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tunnelcat

Can't read or copy FSX disks in File Explorer 10 or 7

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I'm about ready to tear my hair out. I'm trying to copy my FSX disks to ANYTHING, flash drive, external drive, even a computer file on my hard drive, but for the life of me, I can't get File Explorer to read any of the disks. Any other data DVD's work fine, so it's not the drives. If I put ANY of the 3 FSX disks into the drive and then open a File Explorer tree, it literally hangs and takes forever to display the files. It's like watching paint dry, only the paint never dries. The drive head literally clatters as it's trying to read the data on a couple of the drives I've tried. The file icons DO show up under the drive letter the left pane, but it takes forever or most of the time not at all to display the folders and contents in the right pane. If I close File Explorer while any FSX disk is still in the drive and reopen it, almost nothing gets displayed. It's really borked. I have to eject the disk to make it function again. I also get cdrom paging errors in the Event Viewer after going through all this. None of these disks have any dirt, warpage or damage. They're pristine. To top things off, I've tried it on 4 different computers, one Windows 10, three others Windows 7 and the one Win 7 system already has FSX installed and running, so things worked fine one time way back when. One drive is Blu-Ray, the others are DVD burner drives, one at last 10 years old. I managed to get FSX installed onto my new Win 10 system and the ONLY way that happened was to right click on the drive icon, WITHOUT OPENING THE FILE TREE FOR THAT DRIVE, and selecting "Install FSX" in the menu that popped up. But the rub is, it was such a PITA to install from the disks I want to back them up and preserve them to a different media for future re-installs or repairs, but so far, I've been stymied. I'm not even sure if my FSX installation isn't corrupt on the Win 10 system, even though I can open FSX and perform a quick free flight. I don't want to waste time installing GB's of mesh and scenery for naught if it's henky.You'd think that if the disks were unreadable or had errors that I wouldn't have been able to install FSX the first place. I hate the idea of having to buy the Steam version because my PMDG 747X is not be compatible, as far as I know. Any help would be appreciated here.

Edited by tunnelcat

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46 minutes ago, tunnelcat said:

Any help would be appreciated here.

I wish I could be of more help. I had it happen a few years back and I think I ended up disabling, or removing Intel Rapid Start Technology to get it to work.  However, I've a few less brain cells now and foolishly forgot to document the solution, so I could be way off base.


Ernest Pergrem

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I pulled my hair out long ago!  I'm lucky to have 2 brain cells to rub together!  Take a look at your DVD surface.  Any marks or scratches?  Maybe try a little Windex and a softy cotton cloth to clean it.:biggrin:


Charlie Aron

Awaiting the new Microsoft Flight Sim and the purchase of a new system.  Running a Chromebook for now! :cool:

                                     

 

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airernie, 2 of the systems I tried it on don't have Intel Rapid Start.

charliearon, those disks are pristine. No scratches or finger prints. No haze either. I even gave them a nice cleaning with my glasses cleaning solution that's safe for plastic. They look brand new. They've just been stored in a room temperature closet for the years I've owned them, when I wasn't installing FSX that is. Since I seem to have FSX installed, is there a way to back it up once it's already installed if I need to repair it? It hasn't been modified or added to yet.

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Do the disks actually run? (can you install the sim from them?

I remember, years ago, trying to copy the disks, & it seems there is some sort of copy protection on them.

If possible, why not do a fresh install, then copy that install to a portable drive as backup.

Then, if you do a copy/paste from that backup, you can use Flight1's Registry Repair Tool to set the FSX.exe to the registry.

Good Luck,

Robin 


Robin


"Onward & Upward" ...
To the Stars, & Beyond... 

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7 hours ago, tunnelcat said:

airernie, 2 of the systems I tried it on don't have Intel Rapid Start. 

Sorry that didn't help. 

Unfortunately I recently reformatted the Win7 computer that had the issue, installed Win10 and it catalogs the FSX disks.  I'll keep you in mind If one of the missing brain cells decides to fire.

 


Ernest Pergrem

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What I did a few years ago, after a fresh install was to simply copy the entire FSX folder onto a flash drive.  So now if I do anything stupid, I can get whatever I accidentally deleted from there.


Charlie Aron

Awaiting the new Microsoft Flight Sim and the purchase of a new system.  Running a Chromebook for now! :cool:

                                     

 

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9 hours ago, Wobbie said:

Do the disks actually run? (can you install the sim from them?

I remember, years ago, trying to copy the disks, & it seems there is some sort of copy protection on them.

If possible, why not do a fresh install, then copy that install to a portable drive as backup.

Then, if you do a copy/paste from that backup, you can use Flight1's Registry Repair Tool to set the FSX.exe to the registry.

Good Luck,

Robin 

Yes, the disks run. I can install them too but only if I don't try to search the file trees on the disks in File Explorer, which pretty much locks up File Explorer on every system I've tried it on and seems to indicate there is some sort of copy protection. But apparently, others here were able to copy the files off the disks with no issues, so I don't know what to think and I'd love to know their secret to success. Right now, I do have a fresh install sitting on my Win 10 system, so I will follow your advice and back up the directory to a flash drive before I start making .cfg changes and adding aircraft and scenery, especially since Win 10 1903 is going to get pushed onto my system very soon. Any other directories that should be backed up from the C drive? My FSX installation is on a separate drive. I'll also get Flight 1's Registry Repair Tool in case I need to fix things. I'd rather be flying than debugging software at this point.

