FSX fails to load.

[Guest Shep]

Help needed on a very odd problem please. I recently uninstalled/reinstalled and reactivated my only installed version of FSX (owing to cloning one smaller Raptor to a larger 150Gb Raptor)and although I'm minus a multiplayer entry in the drop down menu everything worked. Today FSX briefly showed the start-up splash screen but that was as far as it got. I tried deleting the fsx.cfg, reinstalled DX9 (WinXP Pro) and also reinstalled my Nvidia 7900 512mb card drivers - no improvement. I then used the repair function (from the FSX add/remove program entry) it asked first for disk 1 and then disk 2. Apart from having to reinstall my modified autogen tree and buildings textures everything worked fine.I have just rebooted and am back in the same position - FSX starts to load with a quick flash of the splash screen and nothing more!Ray

[vonmar 122]

Try this and see what happens?Use notepad.In fsx.cfgSHOW_OPENING_SCREEN=1save the file.If already=1 try 0 (zero)

[Guest Shep]

Thanks for the thought. It was on SHOW_OPENING_SCREEN=0 so did try 1 but still the same. A quick flash of the splash screen is all I get.RayPS - What is odd, as soon as I use the FSX repair function it will work 'till I reboot again. It may point to something in my Win XP Pro set-up, although I have not changed anything and I have no idea what it could be.

[vonmar 122]

Are you using one or two monitors?

[phillroath 1]

Go to same folder as your fsx.cfg and rename logbook.bin to logbook1.bin and try again. If that fixes it, do a search on logbook to find a fix.Phill

[Guest Shep]

Using 1 monitor Vaughan.Will try your logbook.bin idea Phill but at the moment FSX is loading fine again. All I did was reboot and it worked straight off. When FSX failed to load, FS 2004 (installed on the same drive) worked perfectly and so did everything else.Ray

[Guest Shep]

FSX was loading perfectly but after I rebooted, FSX failed to load again, just a brief show of the splash screen. It doesn't lock up with any error messages but just shows the splash and nothing else. I tried your idea of renaming the logbook but that didn't work for me Phill, although I did a search for logbook and see it works for many folk.Ray

[yellowjack 28]

I had a problem with identical symptoms when I first installed FSX. I fixed it by re-installing on a non compressed partition. Why FSX didn't like a compressed partition beats me but you have to go with the flow.

[GHD 21]

I had the same problem when it was originally installed to a compressed folder. Re-installing to a non-compressed folder resolved it.George

[Guest Shep]

I used Acronis to load an image of the C: Partition, taken before I had any problems with FSX and FSX worked (FSX installed on F: - no compression). I then realised that I had installed a new 3rd party scenery and this linked to the attached message could well have been the problem. The Acronis image of the C: Partition would have contained a scenery.cfg that did not have the new scenery added.Ray

[Guest Shep]

It was nothing to do with the 3rd party scenery! It failed to load after reboot and I spent a full day setting FSX up perfectly after an uninstall/reinstall only to find it failed to load after a reboot again. All that seems to be left now is a format/reinstall of XP Pro unless anybody has anymore ideas. The C: drive has some compressed files but the drive FSX is installed on is not compressed.Ray

[Jim Padgett 11]

Download procmon from sysinternals.com and see what is failing on the load.....

[Guest Shep]

Didn't need to try procmon, thanks Jim - I found the trouble. I started using the Microsoft Disc Cleanup tool a month or two ago, with the 'compress files older than.....to save disk space' As soon as I uncompressed them all, FSX now loads perfectly after a dozen or so cold/warm reboots (A long job but quicker than reformat/reinstall) Why FSX didn't work with compressed files on the C: drive when FSX itself is installed on a different drive is still a mystery but at least it's working. Thanks to all who replied with ideas.Ray