Zoandar

Thank you! I'll check those out too.

Thanks for your advice to try the freeware Bell 429! It flies very smoothly, but has one annoyance for me. When I use Shift+9 to switch to the 3D cockpit forward view, unlike any other aircraft I have flown in X-Plane or FSX, it defaults to a view zoomed in so far that none of the instrument panel is visible. It seems to ignore whatever zoom level I had been using previously. Is there a way I can tweak a setting or something in one of its config files to get it to stop doing that? I can program a control or keyboard button to do "Shift+9 then ,,, then 10 Down Arrow presses" to get it back to what I want to see, but I am hoping to find a better way to "fix" the issue.

Thanks, BobbyJack. If I do try a clean FSX install, I would not put it on the OS drive, for multiple reasons. I would more likely try installing it to its own cleanly formatted drive. If that worked, I could then copy over the multitude of add-on and custom files I have from my currently populated FSX drive left over from Win7. I like to make drive image backups of my OS drive to revert to when things go sideways. For that reason I install hefty programs with many GB of files on a different drive away from C. It keeps the OS drive image backup files more reasonably sized. And historically, I can just reinstall an OS on a major build, re-install the programs right over top of their files on the other drives, and be good to go. On Win7, this worked for FSX. For now I am playing with a full version of X-Plane 11, and some of my custom FSX scenery files I successfully converted using FS2XPlane. I appear to be seeing hybrid landscapes now, a mixture of theirs and mine. So I need to see how to suppress the mundane artificial landscapes used in X-Plane, without affecting things like their airports. The only airport inclusions I have done with my own scenery were fixes for when FSX airports aren't located correctly in their default scenery.

Thank you for the reply. I am aware of the benefit of keeping certain programs away from the C drive, and I know FSX is one of them. That's why it has its very own SSD that does only FSX stuff. I installed FSX anew, overlaying the existing file content of the FSX-dedicated 960 GB SSD with whatever files Windows 10 re-installed in the process. Note that I "un-installed" FSX before I removed the old motherboard which ran Windows 7. Is it possible that some Windows 7-specific files remained on the FSX SSD and interfered with the Windows 10 new installation of FSX? I did think about trying to copy the many GB of FSX files off the 960 SSD, install FSX to it as a newly formatted drive, and then copy all the ancillary files back to the drive again. I was hoping I didn't have to do that. I've never needed to in the many times I've reinstalled FSX in the past using Win7 and WinXP. I did not know there was yet another level of administrator privileges above being an administrator account. Thanks for the tip. I can try again to install FSX (it is currently uninstalled from Win10) with that tip in mind. On the other half of this topic, I just learned from a friend that there is a utility called FS2XPlane which can convert FSX scenery BGL files for use in X-Plane.

