I have been using FS2002 & FS2004 under Windows 2000 Pro and are going to make the switch over to XP Pro and would like to know the best way to do it for Flight Simulator.I have a lot of add-on utilities for FS and sould I just do a format disk and install everything again or should I just let XP Pro find Flight Simulator and install the programs it's self ?Thanks for any help you can give me !Scott

If you have more than one partition on your HDD ( or two HDDs) copy the existing FS installations to the second partition. Then do your format of the primary partition, install XP,install FS9 and FS2002 from the Disks. Then copy the copies on the second partition back to the new installs on the primary "allowing Overwrites" and you should find everything there- except any addons which are installed as seperate items( EG Oceans FX, Squawkbox , some payware sceneries etc ). This is what I did when going from WinME to XP and it worked fine.Dave

If you have done a lot of modifications adding aircraft, scenery textures, things like that I would suggest the following.1. Make copies of your major FS folders you have modified likeAircraftGaugesWorld/ScenerySoundEffectsAddOn SceneryAny traffic.bgl's you created or have like UT or FS Traffic2. - Write down ALL you commercial add-on serials - get them in order first.3. Install your fresh-clean-virgin FS2004. Run it stock for a day or two to make sure all is good with the default version.4. The start dropping in your saved folders to overwrite the stock versions5. - Start re-installing commercial add-ons.I'm sure I probably left out a few good steps but I haven't re-installed for almost a year. just an idea....

Personally I've not had an issue with upgrading but others on the forum suggest a fresh install.I would suggest, however, that you make sure you have at least 1GB of RAM if you intend to run XP. My 2.8GHz/GeForceFX rig was hobbled by 512MB. Increasing to 1.5GB doubled my frame rates.