Mudhen

100% fixed. Did a quick flight around the pattern at KRDU and everything is beautiful again. Thank you all, esp charliearon and steve, very much! The log fixer found a corrupt entry, deleted it, and now I have my 1100+ flights back in the log.

I've finally gotten home, am getting logbook fixer, and will get started. charliearon, I have high confidence that this will get me on the road. steve, does this mean my name is Mud? Maybe you're not old enough to remember that old saying, eh? MH

Well yes, of course. I may be 73 years old, as my pic shows, but I have sense enough to make a backup in this circumstance. Anyhow, I did restore fsx.cfg and the settings are back to normal. That points to logbook.bin as the problem. So I'll google logbook repair tool and give it a go. Thanks!

I rashly said that everything was back to normal and selected "Mark Solved" for this issue. Well, that's true, but... even though FSX now starts for me (for which I'm grateful beyond words), I didn't anticipate just how much work I might have after having FSX rebuild FSX.CFG and Logbook.bin. All the customized Options settings that were probably in FSX.CFG (I haven't looked yet in detail), which I made to accommodate my countless add-ons (graphics, weather, traffic, etc.), went away. The old FSX.CFG file had much more information in it than the new one, and since it's a text file, first I'm going to restore it to see if it caused my bug. Even if it's corrupt, I may be able to salvage most settings from it. And the scores of flight records that were in my old Logbook.bin did not propagate to the new file, as I suspected would happen. You mentioned a fixer program and I would gladly try that. Where can I find it? Here's an oddity. After rebuilding both files, I lost the ability to make the default C172 begin flights with the ATC winidow active, even though I have that option ticked. And before the bug, sometimes when I taxied I used Progressive Taxi instead of searching for airport diagrams and switching tasks as I moved along. FSX now doesn't even display that option (it was #3, after Tune to Tower and Tune to ATIS) once I have taxi clearance. I do not have Directx 10 ticked so that is not the cause of this bug. Any ideas on these? MH

You noticed that I'm detail oriented, eh? Obsessed. Born and raised in the Bay Area. Love the Giants and Niners. Used to really enjoy Montana and Rice play the game. I don't recall being asked if I want to run/trust anything so maybe there was no hidden window. Anyhow, I made FSX rebuild the fsx.cfg and Logbook.bin files and FSX starts normally. But thanks very much for the input.

If by Splash Screen you mean the very first blue-fade-down-to-white window that says Flight Simulator X and has part of a sectional map on the left and a world map on the right as a "watermark," then yes... I can't get past that. I haven't acted on Steve Howlett's suggestion yet, so if backing up/deleting FSX.CFG is a good first step, followed by backing up/deleting Logbook.bin, I'll do those two things. Sound right? I want to be v. careful with this.

Thanks for the fsx.cfg thought. I will definitely try that. I think when FSX doesn't find that file on startup it creates another. I think it lives on the C: drive. I'll try that, although don't know how it could happen after a controlled shutdown, then pulling the plug on the surge protector. I did disconnect all FS devices but problem persists. I've had axis assignment and calibration trouble in the past after plugging devices back into ports in which they weren't initially, so this time I took care and tagged each USB cable with its matching port location. I should have both my system drive and FSX drive fully backed up on a 1TB Seagate external portable device. Do you have a specific FSX file in mind on the system drive? MH

I run FSX/FSUIPC4 on a Win7 64-bit system. Home repairs required me to disconnect all devices - Saitek yoke, TQ, and rudder pedals. I tagged them so I could replug them into the same USB ports where they had been. I started FSX and flew the default Cessna with no problem. Then I tested the default 737 and as soon as I started a Free Flight, while parked on the ramp - before I touched any controls - the throttles opened by themselves. To gain control I used the Saitek TQ to open, then close the them. I thought it was just an anomaly. I taxied to active and when I pulled back the yoke... aauughhh - no elevator control - tore up a lot of fence! I restarted FSX and opened FSUIPC4 to see if the axes were assigned correctly and the configuration settings were ok, and found no problem. No reason they should have changed, but I wanted to look. I restarted FSX a few times trying to find a reason for these problems, and for no apparent reason FSX started going into an endless loop while initializing. This symptom is permanent. Maybe a file got corrupted somehow. Can't think of anything else. I backup my files regularly, so I restored the most previous fsx.exe. No change. Since I couldn't get far enough in FSX to check FSUIPC4 settings again, and just in case the fsuipc4 dll or ini files might have gotten damaged somehow, I installed Pete Dowson's newest FSUIPC4 version. Still an endless loop. Any ideas for diagnosing this are eagerly accepted. I have numerous addons so a complete FSX reinstall would be a nightmare, especially since that might not change a thing either. I usually do well at diagnosing problems but this one has me stumped. MH

I have AS2012 build 4569 with a Win 7 64-bit system and FSX. At 10:00 PM EDT on July 28, 2012 at Raleigh-Durham airport (KRDU), severe thunderstorms moved through the area and were active for at least a half hour. For several weeks I retrieved the historical weather for that time and enjoyed the lightning. AS2012 loaded the weather correctly every time. I tried again this evening and even though it appears that the weather download completed, when I start FSX the sky is clear. I don't understand why. I've been very busy and haven't used AS2012 and FSX for quite a while, so maybe I've forgotten to specify an option of some sort. Can someone help me figure out how to retrieve that weather? Thanks Very Much, MH