Thank you all for the replies and offer to help. Trying to stick with the seemingly hopeless idea of making FSX work was secondary in my OP, so I didn't want to get long-winded about what wasn't working until I saw some of you good folks reporting that you have done it. Essentially, I am seeing the following error. At first I saw it during the initial installation from my FSX Gold with Acceleration DVDs, so I did re-run the installation a second time using the "repair" option, and the process reported successful completion. Note that I have not yet gotten to the point of installing Acceleration. "Flight simulator was unable to read some program files and will now exit. Please reinstall Flight Simulator to restore or repair the program installation." This is a newly rebuilt PC using: EVGA SUPERNOVA 1300 G2 1300WATT Modular Power Supply – SN: 1803441308808609 – 10 YEAR WARRANTY ASUS Prime X370-Pro AMD Ryzen AM4 DDR4 DP HDMI M.2 USB 3.1 ATX X370 Motherboard AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Processor - YD2700BBAFBOX EVGA CLC 240mm All-In-One RGB LED CPU Liquid Cooler, 2x FX12 120mm PWM Fans, Intel, AMD, 5 YR Warranty, 400-HY-CL24-V1 Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz C15 Desktop Memory Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2B3000C15) EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1070 Superclocked 8GB DDR5 Graphics Card LG WH16NS40 Super Multi Blue Internal SATA 16x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Computer Case with Metal Body and Hinged Side Panels TWO (2) Scythe SY1225SL12L 120mm "Slipstream" Case Fans Asus VS228H-P 21.5” LED SN H1LMTF119753 as RH display Asus VK228 - HDMI , VGA, DVI-D as LH display LG34UM65 - HDMI , VGA, DisplayPort as CENTER display Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD SN: S3Z1NY0M412602 - Main Drive for Windows 10 Home OS FSX is being installed to a Samsung 960GB SSD, from which I ran it when this PC previously ran Windows 7 Home Premium on a different SSD holding the OS. So there is a lot on that FSX-dedicated SSD. All the bits from the previous, heavily customized, FSX install. My custom scenery files load from yet a different SSD. But I never got to the point of working with scenery files in Win10. After the seemingly successful "repair" re-installation, any attempt to execute the FSX.exe file on the 960GB SSD presents me with the same error message above. I am always an administrator on my PCs, so no need to try running as administrator. I tried compatibility mode for Win8, Win7, and even a desperate attempt at WinXP, but all yield the exact same error message. Note that I never saw this message before. Is this specifically a Win10 error message? Most of the forum discussion I have found searching that error message is over a year old. Some are many years old. I even found the exact same error message being reported in P3D. But there was never what I would call a firm list of steps to take to fix it. Just a ton of speculation. And those who claimed eventual success never returned to detail what worked, so often there would be several other folks posting afterward with the same problem and no replies to their posts. I tried using the handy Time constraint in Google search hoping to discover a fix posted within the past month, then within the past year, to little avail. I know Win10 has evolved, supposedly fixing a lot of problems. So I didn't want to dwell in topics addressed in the early stages of Win10, as they may no longer apply today. I appreciate any help you can provide on this, and will try again to install FSX if it seems very likely to lead me to success. Regarding the compatibility of other simulators with FSX BGL files, let me clarify that the files I mean are the "ground" you see when you look down from above, and not buildings, etc.. Although creating such files from online satellite imagery looks great from about 3,000 feet AGL upward, it replaces all traces of buildings, trees, anything that would be normally found outside of the metropolitan areas where the FSX team did a lot of extensive work for realism. I like to "fly" in my general home area, around the Great Lakes. And I look recognizing where I am when I look out the window. The shorelines are beautiful in reality, but sadly FSX generic attempts to render them are beyond ugly. I just HAD to do something about it. So that kicked off my 10 year project to make the ground and shorelines look like they should. Unless someone has actually started using genuine satellite imagery in a simulator, I would really miss all the work I did. If someone HAS done so, please tell me who! 🙂

Having spent nearly 10 years creating my own custom photo-realistic scenery files for my FSX installation, I've got a lot of time and effort in those files. Now that I had to switch to Windows 10 (my new motherboard requires it) and can't get FSX to run, despite hours of online research, I am considering trying one of the newer simulators. But it would be a real plus if I could take my scenery files along with me. So can any of the Windows 10 compatible flight simulators use the same kind of BGL scenery files? If anyone also knows of a step-wise guide to guaranteed success making FSX work on Win10 Home Premium, please let me know. There is too much vague discussion on the forums about it, so I couldn't find anything concrete to make it happen.

svchost.exe - in great simultaneous multiples. The same thing that brings my rusty trusty old single core notebook to its knees every time there is a Windows 7 update, slamming its CPU to 100%, without ever GETTING the update, until I do something about it. MS KNOWS about this. The assume "everyone has multi-core processors now", just like in the past when they made the totally inane statement that "most Windows users don't have speakers". WSUS saved me on that front. Aside from that, when FSX hangs there is NO PROCESS being reported in the diagnostic tools as causing a problem. Whatever it is doing is entirely WITHIN the Windows OS and seen as "normal" to any diagnostics. As I mentioned in post 11, it seems very much to be Windows simply "task switching" away from FSX, and never coming back to resume it. FSX was created long before multi-core processors. My bet is that the way Windows 7 works now is to periodically switch away from various processes to move to others, and then come back to them. IF........the software is written to run on a multi-core processor. If not.........oh well. That's a guess, but best describes what I see here. I appreciate your take on the possibility that I am not addressing the "specific problem", but just as doctors used to cure my Strep Throat decades ago by throwing an antibiotic at it without taking any kind of culture or blood test to see exactly WHAT afflicted me, they made it go away. I am using the same thought process here. I like to say "we can only know what we know". I am working within my life experience with computers, and my abilities to keep them running. I am not a programmer or IT, and I certainly don't have the hundreds of hours of time it would take me to learn enough about IT to even begin to look into this. In other words, when the light bulb burns, out, I don't try to examine the filament with an electron microscope to see which two atoms lost their connection. I replace the bulb and move on with life. Patience is not my strong suit. And I will always opt for the quickest fix I can muster. I don't really care what the details are that cause FSX to hang without using these settings, if using these settings make it WORK, and there are no unwanted side effects. Which is the case. The rest of the PC is humming along nicely doing whatever I ask of it. For me, this issue appears to be SOLVED. I just wanted to share those settings with any other pour soul in the same boat. And from what I found in my research, there are thousands of us looking online for this kind of solution. It's all over the internet. So, thank you all for your help, and I hope you all have a Happy New Year.

