18 months on, should I reinstall?

[Guest Gordius]

Yes it is possible if you have a second disk to which you can install it but a pain in the wassname and better left well alone - up to you I take no blame if anything goes wrong.Option1 - Install Win XP, it will ask you where you want to install it. Choose second disk.When you startup each time you will have a menu asking which copy of XP you wish to run, choose the one which runs it from second disk. Be very careful and if in doubt at any time STOP.Install FS9 having booted from second disk being careful to select that disk for your install !!!!Option 2 - At PC startup go to BIOS Setup and change primary boot device to second disk. Install XP to second disk. Install FS9 to second disk - again be careful you install to second disk and do not overwrite existing copy !!! Everytime you want to check the "clean" FS9 you will have to change your boot device to the secondary (slave) disk through BIOS.Option 3 - Unplug primary hard disk and set secondary hard disk to act as a master instead of slave which it will be at the moment. Install XP. Install FS9.My recommendation. Leave well alone it is too easy for it to go wrong. Note if you do either of these you will lose the contents of the secondary hard disk during XP install. I certainly would not do it !!!!!!!! If you decide to go ahead anyway I recommend option 1, you will not have to mess with BIOS . Option 3 is the safest method.Regarding cannot reload to exactly where your sim paused. If you dont already have it try searching for autosave which will save the flight every XX seconds/minutes, not exactly what you asked for but I think the closest you will you get. By Pete Dowson I think. If you cant find it tell me and I will email it to you :-)I say again and for the last time. The above instruction regarding a second installation is an answer to your question and not a reccomendation. I could do it but will not try unless I have two "clean" hard disks to try it on first. But if you aren't 100% sure of what you are doing leave well alone! As a final note having a second install of XP can be helpful not only for solving sim related problems but for problems with any other software/drivers too. Anu questions email me.Andrew Brownhttp://www.gordiusfs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

[Guest]

I've never had trouble with 9.1 that couldn't be traced back to some addon or outside factor myself.Problem is a lot of people don't care to try and decide the real cause of what problems they may have and blame everything on FS (or Windows, or Microsoft) on general principle.

[Guest OneTinSoldier]

Yes, you can 'make' a second installation of FS9, in a manner of speaking at least. This method will work for most anything(although maybe not absolutely everything), and it is really quite simple. This assumes that you are wanting to do this all on the same hard drive.If for instance I wanted to run dual installations, here is what I would do after I'm done installing the game and patching to the latest version.I make a folder named 'Flight Simulator 9_Original_no-addons'(the name you want to make this folder is entirely up to you), and then go into my 'Flight Simulator 9' folder, press CTRL-A and then CTRL-C on my keyboard to copy the whole thing, then go back into 'FS9_Original_no-addons' folder I just made a minute ago and press CTRL-V on my keyboard to paste the entire game into this folder. Obviously(i hope) I am doing all this within X:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesNow I install all the addons I want, which will obviously get installed to 'Flight Simulator 9'.Then if I ever want to play the game with no addons installed, I simply rename the 'Flight Simulator 9' folder to 'Flight Simulator 9_With_addons' and then rename 'Flight Simulator 9_Original_no-addons' to 'Flight Simulator 9'. Presto! I have just quickly switched between two installations of MSFS! All that is required is disk space. The other caveat(as mentioned before) is that this all on the same hard drive. By now I think it should be pretty obvious what I do if I want to go back to playing the modified with addons installation again.This method also gives you what you could consider a 'backup' of all the original files as long as you leave the 'Flight Simulator 9_Original_no-addons' version in a unmodified(pristine/unaltered) state. In other words, you can play it, but not modify or alter it in any way, shape, for form. You would then have access to all the unmodified original files, for the purpose of comparing or restoring files in your modified installation.The 'FS9.cfg' file is another matter. But you could always make a backup of it the first time you fly FS9 unmodified by making a copy of it and naming something like 'FS9.cfg.orig', which is what I do. And then switch between different variants of it using the same renaming process.Cheers,OneTinSoldier

[Guest David Lee 2]

Graeme,I have a very high end system but am also finding rather severe stutters at landing at particular airports, and this is with sliders already about halfway down. It seemed to start after installing Ultimate Terrain USA. I can't imagine not using that addon because it is such a huge improvement but I also find the stutters so annoying that I'm just not using FS9 much anymore. I suspect Ultimate Terrain is just so CPU intensive that it is having troubles keeping up with weather and AI, although eliminating the AI and flying with clear skies doesn't completely solve the problem. Interestingly, a friend of mine reported the same problems at the same airports (we both live and fly in Colorado). A particularly bad one seems to be landing to the north at Fort Collins/Loveland (KFNL). Bad stutters seem to occur about 1 mile out, presumably when it is trying to load AI or airport textures. Aspen (KASE) is another problem but there you do have a tremendous amount of scenery with all the mountains rivers and lakes. I would love to find a solution for this but so far nothing has worked. I've considered reinstalling as well but just can't seem to take the leap. Good luckDavid

[Rudi 0]

why don't you just defragment the drive. that will help.

[Guest]

before you defrag, also run checkdisk to check the drive for errorsopen a command line and type chkdsk c: /f/rit will say the drive is in use and ask if you want it to start the next time the computer is restarted, hit Y for yesreboot, and let it run through the 5 steps, sometimes you have file errors causing slowdown in windows.A word of caution, a few times at work I have seen computers blue screen and not boot up after running that, but I suspect there was something else wrong to begin with. Just wanted to make sure I threw in the warning that it has a 1% chance of making things worse!Defrag after that, then run software like ad-aware, right click on the hard drive in windows explorer and go to properties, then the disk clean up button to get rid of temporary files and folders. Then reboot, run check disk then defrag again, rebuild your fs9 file, check for updated drivers for all your hardware including the BIOS.Reinstalling the OS or FS9 is not an option for me because of all the data I have on the computer and it is so time consuming I barely have enough time to fly

[mole_man 0]

Like most I do do all the above at various stages, but probably never everything at the same time. I should try that I think.Is chkdsk the same as scandisk?Graeme

[Guest OneTinSoldier]

Yes, it's the same thing as the old 'scandisk'. scandisk is what it was named in Win9x which used the FAT32 filesystem. But in NT it's chkdsk. Open up a command prompt and check out 'chkdsk /?'.The way to do a chkdsk using the GUI is to... use Windows Explorer --> Right-click on the drive letter --> Properties --> click 'Check Now' under Error-checking.Regards,OneTinSoldier

[mole_man 0]

aha, I've only just converted to NTSF, so not come across the new name before.

[Guest]

But it won't check the whole drive because it's in use. It's been so long since I did it that way, does it prompt you to do it on a restart?

[Guest Gordius]

Long live DOS (sorry seeing chkdsk got the blood pumping) ;-)Andrew Brownhttp://www.gordiusfs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

[Guest OneTinSoldier]

>But it won't check the whole drive because it's in use. It's>been so long since I did it that way, does it prompt you to do>it on a restart?I normally use the command prompt too. But yes, if using the GUI it will prompt you and tell you that the disk will be checked on the next restart.Cheers