Edited by tunnelcat

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Not sure you can copy these disks..  Copy protection?

What is being suggested is to copy the FSX folder off your harddrive instead.

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Bert

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OK, I found this answer on FlighSim's forum.

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?304070-Installing-FSX-without-DVD-drive

Apparently, one can copy the FSX disks to a flash drive, so no copy protection and one can install the simulation just fine from any media. Out of frustration, I might just dig out of the box my really old Dell XP system, which I was just getting ready to recycle, and see if I can read the disks using that. Surely that DVD drive is old enough to read FSX's disks without throwing a fit and falling in it. 🙄

 

 

Edited by tunnelcat

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Just sign-up for FSX-Steam and fahgettaboudit... 

(I did more than 3 years ago and have not looked back).

 

Edited by overspeed3

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Solved, I think. I dragged my old Dell XP machine out of the basement and set it up, hoping it would boot. Of course, the CMOS battery was deader than a doornail because it had been sitting down there retired in a box for years, so I had to select which drive to boot from in the BIOS when I powered it on. Actually got the creaky old dust collector booted into XP amazingly enough. Talk about an ancient OS. Thankfully it had no login password or I'd have been hosed. So in XP, File Explorer had no trouble reading the files on all disks, except Disk 2. For some reason, opening the tree on that disk and trying to copy files from the left pane to another folder on the hard drive hung the whole computer, even in XP. However, I did manage to copy the files and burn 3 separate data DVD+R's using my old Sonic DVD burning software since it didn't require using File Explorer. Good thing the DVD RW drive still worked, which is what I needed anyway, because the DVD ROM drive was locked closed. So after all that, I now had a set of backup data disks for FSX and I thought I was home free. But oh no, when I inserted the newly burned disks into the DVD drive on my older Win 7 computer, File Explorer still hung. DITH! Frustrated after this monumental waste of my time, I sat and thought for a moment. There's got to be a way to copy the contents of the disk to another folder without opening the stupid file tree or searching the web for another program, my last resort. Since Explorer always hung attempting this, I decided to do something ludicrously simple. I put the original FSX Disk 1 back into the DVD drive on my old Win 7 computer, canceled out of the autoplay options, opened Explorer clean, right clicked on the drive icon, being careful to not open the file tree in either pane, and selected "Copy" from the menu. Then I ran the cursor up to my "Documents" Folder above, right clicked on that and did a "Paste" (threw it into the top level). Lo and behold, the computer dutifully copied the contents of that FSX disk to the "My Documents Folder" and called the folder FSX Disk 1. Hallelujah, I was elated it worked, so I did this with the 2 other disks. I then copied these folders onto 3 different flash drives for good measure, one for each disk. Since this seems to work on Win 7, I'll try this on my new Win 10 computer, only I'll try to copy the disk contents to an external 3T drive this time using this same method. If it doesn't work, I'll have to resort to Reader's suggestion above or hope the flash drives I made work in the future.

So my question to Reader is, would these files copied this way suffice as backups, or would creating an ISO file be more reliable? I'd have to get an ISO burning program to do that, so have you got a recommendation along those lines?

overspeed3, I so seriously thought about doing that very thing that I put the Steam version of FSX in my Steam wish list to wait for a future sale. The problem is, I just bought the U.S., Alaska and Hawaii versions of FSGenesis on sale for 50% off during July + 10% off Tuesdays at pcaviator, an add-on that unfortunately only works in FSX-MS. I know, I could've bought TopoSim, but it wasn't on sale. I also have the PMDG 747X I bought years ago from Aerosoft and a wonderfully detailed Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport add-on that also only works in FSX-MS. I don't want to give those up. Besides, the Hong Kong Airport add-on, a commercial product, is no longer available.

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47 minutes ago, tunnelcat said:

 

overspeed3, I so seriously thought about doing that very thing that I put the Steam version of FSX in my Steam wish list to wait for a future sale. The problem is, I just bought the U.S., Alaska and Hawaii versions of FSGenesis on sale for 50% off during July + 10% off Tuesdays at pcaviator, an add-on that unfortunately only works in FSX-MS. I know, I could've bought TopoSim, but it wasn't on sale. I also have the PMDG 747X I bought years ago from Aerosoft and a wonderfully detailed Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport add-on that also only works in FSX-MS. I don't want to give those up. Besides, the Hong Kong Airport add-on, a commercial product, is no longer available.

I’m pretty sure all the those addon work in FSX-MS. Some of them like the PMDG you might need to redownload the newer installer and other might just have to point the installer to the FSX folder. As far as I know, most addons made for FSX work in the Steam version as it’s not that different. The Kai Tak was made by FlyTampa and I’m pretty sure it works in FSX-SE as well.


Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator

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Thanks. I will get a copy since it looks like a simple procedure and make backups of those FSX disks. I'll also store them in multiple storage places. Even DVD's degrade over time.

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On 7/18/2019 at 6:00 AM, charliearon said:

What I did a few years ago, after a fresh install was to simply copy the entire FSX folder onto a flash drive.  So now if I do anything stupid, I can get whatever I accidentally deleted from there.

Thanks for the advice. Since I now have a fresh install, I'll back up the entire directory, just in case.

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