An interesting point of view. IMO, what is "wrong" is within FSX and Windows themselves, and I am in no way equipped to try to figure it out. There had to be reasons why, after abandoning FSX and scattering its support team years ago, MS did not choose to fall back on its pre-established flight simulator platform when they chose to jump back in with MS Flight. My speculation is that MS knew all to well what a clanking clattering bandaid infested platform well beyond its days FSX is, and chose not to fix it. If all of them couldn't do it, I certainly can't. As long as things work this way, I will be quite happy. If they stop working this way, I will rebuild one of my older PCs to specifically run FSX and nothing else, so Windows has only it focus on. Probably without any internet connection, so I can disable nightmares like Windows Update. It would remain frozen in time, running an ages old program, with no need for all of Windows cpu hogging updating, spying, and housekeeping.

Thanks! I'm not sure the affinity command is really doing much, but if problems arise I could set it for some number less than 8 cores and see if that helped. I just happened across that command while finding the others during my research, so tossed it in to see what happened. As far as the high priority setting of the batch file, I would hang onto that with my dying breath! The difference is profound, for sure. FSX has always been a snail at starting. Not anymore. If it came down to brass tacks, before I would give that up I would move non-FSX operations to another computer. Thanks again for all the help. I was one step away from thinking I had to build a totally new and isolated PC just for FSX. Hopefully when I add in all its custom goodies it will remain stable. I hope you and your family have a warm and wonderful holiday season!

FSX is still running as smooth as butter, as I continue to install other programs. I have not yet re-installed any of my addon aircraft, placed objects, or custom photorealistic satellite imagery scenery.

Here are the 6 steps I have taken to make FSX run smoothly on my PC without hanging, since its total rebuild: Paste Vista 32 bit copy of UIAutomationCore.dll into the same folder as FSX.exe – do NOT use 64 bit version (even though this is a 64-bit PC). Added “highmemfix=1” to the fsx.cfg [GRAPHICS] section – as per pg. 10 of the CTD guide Use a batch file with line “START /HIGH FSX.EXE” on to start/run FSX as High Priority Set FSX.exe properties to run as administrator (for all users) Set FSX General Settings – uncheck “pause on task switch” Add to FSX.cfg file [MAIN] section “Affinity=84”, supposed to enable more CPU cores for use on 32-bit FSX. I read this on a forum while looking up how to get FSX to start as high-priority. I'll update this later on as I slowly finish rebuilding this PC and continue testing FSX on it.

