I’m guessing this is a nonstarter I tend to  ffly MSFS now But I’ve got a lot of software for FSX and would  occasionally like to return to it However I had not  put it on my new PC and now  I’ve tried seems the install disc  now corrupt I don’t suppose there’s any way of downloading it online and then inputting your serial key? 
 

my new PC doesn’t have a DVD player and I tried a portable one and it just won’t work

 

🥲

Hi Steve

It may be easier for you to go for FSX steam edition as I am not aware of an option for you to download  and input your key from the DVD version.

kind regards

Daz

 

Cheers I am thinking that too I have bought two copies of the DVD in the past so it is a little annoying having to pay for it again main thing I want to have a go at again is the PMDG737 and quite a few a2a  aircraft do you know if they  work  okay in Steam Or would I have to buy them again? 
 

Might be more economical just to buy the 737 now it’s released for MSFS 

Bozdog, worth checking this recent thread. There is a link inside towards some tips for cleaning the disc. In my understanding it only works if the disc has some tear and wear. Will not work if the disc has genuine scratch.

 

 

22 minutes ago, Bozdog said:

Cheers I am thinking that too I have bought two copies of the DVD in the past so it is a little annoying having to pay for it again main thing I want to have a go at again is the PMDG737 and quite a few a2a  aircraft do you know if they  work  okay in Steam Or would I have to buy them again? 
 

Might be more economical just to buy the 737 now it’s released for MSFS 

Your A2A aircraft will work absolutely fine on the steam edition,  not sure re the PMDG 737 as this aircraft is not in my hangar.

Dazkent, the A2A installer will automatically recognize the Steam edition I suppose? I mean, there will be no manual file editing or tweak required?

Edited May 14, 20224 yr by Simicro

1 hour ago, Simicro said:

Bozdog, worth checking this recent thread. There is a link inside towards some tips for cleaning the disc. In my understanding it only works if the disc has some tear and wear. Will not work if the disc has genuine scratch.

 

 

Thanks. Mate just brought another dvd drive around.  Same issue  on both disks I have. Just spins away if open the instal folder no icons on files.  Possible windows 11 incompatible with boxed version instal disk ? 😢

Edited May 14, 20224 yr by Bozdog

Oh you are on Windows 11. That might explain the issue because it is unlikely that both of your disk are scratched in my opinion.
I'm like you: I have 2 FSX Gold Edition boxes, one french, one english. But I was lucky, I reinstalled successfully 2 weeks ago on Windows 10, because I was nostalgic of some addons that are not quite compatible with P3Dv4.5: RealAir Scout and FlyTampa Grenadines.
However I'm considering to buy the FSX Steam Edition as a backup for the day when things will go wrong with my disks. I Googled a bit and found that for approx. 25€ FSX-SE has the following advantages:
- More stable on recent OS
- Improved performance
- Straightforward installation (no need to install Service Packs/Acceleration or to applies fixes such as HIGHMEMFIX=1, UIAutomationCore.dll, etc)
- Cannot be corrupted like disc and can always be downloaded
I've also seen a couple of mates here saying recently that they are happy with their FSX-SE.
The big Con for me is addon compatibilty. Standard addon for FSX-MS are not guaranteed to be compatible with FSX-SE.

1 hour ago, Simicro said:

The big Con for me is addon compatibilty. Standard addon for FSX-MS are not guaranteed to be compatible with FSX-SE.

i used the steam version for many years and i never found any issues with this. i think it may have been a trouble after the first few months of release when devs had to update their installers to be able to find the right folders but it's very mature now, we are talking about an 8 year old app . runs a2a planes, pmdg 737 just fine.

 

4 hours ago, Bozdog said:

Might be more economical just to buy the 737 now it’s released for MSFS 

maybe yah haha...besides, it looks and performs better than the fsx version 😃

 

19 hours ago, Simicro said:

Dazkent, the A2A installer will automatically recognize the Steam edition I suppose? I mean, there will be no manual file editing or tweak required?

Yep straight forward installation 😉

I highly recommend the Steam Edition for anyone installing FSX.  The Steam Edition is an easy installation, FSX add-ons work just fine, and you don't have to apply a bunch of changes to the CFG file to get a smooth simulation.  I also experience far fewer CTD's with the Steam Edition.