After months of tweaking my system I can finally say I have my FS9 performance right where I want it. Having to do a reinstall now would take away a lot of work and i'm afraid I would not have the patience or the drive to start all my tweaking from scratch, i'm trying everything I can to avoid this.

 

 

The problem is, I have noticed a lot of my default FS9 airports are missing. Airports such as KJFK,KPVD,TNCM, etc. I dont get any errors on start up.

 

 

I will be happy to provide any additonal information to help solve this. Thank you. -Steven B

Right off hand, the only thing I can think of is that some of your stock airport files are missing or have been modified causing the airports to go missing.

 

For example KJFK, default: Should be located in Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\NAME\scenery\AP928170.BGL Size = 699 KB (716,582 bytes), Size on Disk = 700 KB (716,800 bytes) along with quite a few other airports in the North America East area. BTW TNCM is Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\NAME\scenery\AP931250.BGL

 

If that file does not exist in that location or does not match the bgl file size that would be the tip you are looking for. If you have lee Swordy's AFCAD 2.21 installed you can use that to check for the stock airport(s) that appear to be missing.

 

In your situation the quickest fix may be to find the APxxxxxx.bgl files on your FS9 disk set (disk four I think, sorry, I don't have the exact locations on hand.) and replace the ones in your FS9 installation. This will not change or effect your add on airport files or scenery.

 

Regards,

Mel

perhaps the whole NAME\scenery folder is lost somehow?

Thank you for the replies. I checked my NAME>Scenery folder and it seems as though I have no AP files in that directory at all.

 

Still having airports in FS9 I would assume another directory holds AP files as well? Having never dealt with a issue such as this before I do have a few questions on the restore process that hopefully someone is kind enough to help me with it.

 

Would my next step be to download AFCAD and see what other airports I am missing before I go diving into my FS9 disks?

 

I would not consider myself a novice user, nor would I consider myself a super advanced user, but I am very puzzled as to how this problem came about. My sim contains tweaks within FS9 or the fs9.cfg, nothing beyond that. I do have a couple of airport addons but most of my addons consist of aircraft.

 

Has VOZ or anything of the sort been known to cause a issue like this?

 

Will replacing the AP files take away my AFCADS for the respected airports?

 

A quick list of addons I'm using are:

 

1. Active Sky

 

2. Real Environment

 

3.FSUIPC

 

4.GE

 

5.UT

 

6.Radar Contact

 

7. Fly Tampa

 

8. Blue Print

 

9. Imagine sim

 

10. Uk2000

 

It's extremely puzzling how I can just lose all those files, it seems like it appeared out of nowhere. Maybe a uninstaller used to removed a scenery decided it would take all those files away?

 

Thank you,

Steve B

perhaps you browse a little in you fs9\scenery\ subfolders if other regions are ok

(eure, eurw, asia, namw, namc and so on).

 

check your deleted files (trash folder) ...

 

otherwise the files are on one of the four CDs of fs9

 

perhaps someone else knows the exact location?

Will replacing the AP files take away my AFCADS for the respected airports?

 

No, replacing them will not change or over ride them.

 

I am not familiar with UK2000, but I can say that items one thru six would not cause your problem and seven thru nine most likely would not. AFCAD will not automatically show you which airports are missing. You would have to search through the ICAO codes one at a time and happen across them - very time consuming.

 

Please have another look in your Scenery / Name / Scenery folder and see if you find any files beginning with AP that have the file extensions changed to something such as; xxx, zzz, or bak - anything other then .bgl. This is to eliminate the possibility that some installer didn't rename them. With it verified that didn't happen you should find other files that start with other than AP that have been renamed UT does that, for one, to replace roads etc. Those are not the problem. While you are looking you might wish to check to make sure these files didn't somehow end up in the wrong scenery folder somewhere - I don't know if FS9 can or does look for them anywhere besides the default location.

 

By my count you should have ninety three files in the Name folder that begin with AP and include a six digit code. If you have all or some completely missing then the only solution is to recover them from the disk or do a re install. When I get time I'll study up on recovering the files from disk to help you through that if no one else steps up.

 

BTW KPVD = NAME\scenery\AP928170.BGL, the same bgl as KJFK

 

Best regards,

Mel

Restoring default files- Jim's Flightsim Pages - Restoring Files From the Installation Disks

I will be happy to provide any additonal information to help solve this.

 

I have seen this before in FSX. I simply hit the clear filter button on the bottom.

 

Best regards,

Jim

I have seen this before in FSX. I simply hit the clear filter button on the bottom.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

didn't he told us:

"I checked my NAME>Scenery folder and it seems as though I have no AP files in that directory at all."

 

???

 

I suppose, he has erased (moved by mouse drag or key strokes) this directory and should copy the APxxxxxx.bgl from CDs...

