Hi every one and reads,

I recently got a brand new M.2 SSD hard drive for my PC, and I have added windows 10 and P3D v4 to this M.2. And now it has gone completely wrong for me, I have QW 787 for P3D v4 and I cannot edit and edit the txt file called Aircraft.

I have also found that many of my other aircraft / sim objects are not below local disk (C:) > Programs > Lockheed Martin > Prepar3D v4 > SimObjects! But they are under other files, so I do not know if it is me who made a mistake or whether it is my PC that roams in this ??? 

I have the feeling that it is me who made a mistake. But to be 100% sure I just wanted to hear, is it stupid to put P3D v4 on the same disk as windows ???

 

If we agree it is me who made a mistake, then I have to reinstall everything from scratch or can I just move the files ???

 

Hope some one can help me

 

Best regards Jammin16

Hello J16, seems you got quite the problem there. The 1st rule of thumb is DO NOT install P3D into C:\Program files. That will cause you major grief, for sure. I had already installed P3D into to root of C-drive with Windows with no headaches, but only had one disk at the time.

The best, of course, is to have a dedicated disk for P3d.

And, unfortunately, you will need to do a complete uninstall/reinstall as you cannot simply move the files.

I have always installed P3D into the Program Files (or Program Files x86) folder. It works just fine. What is this "major grief" that is supposed to occur?

It depends.  I always used the default installation folder and never had a problem.  Why would it be the default installation if there are so many problems?  Having said that, I'm sure there are some best practices that apply to folks that prefer to do things (whatever they are) that are easier to do if the installation is elsewhere.  Nothing wrong, nothing stupid.  

Do you mean you can't edit an aircraft "Aircraft.cfg" file?  What kind of problems?  What editor are you using?  Does the editor have the ability to edit files that require administrator permissions?  Does your windows 10 account have administrator rights?  

14 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

What is this "major grief" that is supposed to occur?

With Windows 10 (8 also had that problem) it was permissions issues. Even installing with admin rights, the problems persisted. 

52 minutes ago, tamsini said:

With Windows 10 (8 also had that problem) it was permissions issues. Even installing with admin rights, the problems persisted. 

I too disagree.

Because I do Beta Testing for many leading / different developers, and I perform evaluations of upcoming products for many different developers, I have to install P3D to it's default location (as this is where the vast majority of people install P3D, especially those that don't follow flight sim in various forums, which is (sadly) most flight simmers.

I have never had any issue with installing P3D to it's default location in the Program Files folder and I have not modified the folder permissions like I had to do back with the Disk version of FSX (this is not necessary with the steam version of FSX, otherwise known as FSX:SE.

Another reason why I install to the "C" drive (same location as Windows) is that I'm able to quickly make a Clone of the drive should something go wrong with my system.  This allows me to quickly revert to a known good install of Windows, P3D, or the many addons on my system. 

One reason that installing P3D to a different drive (other than where Windows is installed) is to increase performance. When Windows is pulling data off one drive and P3D pulling data from a different drive you'll see that increase in performance when running P3D.  It's not an earth shattering increase in performance, but it will be noticeable especially on systems with a slower processor. From my perspective, this is the decision point, whether to have increased performance or having Windows and P3D installed on the same drive for very easy cloning or imaging.  Note:  If you clone a Windows drive, you'll need to take the drive offline in the Device Manager otherwise Windows will actually write data to/from the primary and clone drives at the same time, and that hurts performance.  Taking the cloned drive offline (disabling it) is very quick and easy, as if re-enabling it.  To boot to a drive disabled in Windows is also easy by selecting the cloned (disabled) drive as the boot device in BIOS when you start your computer.

Best wishes!

Edited July 21, 20196 yr by DaveCT2003

3 hours ago, Jammin16 said:

Hi every one and reads,

I recently got a brand new M.2 SSD hard drive for my PC, and I have added windows 10 and P3D v4 to this M.2. And now it has gone completely wrong for me, I have QW 787 for P3D v4 and I cannot edit and edit the txt file called Aircraft.

