Possible Trick For Faster Load Times

I noticed something odd when I was loading certain planes, recently the PMDG T7 – the loading pauses for a while, as though searching for a file, and my data drive (with nothing but installers and backups on it) started spinning. I keep the data drives in HDD sleep mode when not in use, so there is a few seconds delay before info can be read. When the HDD stops spinning, finally the PMDG plane loads. This leads me to the conclusion that there must be installer references in the registry for the data drive related to things I installed into FSX, and for some weird reason FSX keeps looking at the install location every time it loads stuff. 

 

There are two ways to deal with the registries:

 

1) Hand delete them. This is a no go for me, I’m afraid of the time involved and possibility for screwing things up.

 

2) Change the name of the folder than contains the original installer or any hierarchical folder above it, and force the registry entry to become invalid. At that point a reg cleaner like CCleaner will pick it up and clean it out and no more installer reference in the reg. You should see quite a few addons that have installer references, everything from planes to airports. In my personal experience this made some planes load a lot faster, no HDD spinning sound. Since a lot of us probably keep an FSX folder with installers, repaints, backups, etc. changing the name of the main folder (i.e. “FSXStuff” to “FSX_Stuff”) would allow you to rid all the installer references at once, instead of going folder to folder. When the reg has been cleaned, and references removed, you can change the name back to the original. 

 

I would appreciate if any simmers could try this method out themselves and let me know if it makes load times faster for them. Remember to backup reg files before changing them (CCleaner will prompt you) and make sure you don’t have any installed programs in the folders whose name you are changing.