Hi.

 

didn't he told us:

"I checked my NAME>Scenery folder and it seems as though I have no AP files in that directory at all."

 

That would depend on how he checked... If, for example, he looked by attempting to edit a layer from within the FS9 scenery library no bgl would appear at all.

 

Steven, have you tried searching your hard drive for ap*.bgl? Maybe an addon installer moved them.

 

Do you still have ap*.bgl files in other default regions? ../EURW/ for western Europe, ../SAME/ for South America et c.

 

If they are definitely missing, extracting the default airport bgls from the relevant cab file on the appropriate CD to a temporary folder then copying them into the ../scenery/name/scenery folder won't affect any addons you have. FS9 is programmed to override a default airport with whatever addon it finds for that airport: putting the whole set of ap*.bgl back in place will simply fill in all the default airports in between your addons.

 

Cheers,

D

the only way I check a directory for its content is my windows explorer ...

 

so it was beyond my phantasy he could check it another way

 

:Peace:

Thank you for the replies.

 

I have had no contact with the NAME folder aside from checking it's contents with windows explorer. Indeed there are zero AP files located in that directory.

 

Dave, I have checked the EURW directory and it seems to have all the AP files present. ( I don't know the exact number that is suppose to be present in that directory, but have had no problem with European airports)

 

Is the TNCM airport located in the NAME directory? It seems as though I have narrowed it down to airports in North America and some ICAO codes starting with T.

 

During my last two attempts at a flight (KSEA-KPDX) (With Flight Zone Scenery) the simulator has crashed, this seems to be the only route it will crash on. I was using Active Sky and nothing else. Can these missing airports be the cause, or would this be a topic for another thread?

 

Mel, no files starting with AP, or a variation of a renamed file that would start with AP is present in the NAME folder. (Though I do have FL,RD,ST,HL,HP, etc in that directory) I have yet to do a full search for AP files, I will do that tonight and share the results of the locations.

 

Before I go ahead and restore these files, I'll try the above suggestions and see what a search turns up.

 

What has me more upset than the present problem, is how the problem came to be. I've had problems with FS before, sure. These would usually involve a bad file, a missing file, etc. Never a whole directory of files just vanishing

 

Thank you all very much for working with me to fix this problem.

-Steve B

Hi Steve,

 

Is the TNCM airport located in the NAME directory? It seems as though I have narrowed it down to airports in North America and some ICAO codes starting with T.

 

Yes, TNCM is or should be in the NAME / Scenery folder.

 

There is a known issue with the Flight Zone KPDX scenery and the Seattle area that causes crashes. There is a fix available, but sorry, I don't have a link or first hand knowledge of how to get the file(s). I am almost certain there is no relationship between this and your missing airport files.

 

As far as how the AP files may have come up missing in the first place, . . . . . . . two possible (remote as they may be) explanations are things that have happened to me in the past.

 

#1: For some reason, one time that I used system restore I lost a number of files. (none from FS9 though)

 

#2: Once when I was doing a disk defrag with a highly acclaimed payware defrag program I incorrectly had a number of tasks running at the same time. Short story, this resulted in the loss of some very important OS files. (again nothing FS9 related)

 

I suggest you might want to do a complete computer search in file name for " AP928170.BGL ", if of course you haven't already. I'll assume you have or do and find nothing. Your only choice then is to extract the files from the disk.

 

Remember that UT (and maybe some of the other software you mentioned above) renames some of the files in the NAME / Scenery folder to make or turn the default files into backup files. I highly recommend that you only extract the NAME / Scenery / APxxxxxx.bgl files and when placing them in your FS9 / Scenery / NAME / Scenery folder you can simply allow any existing (if any) AP files to be overwritten. That way you can avoid sorting thru the other files that shouldn't be reinstalled. The backups would be nullified and you would end up with a mess of miss matching duplicate roads, rivers, coastlines etc all over the area covered by the NAME folder!

 

I hope this is helping you get FS9 fixed, and let me / us know how things are going.

 

Best regards,

Mel

The search did not turn up the required files, so I went ahead and did a restore from the disk, just for AP files in the NAME scenery folder.

 

All is working great! We can go ahead and mark this as resolved.

 

Thank you all for the suggestions and the help. Having to do a reinstall, after spending so much time tweaking and configuring would probably have put me on a Flight simulator hiatus due to my patience.

 

Mel, HGS, Dave, Jim, N60, a great big sincere thanks!

 

You nailed the problem on the head for me Mel, I think it had to do with a loss of data during defragmentation. Thank you again for all your help.

 

Steve

Mel, HGS, Dave, Jim, N60, a great big sincere thanks!

 

Daring to speak for all who contributed, . . . . . I am happy that we could help and the problem is resolved.

 

My best regards to all,

Mel