robertschiele9

I suppose I fly Posky's Boeing 757s and the SGA DC10s more than anything else.

I think you did exactly the right thing in installing FS9 to C:\. I've had mine there for years and it works like a charm. I would also, if you haven't done so, give fs9.exe administrator rights. You can do so by right-clicking on fs9.exe and then clicking on the Compatibility tab, There you will find a checkbox to allow fs9.exe to run as administrator. This will ensure that it is able to write to/modify the files it needs to access no matter where they may be located on your computer. Your specific issue sounds to me like a graphics driver issue. I may be wrong, as I haven't used an ATI card for many years, but it might be worth your time to see if your graphics driver is updatable. Whatever the truth of the matter is, your computer shop person is 100% wrong. FS9 should run just fine on your hardware and on 64-bit Windows 7.

Give AISmooth administrator rights. That's what I did on my Windows 7 system and it works fine for me.

I had no installation issues on Windows 7 x64, either. I loved the textures--much better than the default ones. Never did use the flight-planner or weather engine, though.

I have the FSGenesis mesh for the US and Canada. I'm happy with it.

A few simple precautions should lead to a trouble-free migration, and your father will probably find that FS9 runs better on Windows 7 than it did on XP. 1. Install FS9 to its own directory, not to the "Program Files x86" directory the installer will select for you. I.e. "C:\FS9" would work well. So would "C:\Games\FS9.". 2. Once you've installed and patched FS9, right-click on the executable fs9.exe and set it to run with administrative rights. 3. Anytime you are installing 3rd party software into FS9, always run with administrative rights. Using the above suggestions, I've found FS9 to run very well on Windows 7 64-bit, and I haven't had any problems with installing any of my 3rd party addons either.

I once noticed some weird graphic issues similar to those reported by the OP. In my case, it turned out that the issue was caused by the default settings in the nVidia graphics driver for Win7_x64. I don't recall which version of the driver was involved. When I used the NvidiaInspector software to optimize driver settings for FS9, the problem disappeared for good. I've never seen it since, either.

No disrespect intended, but you seem to have little or no understanding as to how scenery even works in FS2004. Simply downloading and installing libraries, be they trucks or the Runway12 or EZ libraries, won't add a thing you can actually see unless you also have scenery installed which makes use of those libraries. Having noted that, I wonder whether you've installed any addon sceneries correctly. As you are describing your current problem, it sounds as if your scenery.cfg file has gotten corrupted (or even erased) somehow, and unless you deliberately delete the file, corrupting it shouldn't be an easy thing to do inadvertently. Unless, of course, you've either tried to manually edit the file or used the Scenery Library function within FS2004 to rearrange things to your liking as opposed to, say, the way the sim expects to find them. Without more information, I doubt if anyone will be able to help much in working through this. How badly is the scenery,cfg file corrupted? That would be one question I would have. If most of it's still all right, you might get rid of any jumbled bits and begin reinstalling any addon sceneries in the FS2004 Scenery Library as they are supposed to be installed. Failing that, you may have no better alternative than to delete your entire FS2004 installation and reinstall the entire thing from scratch.

If were me, I'd rebuild the system beginning with Win7. Replacing the motherboard is analogous to replacing the entire system unless, of course, the new motherboard is exactly the same make and model as the old. That's true even though some or all other components remain unchanged: HDDs; video cards; etc. Win7 is never going to operate at peak performance in that situation, reactivated or not. Hence, neither will anything running on Win7 including FS9.

