Time for an honest discussion: Removing P3D from hard-drive.

[Rusty 11]

Hello guys, 

Today I have made the decision to remove P3D from my HDD. Nothing can beat the raw-power and beauty of MSFS and now that high-fidelity addons are here from PMDG, FENIX etc: I have not touched P3D in over six months. In order to free up my HDD for much anticipated addons for MSFS it now makes sense for me to wipe P3D.

However before doing so, I would like to ask for the support of the P3D forum members on what is the best way to remove or uninstall P3D. Additionally, after doing so should anything else be touched in the registry in order to remove any lingering aspects of P3D. 

Thanks for your support!

 

Note to Moderators: Please do not be sensitive regarding my post, as I am asking for support regarding uninstalling P3D, it is not my intention to spark a  MSFS "versus" P3D discussion. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Rusty
Note to moderators edited.

[polosim 858]

16 minutes ago, Rusty said:

best way to remove or uninstall P3D.

https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=139311

[Twenty6 694]

Well, if you're ready to delete P3D that's one thing. But if you also ready to delete, shred, burn, etc all the paperwork and registrations for your P3D addons then you're truly ready to sever all ties. Go ahead and do it and don't look back.

Yet SSDs are getting dirt cheap. Needing more space for addons and scenery means buying another HHD or SSD, not deleting files to gain a few GBs. Keep P3D for nostalgia's sake.

 

[Doug47 574]

Why don’t you keep it on for when you return to V6?

[polosim 858]

1 hour ago, Twenty6 said:

Keep P3D for nostalgia's sake.

Or when MSFS servers doesn’t work as expected, sometimes happens. ( rare but happens ).

[Holdit 551]

I keep P3D for the aircraft it gives me that I can't get in X-Plane or MSFS, namely:

• A2A 172
• A2A Cherokee
• A2A Bonanza
• Milviz King Air 350
• Flight1 King Air 200
• Majestic Q400
• Aerosoft Catalina

I have very good King Airs and 172s in both other sims, but I'm still not ready to get rid of the old ones yet. I like my collection. I don't anticipate buying any more P3D add-ons though. With these aircraft plus the Orbx NA FTX and UK/IRL regions, the total on my new SSD comes to 121GB - not a whole lot.

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

1 hour ago, Rusty said:

However before doing so, I would like to ask for the support of the P3D forum members on what is the best way to remove or uninstall P3D. Additionally, after doing so should anything else be touched in the registry in order to remove any lingering aspects of P3D

Go to Control Panel, add/remove programs and uninstall all airports, aircraft and any utilities such as ChasePlane.

Once that’s done highlight the main P3D v5 Academic entry and choose uninstall. All registry entries should be removed.

Afterwards check My Documents for any P3Dv5 Addon entries. There shouldn’t be any if you’ve uninstalled all associated software.

No need to touch the Registry. It’s been four years since I’ve done this so may have missed something. That was when I was upgrading to a new computer.

[hs118 725]

I took a more nuanced approach similar to what @Twenty6 may be alluding. I already had backups of all my license info (in email and files as needed). I backed up the actual simobjects files of all the aircraft, including defaults and my modules folder (lotsa scripts in there). Then was ready to uninstall P3D using the control panel option.

There are always some lingering files in "My Documents", %appdata%, and Programdata that you can seek out and delete.

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by hs118

[micstatic 4,340]

normally I wouldn't recommend this.  But perhaps reinstall windows. 

 

Reason i say this.  I always tried to keep my addons for p3d on an external drive and then pointed them to the sim with Lorby Add on XML.  Despite my best efforts, I had years worth of bits and pieces all over the place from developers who had installers pointing all over the place.  Or I would end up with programs I already uninstalled still showing up in my add/remove apps part of windows.  These days as much as possible I try to use my main M.2 just for windows and other applications then other M.2's for storage (and addons).  It certainly makes a windows reinstallation much less of a chore.  I'm not saying all this needs to be done.  But I've found it works very nicely for me.  

