Reinstall P3DV4 without losing files?

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Hey fellas, need some help with this one. Thirty minutes after installing Acronis, the entire sim crashed. So if you're thinking of installing Acronis, then IMO I would give it a wide birth. I had troubles with the last version too. Anyway, it had trashed my Win10 install. This was confirmedb y my PC guru, who is reinstalling a fresh Win10 and copying across all the relevent files and folders. However, I am unsure how things will pan out when he returns the machine to me tomorrow. I have P3D on a separate drive, so my question is... if I have to reinstall P3DV4, is there a way of doing so and not having to reinstall all the addons. I am assuming I could copy all the scenery and aircraft folders to another drive, and after reinstalling P3D just copy them back to the correct folders? I know there are other folders on the C drive, which I may have to also copy and return to their original place after installation. I'm thinking of xml files, those in the appdata folder, ezdok etc etc. Am I on the right track with this, or will it not work? Can anyone offer a full solution to my dilemma if indeed I have to reinstall P3D. Cheers guys.

[jimcarrel 688]

This was one reason for the xml files under documents. All things that were added with xml files only need appropriate folders copied to previous locations. (adjusting xml files as needed, if needed to be adjusted). I think you have the right idea, just try to replicate all files with their locations (make sure add-on.xml files match where you copied over the actual add ons. You will of course need to install P3d, which brings to mind you may have a slight problem getting it activated since you may have not got the chance to un-install it. 

Someone might have an idea on some registry edits, if so you could just do that an run P3D from the drive it's on, but I bet that is almost impossible. 

[vgbaron 3,587]

First - just as a FYI, I have been using Acronis for years and never had an issue.

If your OS got trashed then probably your registry got trashed also.

You are MUCH better off reinstalling addons that use the registry. If you installed with the add-on.xml method - you should be good to go as long as all the files are in the correct locations.

 

Good luck,

Vic

[Guest]

Personally I would definitely install everything from scratch again. When you copy things from a previous install it is easy to make mistakes. Things get worse when you need to edit files to get things done. And registry entries might be missing. I would never do this, specially when you get a freshly installed system!

Besides... you are blaming Acronis for your problems but thousands of people are using Acronis without any problems so you can't be sure if that program is the cause, so... that might also mean there were files in your P3D install that were the actual cause of your crash. Imagine you would copy those corrupted files into your fresh new system! Now THAT would be awful! P3D might crash again and you might have to start all over with reinstallng the system again! (Insert scream of disgust here.) No way I would risk that. Again, my advice: reinstall everything from scratch. Better safe then sorry. 

[Paladin 101]

Acronis???  Top notch software.  Used it 4 years with no problems!!

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Thanks for the replies and help guys, appreciated. Jeroen, good advice, but I have no intention of keeping the original P3D. I want to reinstall P3d and simply copy across scenery files and soforth. So there shouldn't be any config files or such. You may be right about the P3D being corrupted. It just seems very strange that within half an hour of installing Acronis, the thing just went boom. I had been running P3d perfectly for sometime with no issues whatsoever. I've also read posts elsewhere of people having issues. Anyway, regardless of the cause, it seems I will have quite a bit of work to do.

[PaulFWatts 100]

Hence the importance of doing an image backup (using the standard Windows Image Backup tool) of your Windows drive and P3D drive.

Then if you ever have a major problem restore the image backups.

I do this once a week or after any major installations.

I also run standard backups so I can restore a file if need be.

[Slayer 190]

Another wrinkle is that you can potentially save hours and hours of downloading orbx if you point it to your old install location, it will copy over what is needed and download the rest. When i Went from V3 to V4 luckily I had kept my V3 intact and FTX central simply copied over the files it needed.

[Rocky_53 1,579]

The only upside is that I am only about 25% into a complete install of P3D V4.  So I could probably get most of what I have reinstalled so far in a couple of days.