Hi

After many years running fs9 on my pc, slow loading times and crashes have led me to think I need to reinstall.

Start from a clean slate.

 

Only problem is this- it's going to be a very long process.

I have hundreds of scenery and aircraft addons- freeware and payware.

 

I know one is supposed to uninstall the addons first, and then the base structure.

Can I save time by saving aside at least the addon scenery folder, and then  just build up the scenery library from scratch?

 

I'm just looking for a way to streamline the reinstall, so it won't take a month.

 

Any tips?

 

Just a sample of my addons:

 

PMDG 737

Level D 767

Flight1 ATR 500 and Pilatus 12

GEX

UK VFR Photorealistic scenery

Switzerland Pro

Real Germany

FS2Crew

Active Sky

REX

Ultimate traffic

Ultimate Terrain Europe

 

Eytan Ornstein

MMmm....no pain no gain.

 

Yes you can save folder content to add to the new install....just so long as you know where all the little extras are located...effects etc.

 

Scenery and Textures are fairly straight forward.

 

Switzerland, Germany and UK very straight forward....not sure about the rest.

 

.

Instead of reinstalling, have you tried disabling all of your addon scenery to see if fsx runs much faster?  You are definitely going to have the same problems once you reinstall everything.  What you should do is download and install Scenery Config Editor v1.1.  What I do with this program is disable all of the scenery that I will not be using for a flightplan I intend to use.  Save it as, for instance, KDCA_KORD_Scenery and also save the current configuration of the scenery library.  When you restart FS9, it will load that configuration for that flight plan.  Go fly.  I'll do this for several different flightplans and then I'll only have to open up the scenery config for a particular flightplan I intend to fly.  Pretty neat tool. 

 

Best regards,

Jim

Instead of reinstalling, have you tried disabling all of your addon scenery to see if fsx runs much faster?

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Kinda makes you worry a little bit about FS9 moderators around here.

I built a Vanilla Sim which contains all those things which make up a minimum FS9.5 install: textures, little tweaks, everything that makes the sim comfortable for me.

 

Then I copied the whole thing to another drive, and renamed the folder to FS2004 or whatever it was.

Now I do things to the original with abandon: add planes, tweak dangerously, all with impunity.

Every now and then, I arrive at a point that delights or intrigues me.

I copy the entire thing out to that other drive, and rename it FSMostDelightful or whatever.

There are several editions of this process.

Sometimes I want to go back a space, so I just bring back the whole sim from one of those folders.

 

I also have a Most Bloated sim, which has everything.

In there I have several aircraft folders, called things like "aircraft.AI", "aircraft.Military" and so on.

Likewise Scenery\World has several subfolders called "Scenery.AI", "Scenery.Military" and so on, which have traffic files relevant to the aircraft folders.

 

Why? Well it's the giant aircraft folders that take eons to load (scenery has far less effect) and hordes of AI can cause stutters.

 

When I want to strap on a supersonic something, the folder "aircraft.Military" is renamed to "aircraft" and "Scenery.Military" to "Scenery". There are few planes and not a lot of AI, the sim loads in a flash, and I get my gratification instantly.

 

What was the question again?

Well there's this program called SceneryConfigEditor that works for both FS9 and FSX, it allows you to add and move around scenery entries with a lot less hassle than the ingame editor. I have a backup forlder with all my necessary addon scenery (the free stuff that is, I think most payware need to be installed properly from scratch to work) and I simply click and drag and add it all with SceneryConfigEditor.

 

Works great, saves a lot of time for me. But I do have tons of entries in that file. I love addon scenery.

 

I don't have a link for the program, but it's called "SceneryConfigEditor v1.1.1" last I googled it.

Eytan

 

Not sure a reinstall is going to sort your problems. How long is the load time?

 

I would start first by trying to diagnose the crashes, and try and deal with the actual problem You wont be a happy bunny if after a lengthy reinstall you have the same issues.

Now, now Jon, this is a Family Forum...

 

To finish the thought:

If you want to run FS9 directly out of one of these many alternate worlds, you can.

Take an example, say FSMostDelightful.

Rename FS9.exe in that folder to FSMostDelightful.exe, rename a copy of your FS9.cfg file to  FSMostDelightful.cfg

Creating a shortcut somewhere for FSMostDelightful.exe makes it even less painful to get Instant Gratification!

 

EDIT:

Now that I remember the OP question, perhaps download and read this:

http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fs2004misc&DLID=123907

Kinda makes you worry a little bit about FS9 moderators around here.

Not exactly sure what you mean by that comment....  Mods are here and trying to provide suggestions and to help.  The suggestion works (or at least it does for me).

 

Jim

AVSIM Moderator

Not exactly sure what you mean by that comment....  Mods are here and trying to provide suggestions and to help.  The suggestion works (or at least it does for me).

 

Jim

AVSIM Moderator

 

 

Just a typo of yours, Jim.

 

But I mixed up FSX advice with FS9 advice myself, actually.