I have also found that many of my other aircraft / sim objects are not below local disk (C:) > Programs > Lockheed Martin > Prepar3D v4 > SimObjects! But they are under other files, so I do not know if it is me who made a mistake or whether it is my PC that roams in this ??? 

I have the feeling that it is me who made a mistake. But to be 100% sure I just wanted to hear, is it stupid to put P3D v4 on the same disk as windows ???

 

If we agree it is me who made a mistake, then I have to reinstall everything from scratch or can I just move the files ??? 

 

Hope some one can help me

 

Best regards Jammin16

No it is not wrong to install P3D in the default location.

Unless I completely misunderstand your post, the only mistake that I can see is that you are trying to apply to P3D what you used to know about FSX. Please don't. Unlearn what you have learned, P3D works differently.

Addons are no longer required nor recommended to be installed in the simulator folder. The default location is \Documents\Prepar3D V4 Add-ons\ - or anywhere on your computer really. The reason is, that Program Files is a protected system folder, for executables only, and that is where the simulator program belongs. Content files are supposed to be either in \Documents or in \ProgramData.

If addons are installed properly in your Documents folder (or elsewhere you have full access to), you never have any trouble editing aircraft.cfg files. With P3D you don't move the whole simulator - you move the addons. Please note that there is a lot more to this than just moving files around, and you should familiarize yourself with P3D add-on operations in general.

Also, editing any cfg files is an action that you should keep to a minimum. So many things have changed. Be aware that P3D internal cfg files are no longer simple ASCII, they are encoded in UTF-16. If you use an editor that is unaware of text file encoding, it will break the cfg files.

Best regards

Edited July 21, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

I'm in agreement with Oliver. In an idral world where all developers follow the recommended guidelines and install addons OUTSIDE of the root folder, there should be no issues with ProgramFiles permissions. The problems arise when the user or the addon tries to modify the cfg files, etc in the protected folder. Quite often(but not all the time) the sim will crash with no real explanation leaving the user to puzzle out what happened.

This is why many people recommend installing P3D outside the ProgramFiles folder, just to eliminate that possibility. 

If those situations do not occur there will be no problem with an install to default folder.

Vic

Hi every one

First of all, thank you for coming with each of your knowledge about this topic.

I have read each of your comment and I can say my little problem is solved with the Aircraft.cfg file. I had to run notepad as an administrator to be able to save the Aircraft.cfg file with the new airline. But what amazes me is that I have to run a notepad as an administrator to be able to save. My PC has become very strange after I had reinstalled windows 10, I am fully in the process of finding out what happens to my PC since it has got its new features!?!?

But as far as I understand, P3D v4 and many other PC programs recommend installing on the (C:\\) disk. What just also amazes me is that it is located Aerosoft airports and other airports as well as flying in all sorts of folders, although I have said it should be below (C :)> Programs> P3D v4 ???

But I'm going to talk to microsoft support about my control system. And then I have to see what happens.

 

But thank you very much for your repleys.

 

 

17 minutes ago, Jammin16 said:

I have read each of your comment and I can say my little problem is solved with the Aircraft.cfg file. I had to run notepad as an administrator to be able to save the Aircraft.cfg file with the new airline ...

 

As Oliver (Lorby-SI) already stated, better use notepad++ or other editors which won't screw up UTF coded .cfg files. Windows default notepad can produce some trouble  with UTF coded txt files. In your case the aircraft.cfg is propably not UTF coded but other .cfg files are.

Edited July 22, 20196 yr by Nemo

FSX.cfg and Prepar3D.cfg are owned by the logged on user. Editing in notepad is supported without elevating to admin.

If we log in as Joe we become a member of the users group.

But when we locate the file:

C:\Users\Joe\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Prepar3D.cfg

We own this folder. Admins can't operate it.

We can double click that and it opens in Notepad (or what ever our associated program to .txt files is set to).

Admin privileges are a master key to unlock any door.

When we are the first Windows user we have full privileges, but only made available where we need to. For example adding users.

But program folders are protected from malware and our own mistakes.

In the program folder:

C:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4

There might be something we want to modify. Let's have a look:

C:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\SimObjects\Airplanes\Mooney_Bravo\aircraft.cfg

Perhaps we want to edit that to play around. Don't worry we have a backup

I double click that and I can make changes in Notepad but refuses to save.