Just checking in so you won't think I bailed on this thread. Shortly after my last post, my main PC, where this FSX issue is being diagnosed, developed some serious problems with Windows 7x64 Home Premium, which an attempt to repair through traditional recovery console options could not fix. Since this build was about 8 months old (that's 80 in PC years) I decided a complete rebuild was in order. No small task, given I have several programs that demand uninstalling with a live internet connection so their "activation limit" is not exceeded....FSX of course being one of them. Add to that a lot of USB hardware and nearly 100 installed programs in total. Once I got Win7 reinstalled, I went straight to installing FSX, which initially continued to hang. I almost gave up in frustration, until I remembered that just prior to the OS meltdown I had succeeded in an 8 hour contiguous autopilot flight while I attended to other matters. I went back through the log I keep on the FSX installation, and compiled a list of all the steps I had taken up to that point, to help prevent the FSX hang. I had not yet applied any of those fixes to the rebuild. I'll post that list when I get the chance. Applying those fixes ( 6 or 7 of them, I think), I was once again able to fly a currently fresh and squeaky clean FSX install (with all previous options, custom aircraft, and custom scenery not yet reinstalled), for over an hour, at pretty much Ultra-High settings, 30 FPS, full screen, switching aircraft and using panel controls with the mouse, and using menus and keyboard input. This is how I am testing FSX, in beween small batch sessions of reinstalling my other programs, in case one of them breaks FSX. So the process is very time consuming, and will take weeks to complete, with the holiday season also underway. One thing that is making a profound difference is running FSX from a batch file with a command to start it at higher CPU priority. It literally snaps open, and loads appreciably faster than I had ever seen before. I did this suspecting, since its hang never actually showed up in Event Viewer until AFTER I tried to close the hung, opaque, FSX program window, that perhaps part of the issue was Windows itself shifting to some other process it deemed more important in the middle of using FSX. So now FSX gets next to Real Time priority. (I read using Real Time for anything is a bad idea). Each test session is nice and smooth. But I have tons of programs to install before I eventually declare the problem "solved". So please don't close this thread, because it will take a long time to complete. Thanks!

First glimmer of hope: After disabling the Realtek Audio on my motherboard and adding in a legacy Creative Sound Blaster Audigy LS PCI card I had here, complete with a newly downloaded Win7 driver, I still wasn't getting very far, except that as FSX was seen in Process Monitor now, I stopped seeing most of the Name Not Found listings, and it stopped loading the airplane wind noise sound file 30 times in succession when it did (still) hang on every test flight. Something told me to Google this issue again, despite that I have yet to finish the CTD guide beyond the Process Monitor point. I found mention of someone wanting to disable having FSX pause when task switched away to something else. Hmmm. Since Event Viewer never even notices FSX hanging when it does, something told me that maybe Windows 7 OS is task switching in the background (perhaps something that did not exist in the time of Windows when FSX was state of the art) and FSX wasn't handling the situation. So, I found that checkbox under General Settings, and unchecked "pause on task switch" or however it is worded. I then started my typical test flight described earlier, still using minimal graphical settings, at about 9:45 this morning, and let it fly on autopilot. I did not come back until 3:30, and it is STILL FLYING 6 HOURS LATER. This is the first glimmer of hope I have had. I now need to see if I can get it to work with a bunch of the eye candy turned on, my custom photo-realistic scenery reloaded, etc., but maybe I am onto the fix. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Odd that Dell sold that fellow a PC configured with an add on Creative sound card, but they never disabled the intrinsic Realtek Audio. I agree with those who told him you definitely don't want to be using both. As for my case, I had just downloaded and installed the R279 64-bit Win7 codec (driver) on November 10th when I was in my initial diagnosis of this issue, and had seen forum discussion blaming old Realtek drivers for FSX problems. So updating the driver is something I have already done. However, after reading your links above, trying a completely different audio card, and disabling the onboard Realtek audio, seems like a good step in trying to fix this, so I will do that next.

