I have had a run of bad luck lately. On two occasions now I've come into a situation where the sim crashes to the desktop about a third of the way during the flight load up (after hitting "fly now" - not the initial program load). Meticulus deleting of any add-ons has not helped, and I have been forced to reinstall the sim.So, my question is this. This time around, I left the settings and files from my old install in place using the unistall utility. It has a box where you can tell the program to delete those pieces as well. I also uninstalled all UT programs before uninstalling the sim. Well, after the install, things work well. Even my third party planes like the PMDG are fine, which surprised me. So, my question is, what exactly happens here when you go this routine? Does anyone know if this install will be less stable? Is it corrupt and I don't know it yet? Is performance going to be hit because of issues I can't really see in the file structure? Thanks anyone for your thoughts.

Martin,You certainly acted in a drastic way to eliminate your problems!Next time just go to 'Start/ProgramFiles/MicrosoftGames/FS2004/TroubleShooting/Reset Defaults'.This will revert your FS9.cfg file to normal. This is all you do when you undelete FS and it is much quicker.By re-loading the program you are re-writing that configuration. It works for me.What has happened is, something you had added to your FS has corrupted the whole program. These files do exist, unfortunately.Dave T. .........On the lovely warm Devon Riviera and active 'FlightSim User's Group' member at http://www.flightsimgrpuk.free-online.co.uk/

>Martin,>>You certainly acted in a drastic way to eliminate your>problems!>>Next time just go to>'Start/ProgramFiles/MicrosoftGames/FS2004/TroubleShooting/Reset>Defaults'.>>This will revert your FS9.cfg file to normal. This is all you>do when you undelete FS and it is much quicker.>>By re-loading the program you are re-writing that>configuration. It works for me.>>>What has happened is, something you had added to your FS has>corrupted the whole program. These files do exist,>unfortunately.>>Dave T. .........On the lovely warm Devon Riviera and active>'FlightSim User's Group' member at>http://www.flightsimgrpuk.free-online.co.uk/I have been fooling with MSFS for years and never knew that this troubleshooting section was there. Thanks for the tip :)

>>>I have been fooling with MSFS for years and never knew that>this troubleshooting section was there. Thanks for the tip >:)>>>>You probably have used it many times but didn't know. This is simply the same as removing your current FS9.cfg file and letting MSFS rebuild a new one from start. In the Tips forum here there is a long thread about the suggested best ways to do this.

Thanks for your note. That will save a lot of heartache in the future (and keep my reinstalls down with my add on vendors so they won't think I'm trying to pirate their software!)Best,