Hi guys,Is it possible do you think to install a second FS9 alongside the existing install by tweaking the windows registry somehow?I have an extremely pimped up FS running 150 addon airports, 4 gigs of AI, all the thrid party weather engines, meshes galore, texture, trees the list goes on.What I want to do is install a fresh copy and keep my other one there and then gradually build up the second copy to optimise sub folder structure/placement, generally tweak it up, install all the stuff again bit by bit until I can drop my current install. I don't want "downtime" and that's why I'm asking this question.Has anyone achieved this somehow?

Hi,If I understand you correct, this is my suggestion.The only thing you have to do, is to rename the old FS9 folder to OLD_FS9 for example.Then install a new FS9.Then you can alter the foldernames depending which FS you want to use.No editing on the register archive if you install the new FS9 on the same disk, and name it as the older version.http://www.scandicair.com/images/Banner_ariane_4.jpg

>Hi guys,>>Is it possible do you think to install a second FS9 alongside>the existing install by tweaking the windows registry>somehow?>-SNIP->Has anyone achieved this somehow? The simple answer is "yes". I have four different versions of FS9 on my hard drives. The original, like yours, became very unweildly when it grew to 700+ aircraft, including AI, and lots of add-on scenery spread throughout the world. It took forever to get that version to the point where I could finally hit "FLY". It was also filling up the 31GB E: partition that I have it installed on, which now has less than 4GB space remaining. So, I decided to create a second copy to use for just "testing" purposes, since I do alot of "tweaking" of panels and gauges, etc, on my G: drive. FS9 creates/uses the "FS9.cfg" file based on the actual NAME of the .exe file that is run. All you need to do is rename your original FS9.exe to "FS9_bloated.exe" and then run it to get a new .cfg created. Then do a new install of FS9 to the new loacation. The two installations will share a common "scenery.cfg" file but that doesn't seem to slow things down much in my case, however you might get the "updating scenery...." messages when going from one version to the next. In my case, once I created the initial "FS9_clean.exe" copy, I simply copied that entire installation to two other locations on my I: and J: hard drives and renamed the new copies "FS9_USA.exe" and "FS9_Europe.exe". I also renamed the top level folders to reflect those names. Now, when I install new aircraft or scenery, I place the new stuff in the appropriate FS9 copy after having first unzipped or "installed" the new files to a TEMP directory. The only problem that sometimes arises is with mal-configured "self installing" add-ons whose creators do not give you the should-be-a-mandatory-inclusion "browse" button to locate the location that YOU want the add-on to be installed in to. When using apps like Traffic Tools you can select the source and destination location so one can, as in my case, keep AI for specific regions of the world confined to the appropriate FS9 installation. I also went on to take the original FS9 icon and created three modified icons that I assigned to the "new" copies of FS9, thus in my quick launch tray I have 4 different FS9 icons, easily ID'd by the color and text I added to the icons. In my case, my registry still points back to the original FS9 installation. I forget now what hoops I had to jump through to make this happen when I created the original "clean" copy. It's not all that hard to search the registry for all instances of "fs9.exe" and make the appropriate path changes in KEYS such as:HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTApplicationsfs9.exeShellOpenCommandHKEY_CLASSES_ROOTMicrosoft.MicrosoftFlightSimulator.9DefaultIconHKEY_CLASSES_ROOTMicrosoft.MicrosoftFlightSimulator.9ShellOpenCommand As I mentioned, your new installation(s) will share a commonscenery.cfg file. They will also share the FLT and PLN files in your"userMy DocumentsFilght Simulator Files" directory.You can, however, have seperate default flight files since thename of this file is defined in the fs9.cfg file for each install.Just remember to give each default flight a unique name.One could go the route of creating a new install under a different"user" if you are running XP, but I prefer having all the filesavailable to me under one login name. Paul

That's awsome Paul. I don't know if I'd go that far, but then again I might get the hang of it and who knows!I already have FS9 on it's own 60gb drive. I do believe there are better ways to optimise the way the sim reads files and your method sounds a long way towards that.I also agree with your point on "browsing" addon scenery to install to a temp folder - this is definitely Rule #1. My sim is pretty "clean" as it is in this respect. I always manually install everything. I do, however, have lots of loose bits of mesh and landclass which I want to experiment in how to locate and access this.My system has also develeoped a nasty micro-stutter which I believe is caused by hard drive access, so locating my scenery on another drive might do something to help. I guess it comes down to trying a few things out so the new "copy" may help get some answers.Cheers for your help.

I also renamed mine as others have suggested and use it as "spare part"... So if say my "Main DLL" is corrupted, I just delete the corrupt one and copy the one from my spare parts Bin...Ron Mashburn