto that second HDD, especially considering you are running your business off that HDD (never mind FSX).The second thing you need to know (disclaimer: I don't own Win 7) is that I understand you can change any components in your PC, pop-in your Win 7 DVD to "fix" your Win 7 install, and you're off to the races (you might have to re-register your copy of Win 7). Many simmers here have been able to migrate to Sandy Bridge CPUs and motherboards courtesy of Win 7 without having to reinstall anything at all.All in all pretty good news for you I'd say!Cheers,- jahman.

I recently upgraded frpm an I7 to a 2600K cpu with a consequent change to a new mobo. I run W7 Home Premium. I just rebooted checked the BIOS to suit my old settings (turning on board audio off, setting up AHCI etc). When I got to the desktop I installed the new Mobo drivers, rebooted and was of to the races. I trust the OP checked his BIOS settings when installing the new Mobo.

Ah well, at least I'm running now on my other hard drive. I have 3 HDs installed at the moment, and a few spares laying around. I think for now I will continue to migrate what I can without too much trouble, and just build a new pair of PCs as soon as I can - one wild beast for FSX and one tamed & stable for the business.Yes, Windows 7 and Vista are supposed to be able to boot to new hardware, but I couldn't get it to happen in mine. I used to be in IT, and I have Microsoft training on that aspect of Vista. It doesn't always work though, and I don't remember why. There might be a small detail I overlooked, but many many searches didn't point me to whatever detail it might have been.