brian747

Hmm, I believe the jury's still out on the best way to defrag with Windows 7

As someone who (with PMDG's explicit permission) has benefited from this policy in many a distant hotel room over some years, may I add that it's also another example of the great support that we receive! :( You're the good guys

:( :( :( B) B) That's great news, Ryan: I'll look forward to it. Many thanks in advance!Cheers,Brian

Of course, if Microsoft had written the FMC software, the prompt would simply have asked "Are You Sure???" :( B.

Gentlemen,Thank you for your various replies, which have encouraged me to take the plunge. I never found the system restore feature to be of any practical help anyway, so it wasn't really a hard decision

Hi Gary!

Hi Ryan! Hmm, I understand where you're coming from when stressing the need for defragging, but in my ongoing struggles with Windows 7 I appear to have encountered a built-in problem.For years many of us have faithfully defragged our disks for fsx, but in W7 there is an advanced form of something called "shadow copies" (VSS). This seemingly has an unexpected conseqence: allow me to quote from the O&O defrag manual

Hi Ravi!Since this is now definitely O.T., I think we'd best continue this conversation elsewhere.I'll PM you...Cheers,Brian

Hi Ravi! That's a great compliment, but far from being the case, I'm afraid. :( There was only one author, in fact: Hardy wrote the simulation entirely on his own. I reckon no one had told him that it was impossible, so he just went ahead and did it. :( My apologies, Ravi, but although not entirely PS1-specific the document was protected because it was intended only for those who had actually bought PS1. After all this time, however, you could always mail Hardy on his new forum

Hi Ravi!(With apologies for continuing O.T)... <grin> PS1 is no longer available, although all the indications are that it will be reborn in a new and yet more splendid incarnation as PSX, sometime next year. The PS1 manual which I have is

Hi Mark!One thing you might want to do in advance is to work out exactly which functions you want to assign to the stick and which to the throttle, and then which buttons to use (that could keep you busy until your birthday, if you do it thoroughly!). Then when the stick arrives you can dive straight in to programming a profile that's exactly right for you. You'll probably need to add a few entries to the PMDG keyboard commands list, to map to the keystrokes you decide to generate from the stick (i.e. for functions like TOGA that won't be present by default in PMDG's list).I suggest making your own because it's more fun, and you end up with exactly what you need for the way (and the aircraft) that you fly. The generic fs profile that Saitek provide is far from ideal, but you might want to use it as a starting point for your first attempt.My top tip would be to ignore the CD that comes in the box and download the *latest* Saitek software from here. That way, you are benefitting from some considerable improvements to the earlier versions. You could then get the manual printed out, too, in the event that you dislike reading it on-screen. (It's a complex stick, so don't underestimate the learning curve...) :( You might possibly want to have a look at the Saitek forum, although you'll have to wade through a lot of peeves from people who for one reason or another seem to be having problems. I guess those of us who are very happy with our X52 Pros are too busy flying with them to post... :( Cheers,BrianP.S. Happy Birthday in advance! :(

Hi Michael! By coincidence, I have just been reading an article in the current edition of PC Pilot (a UK magazine

A final comment about all this (hopefully....) :( In pursuing this topic, I have just come across a very helpful page on the Flight1 website re UAC etc which could be useful for anyone who has read through this saga because they are also seeking a solution.It's about UAC with <cough> Vista

Hi Adrian! As someone who from time to time "drops in" to Dublin after a short hop from the UK I can confirm that the problem definitely lies with fsx. And the first time I encountered it, I was irritated, too! :( I would suggest you consider various alternatives, including: (i) make a patch for that ILS, as suggested by Dan (which is what I did, about five minutes after encountering the problem for the first, and last, time), or (ii) since you use Dublin on a regular basis, perhaps you might perhaps wish to invest in version 1.1 of the new Eiresim Dublin for fsx (details and pics here)?(And no, I have no connection, business or otherwise, to Eiresim, and I haven't used the scenery myself so am not in a position to comment further

If turning off UAC is as mysterious to you as running things as Administrator, the forum search facility often helps: forum linkSee also this threadCheers,Brian

:( :( :( That's encouraging, thank you

Hi Ryan! Thank you for that: I'm definitely starting to think that Life Without UAC could well be the best (and simplest) solution to all these Vista/W7 permissions troubles.... :(Less intrusive in W7? Well OK, a bit, I have to admit. Still a pain in the proverbial, though. :( I might add that although I have unfortunately ended up with fsx being installed in the dratted Program Files directory structure, so far (in the absence of UAC) that doesn't seem to caused me any issues. So far.... :( I do miss UAC, naturally

AFTERWORDI was just scanning the FSUIPC forum and came across the following words from Pete Dowson himself:"I switched off UAC and generally eventually got rid of all the nags. I still sometimes wrestle with the annoying complexities of folder and file security and permissions, but, as you've found, if you steer clear of allowing programs to install into "Program Files" they don't come into it too much".(If you'd like to read it, it's at Pete Dowson's Forum

Hi Dan! <wince> Well, as someone who looks after directory structures and what's in them as part of my day job, I was rather hoping to avoid anything as broad brush as changing *all* of the folder and file attributes in a directory tree (I could tell you War Stories...)

Just in case there's any doubt, please allow me to expand on my question, above. (Sorry to add an extra post, but the Edit button seems to have vanished, for some reason). In this particular case I guess that translates into "Which directory has the PMDG keyboard mappings file?", which raises the additional question

Hi Ryan!And thanks for your reply. I concur: in fact my sub-heading to the original post title was "ownership/permissions problem". <sigh> Check. The problem is that when the inability-to-activate problem strikes, it also blocks any ability to activate by phone. Hence I am extremely unwilling to blow away a working (as long as UAC remains deactivated) installation and risk trying again, even though I detest it being situated in the Program Files (x86) directory structure. (I very reluctantly let it install there following repeated fsx reinstalls, to try and eliminate something that might have been contributing to the problem). <grin> Thank you: good old Google had already led me to that one, which is precisely what prompted my original question

(This is yet another case of there being more than one way to skin a cat

Hi folks!My grateful thanks to all who have replied: I think it has now become one of those situations where maybe the search is now more significant than finding the answer

Hi Dan! <grin>

Hi Scott! Ah