I actually fly a lot of the stock Microsoft passenger jets, but with custom sounds obtained from here at Avsim. I've added Ken Mitchell's panels where available for a particular type, and one or two other panels where they aren't. I'm also a big fan of Project Airbus's A318-A321 series, and have most of their liveries. All with Ken Mitchell's panels and custom sounds, and with a few tweaks I made to the FDEs which may make then less realistic, but which bring their performance (and the skills required to fly them) into line with Microsoft's default jets. Same thing with the DC10 series by SGA, for which I use a custom DC10 panel which I got here at Avsim, although I do not recall who created it. I'm also partial to several HJG DC9 and MD80, MD90 planes, for which I did a few FDE tweaks for the reasons given above. They seem to pride themselves (probably rightly so) on the realism of their own FDEs, but I've never been a pilot, never wanted to be, and never will be. For all of them, I use custom sounds and the MD80 series panel (found here at Avsim) created by Tom Dennis and modified for FS9 by Bill Alexander. Regarding my FDE tweaks: As stated, I am not a pilot IRL. The only aircraft I ever flew was a one time flight in a Cessna 172, back in the 1980s. I managed to do the takeoff properly (well enough at least not to damage the plane or kill anyone) and flew around for roughly 30 minutes before gratefully relinquishing the controls to the instructor before we landed. That I could do even that much was due solely to what I had learned fooling around with a very early version of Flight Simulator ported to 8-bit home computers, long before Microsoft bought the franchise. I learned there and then that I haven't the skills (or the coordination, not to mention the nerves or stomach) to be any kind of real-life pilot, although I will always cherish the experience. That is why I've always considered the flight models of the default FS9 aircraft to be about as close to realistic as I can handle. Sometimes, I am moderately challenged, usually only in particularly bad weather, but by and large I can take off, get where I want to go, and land successfully while having an enjoyable experience, not a waking nightmare.

I use Teracopy too. It's faster and more reliable than using Windows Explorer's copy function, and it's also free.

First, I chose all aircraft files I really needed to backup. By that, I mean aircraft which hadn't shipped with FS9, stock aircraft to which I'd added dozens of new liveries, and so on. For reasons of convenience, I copied all of these files into a temporary folder I'd created for that purpose. I deliberately did not include AI "traffic" aircraft, since as these are installed, .bgl files must also be created and copied into some of FS9's scenery directories, a process the installers for these aircraft carry out. I personally use WoAI and a few PAI aircraft, but the principle should be the same for similar "traffic" aircraft. Once I had the files (still in their own folders) copied into my temporary folder, I used Pk-Zip, the freeware archiving program to create .zip archive containing all of these planes, and it was that .zip archive which I copied onto my external hard drive for safekeeping. Now, anytime I must reinstall FS9, I can restore all but my AI "traffic" aircraft in minutes by simply unzipping that archive into FS9's "Aircraft" folder.

Project Airbus is developing a new A330 and a new A340 for FS9 and FSX. Based on some photos they've released, it looks like they're making progress, although no one's mentioned a projected release date yet. They've long since released the A318, A319, A320, and A321 series, and you can download the files from here or from their site itself. I've flown their aircraft for years, and thoroughly enjoy flying them. You can find the Project Airbus site here: http://www.pafs.wf/

By renaming Trafficxxxxxx.bgl you've disabled FS9's stock AI traffic, yet you don't mention what, if anything, you are using to provide AI traffic to replace it, it's no wonder that you aren't seeing any AI traffic. To be clear about this, the only times you should rename Trafficxxxxxx.bgl are: 1) if you intend to replace FS9's stock AI traffic with something else (e.g. Ultimate Traffic, WoAI, etc.), and; 2) if you don't want any AI traffic in the sim at all. What RadarContact may or may not be doing with AI traffic which apparently doesn't exist in your sim, I do not know. I haven't used RC in many years.

The CPU listed by the OP didn't enlighten me as to what its clock speed might be. IMHO, if it's 3.0 Ghz or better, he should have few problems. I would, however, point out that he might still experience some comparatively lower frame-rates if and when flying in, over, or under any sort of heavy cloud cover. There may be FS9 users who have such high-powered systems that nothing FS9 can throw at them causes much if any degradation in performance, but if so, though my system provides me with excellent performance otherwise, heavy cloud cover can still affect it.