I can open Notepad with privileges raised to admin, then I can save my changes.

Now, we know that some planes save their settings there, so often then the simulator is installed in a folder we created. In that way we own it and we can run a plane and that can modify those files.

Or we can run the simulator with admin privileges and again the plane can save it's settings.

If we do not do ONE of those things the sim may CTD with a dll error or stackhash as the dll hangs the simulation while attempting to save without Modify access.

We see systems created on purposely repartitioned drives and UAC adjusted and forcing run as admin and all kinds of things.  There are obviously better ways to handle it, right?

Instead the professional way to gain modify access to a folder is to provide modify access to a group that uses the software, a group that is Authenticated.

Say we have a program folder that contains a settings file like P3D or FSX with an addon.

C:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4

We can add the Modify Allow permission to the Users group. That's nice and safe because we are a user. Now we can double click the file, notepad runs, and we can save changes. The simulation doesn't CTD with an access problem if we do not run as admin and we do not install in our own folder.

A warning about user folders is that admins can't access them. There are installer admins and service admins and well you get the idea that in the long run you might need to worry that some addon doesn't get to put something there. In user created folders where other apps and users write out to settings, make sure to add the Modify Allow permission to the Users group on those folders.

In effect the only reliable way is to add modify permission on that folder if we are installing user mode read/write file there like aircraft panel files and plans saved by FMSs, or we want to edit a text file in there. I have lots of apps that work like that. It's a throwback to WinXP when the folder was not protected in the same way those apps and addons put read/write files there.

Drives are queued, so it is better to have a controller that can widen queues such as a RAID controller. These can use striping to accelerate file access for HDD and SSD and interoperate with the motherboard. Xeon Platinums have a nice onboard controller for around $9000..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^

Can't quite believe it huh? I understand that loads of folk go the complicated route, so long as it works it's OK. I see that some say don't mess with permissions, well you are not messing with permissions they say that to scare you. I would not mess with permissions, but I've seen it all over the place stuff like take ownership etc. No need if you do NT you know how to make a group that uses an app and add users to the group. We can use the users group it's already made for us. That's not messing, that's called using our PC normally. Look:

Very simple: Right-Click, Properties, Security, Edit, Users Group, Modify Allow - check it, OK to all folders.

Modify Allow checks the Write box for us. That's on an old x86 LM folder so that any P3D versions added will inherit the permission. I do this because certain planes install read/write files in folders in there.

Properly designed Windows programs don't work that way they have their own user accessible folder for settings so we don't have to worry about modify permission on their program folder. Remember it's not a fault that we can't edit program folder files if we want to it is protected.

It is protected by permission. We do not have permission to just edit freely.

When we do not have permission and we often want that permission we give the permission.

If you have to OK to Admin when attempting to notepad edit and save a cfg file in the simobjects folder for example, your sim is basically a permissions problem to certain brands of aircraft and other addons. Not mine.

We don't need to make a drive partition and a private folder. We can add the modify permission to the Users group it is fine and safe. Only authenticated logons are members. there's network and local versions, no need to worry they work the same.

As I have pointed out to Steve in private conversations, I have always installed FSX and P3D into the relevant Program Files foilder. I have never had any problems modifying files of any kind, and I have never had to install/run/save anything as an administrator.

Ever.

Edited July 23, 20196 yr by Christopher Low

Out of interest...

if you install into program files and you try change the cfg file or add a paint, needing to modify the aircraft config..will it accept the changes and save the file, in its original location, within the program files...or does it start asking you where you would like to save the modified version on the file, outside of the program files?

results as admin :?

results as non admin:?

It takes no time to try this:

 

make a notepad file in \Program files, can you save it.

 

If you can save you have a less secure version of Windows like Chris!

(What Chris can do is actually look at the permission list on his folder to work out what his 'mystery' condition is about for enlightenment.)

If you cannot save you have a protected version of windows. You can run notepad as admin, or you can allow the users group, or any group you create, to gain access. Simply add Modify to the Usrers group and you need not use Admin. Try it, takes a few minutes.