 

Instead of reinstalling, have you tried disabling all of your addon scenery to see if fsx runs much faster?  (...)

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

The long loading time is not the problem.

Naturally when I place an aircraft at Heathrow Extreme  (by UK 2000) on top of UK VFR photrealistic scenery, it's going to take a while- like 90 seconds.

 

The real problem is flying over the US and Canada, just these countries.

Whenever I fly here for more than an hour, FS9 stops working.

Under windows 7 you don't get a window which shows an error report (which XP used to do).

All you get is a window saying Flight Simulator has stopped working... and we are looking for a solution blah blah.

I repeat- only the US and Canada cause fs9 to crash. The rest of the world is fine!

 

The only addons for North America are Megascenery Pacific NW and FS Genesis terrain mesh.

Maybe I should try uninstalling Megascenery and see what happens.

 

Eytan

 

 

Just a typo of yours, Jim.

 

Thanks.

 

Jim

The long loading time is not the problem.

Naturally when I place an aircraft at Heathrow Extreme  (by UK 2000) on top of UK VFR photrealistic scenery, it's going to take a while- like 90 seconds.

 

The real problem is flying over the US and Canada, just these countries.

Whenever I fly here for more than an hour, FS9 stops working.

Under windows 7 you don't get a window which shows an error report (which XP used to do).

All you get is a window saying Flight Simulator has stopped working... and we are looking for a solution blah blah.

I repeat- only the US and Canada cause fs9 to crash. The rest of the world is fine!

 

The only addons for North America are Megascenery Pacific NW and FS Genesis terrain mesh.

Maybe I should try uninstalling Megascenery and see what happens.

 

Eytan

Your original post says it all - what is the LEAST PAINFUL way to reinstall FS9. Been there, done that and it took me weeks. I was pleased with the results, but it truly was a painful experience. B)

 

With the problem you report in a specific region, it does seem logical to expect that the problem lies with any addons that you have for that region. But neither Megascenery nor FSGenesis would do what you're experiencing unless somehow some of their files have become corrupted.

 

But the problem may not be in that region at all. As illogical as it seems, there have been numerous experiences of a scenery or AFCAD causing a conflict thousands of miles away. So here's my suggestion if you want to postpone the agony of a new install:

1. Make sure you do not have any duplicate AFCADS. There's a freeware utility called ScanAFD that will do the job.

2. Check to see if it is an addon that's the cause of the problem. Make a backup of your scenery.cfg file and then erase all the entries in the one you are using after

[Area.038]

Title=Addon Scenery

Layer=38

3.. If you confirm it is an addon scenery, I would then cut and paste a block of maybe 10 or 20 addon sceneries from your backup into the now clean scenery.cfg and see if the problem returns. Keep doing that until the problem occurs. Once it does, you know that the problem lies somewhere within that "block." Then all you need to do is disable them and enable them one at a time until you get to the problem addon.

 

 

Hope this helps

Cheers

Ian

If all that fails, reinstall only the default scenery BGLs (extract them from the CAB files in the FS9 CDs). I had some weird CTDs in Brazil/Argentina, somehow the terrain files became corrupted: I just extracted and reinstalled all Same BGLs and problem solved.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the help. I'm not so computer savvy so I gotta be careful about implementing advice.

 

Let's take it one step at a time and describe the experiment I've been doing with fs9.

I'm playing detective here. By a process of elimination.

So far I know it's North America where I crash.

So I did some test flights:

 

1. I did  three flights- short, medium and long haul in the western US, west of the Rockies, with various aircraft.

The result- NO crashes. Hmmmm!

 

So then I did a flight rom LA to Orlando (with addon airports in the eastern US active, default B737). The crash occurred as I crossed the Texas border.

So I went and uninstalled the addon scenery (about ten airports) In North America.

I repeated the flight, with the default B737, display level medium low to save on resources.

Guess what? FS crashed when I flew over Arkansas.

So it has nothing to do with the addon stuff.

 

So now I'm considering two options, as suggested before.

 

1  Luis suggested above-"If all that fails, reinstall only the default scenery BGLs (extract them from the CAB files in the FS9 CDs"

Question is- where on the 4 cd's is the North America east older to be found?

 

2. The Scanafd utiity. I got it and ran it. It has a read me file which I just don't understand.

I ran a scan for all default AFCAD directory and it came with three airports all in Europe- so no help there.

Again I did a scan across all the scenery addon directories (show duplicates ticked) and got a very long list. It showed European ,Carribean and Brazilian airports. However when I fly in these areas I don't get crashes.

When I highlight TJSJ (San Juan PR)., It shows:

AF2_TJSJ.bgl

F1UT_TJSJ.bgl

TJSJTtaxiwaySigns.BGL

Since there's no manual , I have no idea what this info means.

I'm not sure if this a problem, and if that might be related to the crashes further north?

 

So these are the two options I'm considering, and I need help in both before I proceed.

 

Eytan