[UrgentSiesta 942]

As a counter-point for consideration, I just re-installed P3D because - other than airliners - I get very little satisfaction from MSFS.

I've got a great collection of high quality addons filling my Community Folder, Including the PMDG 737 & DC-6, Just Flight BAe 146, Hawk T1, MilViz C310 and SWS Kodiak among quite a few others.

But honestly I just uninstalled most of them to make room for P3D again.

Why? Pretty simple: until I can get addons that fly like A2A Simulations Civ Mustang & Bonanza, Milviz T-38C Advanced (external flight model), and Majestic Q400 (external flight model), it's just not all that much fun to fly around in MSFS because in many ways, it doesn't "feel" like flying in the same way that the above provide.

Now, I can happily report being very satisfied with MSFS' PMDG, CFD-enabled Skyhawk G1000 & CFD Bonanza mod and...that's about it.

Hawk is super detailed and sporty, C310 has deep systems, 146 is great for "old school", and Kodiak goes places most aircraft fear to tread. But though they all "hit the numbers in the book" and are absolutely gorgeously modeled, they just don't have the fluid motion and sense of momentum/inertia found in the referenced P3D addons. And don't even get me started on the MSFS warbirds vs A2A's...

Anyhow, my advice is go ahead and pare down/clean out/minimize your P3D install, but maybe leave it in a useable state with just a couple of your absolute favorite addons. You might be as surprised as I was to realize I still need a few addons only available in P3D.

p.s.: I uninstalled P3D many months ago using a procedure very similar to that described by @Ray Proudfoot above and I ran into exactly zero issues afterwards, and neither when reinstalling v5 just this past weekend. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by UrgentSiesta
answering OP's actual question ;)

[Christopher Low 5,390]

12 hours ago, Holdit said:

.....the total on my new SSD comes to 121GB - not a whole lot.

The 45MB hard disk in my first ever PC (January 1992) begs to differ

[Holdit 551]

Just now, Christopher Low said:

The 45MB hard disk in my first ever PC (January 1992) begs to differ

Ah, those were the days. I remember the first PC (Win 95) that came in to our house with a 1 GB hard disk.

"That's loads of space! We'll never fill it!"

[W2DR 1,860]

Back in 1983 IBM released the XT model PC. It was the first model to include an internal HDD. The company where I was the working bought several thousand of them. The were two HDD options, 5GB and 10 GB. I don't remember the cost of the optional 10GB drive but it wasn't cheap. Then we learned that all the drives were 10GB and that the 5GB or 10GB option was controlled by a software switch in the OS. Guess how many 10GB drives we ordered after that.........

[Torsen 496]

1 hour ago, W2DR said:

Back in 1983 IBM released the XT model PC. It was the first model to include an internal HDD. The company where I was the working bought several thousand of them. The were two HDD options, 5GB and 10 GB. I don't remember the cost of the optional 10GB drive but it wasn't cheap. Then we learned that all the drives were 10GB and that the 5GB or 10GB option was controlled by a software switch in the OS. Guess how many 10GB drives we ordered after that.........

Me think you mean MB and not GB... back then GB sizes were as far away as the moon 😄 I still have a working Nixdorf Carry-a-ton-pre-notebook with a 20MB harddrive. And here an old 20MB 5 1/4'' double height HDD back from that time... keeping it on my desk just to remind me of that times:

Back on topic. Did the same like described above. Just uninstall every addon and tool, then the base. No reg clean needed. Working perfectly fine. And yes I uninstalled the Majestic Dash and a complete a2a fleet and my beloved pmdg 744. Not flown in many months and even when I started p3d and jumped into the cockpit I just shut it down again. I keep a v4.5 on my backup machine for nostalgic reasons, too.

Cheers T.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Torsen

[Rusty 11]

Thank you all for your respective contributions! 

As discussed, the overwhelming consensus seems to be a full reinstall of Windows due to the fact some aspects still linger deep within the registry. 

For those advocating keeping P3D, while I would considering the significant investment, it simply feels like FS9 each time I open it now, MSFS has spoilt us indeed. 

Thanks again!