IT WORKED PERFECTLY! Last night I downloaded SP1, and didn't load it. I then deleted EVERYTHING associated with FSX (including my addons)from my hard drive. THEN, I started the long Defragmentation, went to bed, and Voila....this morning it was finished. Painless. This morning I re-installed FSX (takes so long...)and RAN it. I then set up all my appropriate settings: Level of Detail, Mesh Complexity, Mesh Resolution, and Texture Resolution to MAX. I then set my Autogen....Normal and Very Dense. Set up my MSFF2 joystick to all appropriate settings.Came home from work tonight....and installed SP1. Very Quick. Got into FSX and checked my default airport, KABE, and NO weather. This morning, without SP1, I was in the low 20's and high teens, but very smooth. AFTER SP1, tonight, I was in the 30's and up to 46FPS constantly. Then I went to KSEA (a challenge), and flew "beautifully smooth" in the high 20's. I noticed the clouds were more realistic than ever (my imagination?), and I really enjoyed the whole experience. THEN I loaded RealWeather...NO PROBLEM. It worked as before. Tomorrow...(I'm too tired now), I'll start with my Cloud9 and FS Genesis addons, load all of my favorite payware and freeware planes, then load my FSForce (Russell Dirks software that makes FFeedback very, very real).LESSON: Follow the rules, and do the update as Phil and others have long preached. It worked for me, and it should work for you (if you're computer is free of Gremlins).Lastly, THANK YOU very much, Phil Taylor, for all your hard work and dedication. I, for one, appreciate it, because it "works as advertised".ps. I will do one more "defrag" tonight.

This should have gone in the pinned thread at the top of this forum. Nonetheless, contrats on your happy experience!Gary

Me too, Stan. Deleted FSX and started from scratch. Everything went flawlessly. I am now re-installing my add-ons.The only little quirk I experienced was that FSUIPC 4.1 (registered) did not recognise my Elite King Air Power Quadrant. I then installed an older version of FSUIPC (4.07), had it recognise my PQ and subsequently updated FSUIPC to 4.1I am joining you in thanking Phil for giving us regular feedbacks during this long wait for SP1.Merci beaucoup Phil!!J.J.JJ StruyfBraine-L'AlleudBelgium

May I ask you which settings do you use? What about AI?I did the same procedure as you and i get barely 10 FPS in Seattle.Thank you.Alberto

Stan, good news on your install. For those who are looking for other success stories:* I did not have FSX installed on my computer when SP1 released. * I installed FSX to my dedicated sim drive, as usual.* IMMEDIATELY, I installed SP1 (prior to running FSX at all). I got the install successful screen in the patch. I validated this by looking at the EXE and DLL file datestamps, some of which now read 5/11/2007 (true and correct!) * I then ran FSX, prompted through the EULA and Activation sections (activation sucessful), then launched the sim. * I configured sliders to my liking, kicking them up a touch due to the expected SP1 improvements, then launched a flight.* Then the drooling began at how changed the sim actually was! * Then I created an Acronis TrueImage snapshot of my entire system. This captures my activated FSX install and everything else, so if I ever need to totally refresh FSX to scratch, I will reload this image. Additional Tweaks:I use an nVidia card, and found that in full screen, I wasn't getting quite the image quality I wanted. I exited the sim, and in my DRIVER SETTINGS, turned anti-aliasing and ansiotopic filtering to "Application Controlled". I entered the sim, and in the sliders set filtering to Ansiotropic and checked the anti-aliasing checkbox. Va-boom! Image quality as expected. This behaviour is opposite what FS2004 wanted - FS2004 is no good with in-game AA, but FSX is better with in-game AA/AS.

I started out just installing over my existing FSX and it worked, but decided to bite the bullet and uninstall and re-install over a fresh RTM of FSX. Took several hours but went without a hitch.Flying over Alaska around PANC with mytrafficx set at 30 and settings the same prior to SP1 I've jumped from 14-18 on the ground at PANC depending on where I panned to 20-25 (locked at 25).This is with WMRX and Track IR running along with Cargo Pilot Tracker. In the air I decided to lock at 30 and it stuck there like a pig in mud. No stutters nothing. Prior to SP1 in the air around the alaska it would fluctuate between 22-25 in PANC airspace, now it sticks at 30 with mytraffic at 30.Seattle was interesting but flying through the city at the same settings as Alaska I got 18-25 (locked 25), did get a quick stutter as the AI loaded near the airport but frames maintained 18-25. Prior to SP1 at the same settings it was 7-12.Going to try Denver next...NY is out of the question 6-9 still. Need to save a lower settings CFG for East coast flying.I do hope that some of the problems people are having do get resolved as we are now where we were at the release of FS9 in my opinion. Some had great performance some did not (I was in that category with a low end PC, had to keep settings low).With new hardware on the horizon such as the Penryn and whatever AMD has to offer along with DX10 and even faster video cards, I think we are finally on the road to seeing this incarnation of FSX coming into its own.Ian.

What did you find after you installed SP1 over your first install?What made you decide to start over?What were the differences in performance between an SP1 install over a current install and the one you did as a fresh install?Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Hi,I just did this trick doing my first install after doing an FSX repair from FSX Disks.This worked fine then I had second thoughts so I backed up my partitions, "C:, D: and I:" (System, Documents and FSX) and did a clean install and checked performance. It was no different to my "Repair" install. So I ditched the Complete install and recovered my partitions to my "Repair" install. I then checked performance with the default MS traffic files and had the same performance as the complete re-install. The repair install obviated the need to reload add on aircraft etc.The repair install is very quick to do and may have suited more users. All my add ons, Aircraft and Cloud9 work just fine with the repair install. Even if the "Repair" option has a problem one could always do a complete re-install anyway.The "repair" install still requires a good defrag after completion. SP1= Happiness. :-)John

Didn't find much of a difference, though I did have a CTD from weather.dll on the existing install. I decided to uninstall-re-install just be safe and start fresh.Performance wise there didn't seem to be much of a difference, although I didn't test that much, the CTD hasn't happened since. I just wanted to be sure I was seeing all the benefits, that nagging feeling that if I don't do it I'll pay for it later. It's an OCD thing.Ian.