Your links get into some extremely deep stuff and my personal experience has been (almost completely so) that when I try something to improve performance, my life goes down the portacan and I spend many days undoing the damage instead of flying. My system was built by Jetline and I'm very confident that their custom setup is working well for me. It's always possible that performance could be improved, but the tweaks recommended in your links are something that I would not personally feel confident in doing - rather like doing my own heart surgery. CPU is i7 930 Extreme (3.33GHz factory o/c) quad core Card is 896GB Nvidia GTX260 MH

Thanks Vic, this is just the kind of help I need. I can't find this kind of what I'll call scenario-based help in the manual, nor a tutorial that addresses this basic information. So first I'll set up FSX as you said earlier (I'll purposely repeat to make sure I'm doing it right). I'll start FSX, select Free Flight, click the Change button below Current Weather, select User-defined weather, and click OK. I should stop there, not clicking Customize and going further, right? To set the other three things you mentioned, I start in FSX by selecting Settings. (Note: Under Display Settings, the weather slider is set to Medium High.) I click the Customize button (just above Reset Defaults). On the Settings Display page I click the Weather tab. Cloud draw distance is already set to minimum - 60 mi. Detailed clouds (3D) is already selected. I've had the Cloud coverage density set to Medium (I seem to recall stuttering when I had it maxed), but I'll slide it two clicks to the Maximum setting. For a flight session, I'll start AS2012 first, using the default graphics theme and Standard Weather Depiction to begin with. (Under what circumstance might I prefer the Direct Weather Control option?) Eventually AS2012 issues messages: 3:17:41 PM - **** AS2012 Initial Weather Synthesis Complete! **** 3:17:41 PM - New Hurricane Data found... 3:17:41 PM - Fine tuning weather synthesis... I think that means I'm ready to go (although I just noticed an additional message: 3:19:50 PM - Synthesis updated...). So I clicked he Start FSX button, then sent AS2012 to the system tray. I'm on a VFR flight and am experiencing slight stuttering even in the Cessna. I have an i7 quad-core processor with 6GB Tri-channel RAM and a pretty good graphics card, but I still must be marginal. I do have UTX-USA and FSG mesh installed, and most settings set high. I'll try disabling unnecessary services and programs and crippling my antivirus to see if that frees up enough resources to run better. Have I missed anything? Any further suggestions? MH

I wasn't aware I could choose to control the weather both ways. Since I'm not trying anything fancy just yet, is there an advantage of one over the other? I think that if I tell FSX to load Jeppesen's real-time weather every 15 minutes, the weather is updated for every weather station on my route. I don't know if AS Standard Weather Depiction does the same. For now since I'm familiar with it, I'd like my weather to work this way (unless there's a better way for a novice). I'm flying only small GA planes right now so that should simplify my needs. I would like to see AS's enhanced textures for sky, clouds, etc. Specifically with that in mind, can I just see the AS default textures and let FSX control the weather for now? Then I think I'll try some other AS texture themes. I don't think DWC is the best choice for fairly short trips in my Cessna, is it? Do I understand Vic correctly? Even though I'm using SWD, should I still tell AS to download real-time weather instead of having FSX do it? How do I tell AS to do (or not to do) that in SWD mode? MH

I've read all 95 pages of the AS2012 U/G and set up FSX accordingly. Although the U/G tells me how to do certain things, I'm not sure what results to expect. I can't readily find answers to the following questions. Some questions may be redundant. I'm still an AS2012 beginner. I'm not ready to try the in-depth options yet; my questions are about more basic things. For now I just want to see better looking skies. And I want to see them whether I define weather myself in FSX or I let AS2012 do it through DWC or Standard Depiction. I want to always see AS2012's enhanced textures. To do that, must I always start AS2012 and then FSX? Or were the default FSX textures replaced during the AS2012 installation process? During AS2012 build #4363 installation, an "initial_backup" up of FSX weather textures was made. Does this mean that after installation I should see the AS2012 default graphics theme-enhanced textures for clouds, lights, etc, without having to do anything else? What does restoring the initial_backup do regarding textures? If I want real-time weather, is it best to use AS2012 Direct Weather Control instead of telling FSX to download real-time weather? In fact, should I specify any weather options in FSX, or should I use only AS2012's options to define specific weather? I have been using Plan-G to create flight plans and loading the plans within FSX. Should I import existing plans into AS2012 instead, or otherwise do all plan creating/loading within AS2012? Do you suggest using Standard Depiction Mode if I want to encounter changing weather conditions during my flight? (The U/G makes it sound like Direct Weather Control Mode gives me the same weather from JFK to LAX, which obviously isn't realistic.)

Hmmm. Something happened and my reply didn't show up. Here goes again. OK! I created my own weather for KRDU (see first screenshot). Please note that I am not a weather expert so my first attempt is clumsy. I edited the Wx so I 'd have a broken cumulus cloud layer at 4500', moderate shear, no precip, surface wind from 195 deg at 16. Couldn't find a way to specify gusts (is there one?). I assumed temps were in celsius so I converted temp of 80 deg F and dewpoint of 56 deg F to the celsius that you see in the screenshot (should be close - can you verify?). I applied that weather, then clicked Map to see what I'd find, and the second screenshot seems to show considerable weather south and west of KRDU, weather that I would expect to be associated with precip. What did I do wrong? I didn't want rain. Thanks, MH

Sorry MD, I just haven't been able to find time to try it out. I have several other things demanding my time and I may be a few days getting to this. If you need to suspend/close this thread please do so and I'll contact you as soon as I have tried out your recommendation. MH