I am indeed using the Realtek Audio intrinsic to the motherboard. What's your take on "HD Audio"? As I understand it, this gets put into play when you use video cables (such as the HDMI and DisplayPort cables I am using) which can carry an audio signal to your monitor. During the time before I found your guide, some of the many scattered forum topics I read for solutions discussed disabling HD Audio, specifically the GeForce HD Audio that got installed on my PC through the GeForce Experience utility. When I tried to uninstall GeForce HD Audio, Win7 immediately reinstalled it as soon as I rebooted. I then read where it can be disabled in Device Mgr. so I had tried that before the point where I completely reinstalled FSX. At that time it didn't help. The Realtek motherboard audio also has lists Realtek HD Audio in Device Manager. Aside from another listing for Virtual Audio (??) those are the only 3 audio listings in Device Mgr. If I disable both GeForce HD Audio and Realtek HD Audio, the speaker icon in the task tray gets 'Xed out' and a tooltip says there is no audio output connected. So it seems I need the Realtek enabled there despite it being worded as HD Audio. This fact makes me wonder what Virtual Audio is, and should I disable it for cooperation from FSX? I have no objection to installing a retail sound card if it comes down to that. I have a few old ones from previous PC builds, but whether they would have Win7 drivers available is the question on using them. So I would probably just get something new if I went that route. Hopefully without HD Audio so I needn't worry about that. I never use display mounted speakers. On my previous Win7 PC build, where FSX ran very well for years, I initially used 3 DVI-D cables, from 2 different graphics cards, and then when I upgraded graphics cards I was able to use 1 mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter to one of the DVI-D cables, all on a single graphics card. I am guessing that adapter disabled any chance of Win7 seeing an HD Audio source. Only when I built this PC, which before the new GTX 1070 used a pair of GTX 580 cards configured for SLI * did I end up with DisplayPort cables running all the way to 2 of the monitors. I was away from using FSX at that time, into some other things. I only within the past couple weeks have been finally trying to get FSX fully running on this PC. * Note that although the twin GTX 580 cards were "configured" for SLI, I generally did not use it. Windows 7 limits SLI to only 2 displays, and I am very much spoiled by having had 3 displays for years. So when I was trying to get FSX up and running on those cards I had SLI shut off. Years back I used to span FSX across all 3 displays I had at that time, being the reason I got into 3 displays. I had a TripleHead-2-Go adapter back then. Newer graphics cards supporting multiple displays made that obsolete. But with the 34" center display I have now, I've been just using it alone for FSX, usually flying in Windowed mode.

I appreciate the help. But You are making an assumption here, that my PC has only one drive. I mentioned that I reformatted the SSD that I only use for FSX things. I did completely reinstall FSX. I did not reinstall Windows7. This PC was just built this past Spring, so I don't yet feel the need to nuke it and start over. This PC actually has 6 hard drives. An SSD for FSX. A second SSD runs the Win7 OS, and the other 4 are typical SATA drives. Perhaps I should post the specs so you know what hardware I am using: FSX Gold Acceleration was newly installed, with NO addons, on a freshly NTFS formatted 960GB SSD, mounted in system B2 (my name for this PC). I am using the LG 34” wide screen display to run FSX, although B2 has 3 monitors. The LG is in the middle of the 3 monitor layout handled by Display Fusion. PC Specs: ASUS Crosshair V Formula/Thunderbolt AM3+ AMD 990FX 7 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS AMD FX8150 Zambezi 8-Core 3.6 GHz Socket AM3+ 125W FD8150FRGUBOX Desktop Processor CORSAIR Hydro Series H100 (CWCH100) Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler CORSAIR DOMINATOR GT 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 Desktop Memory Model CMT16GX3M4X2133C9 Brand new EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Graphics card with 8GB DDR5 RAM, supporting up to 4 displays across DVI, HDMI and 3 Display Port outputs. GeForce Experience installed, with latest GeForce drivers available for this card. Cooler Master Silent Pro M 1000W Power Supply with 80 PLUS Bronze Certification andSemiModular Cables OCZ VERTEX-2 SATA 120GB SSD – for Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 Western Digital Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal HardDrive Bare Drive SanDisk Extreme PRO 1TB (960GB) SATA SSD used solely for FSX and its related materials WD Raptor X 150 GB SATA Hard Drive Second WD 1TB SATA Hard Drive Seagate 2TB SATA Hard Drive Addon PCI SATA card Addon PCI USB 3.0 card ASUS Black 12X Bluray Burner SATA BW12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Computer Case with Metal Body and Hinged Side Panels >Set FSX.exe properties to run as administrator for “all users” (although no one else uses this PC). Still hangs in flight perhaps 10-30 minutes after start. If I leave it “hung” and do not try to close FSX, it doesn't even show up in Event Viewer, and eventually I can sometimes return to find it “paused”, and it will resume flying (until the next hang). >Ran sfc /scannow – no integrity violations found. No “tweaks” have been added or applied to any FSX files. Pure FSX. Nothing added except swapping in the customary Vista copy of UIAutomationCore.dll Windows 7 Updates are current, for the non-optional updates. As mentioned above, the graphics driver is the very latest available from GeForce. Nothing is overclocked that I am aware of. I did add the highmemfix=1 entry to fsx.cfg's GRAPHICS section. I did not add in FSUIPC 4 until needed in the CTD Guide, and then I installed the latest version of it. In order to establish a repeatable test, I use the same Free Flight setup every time. I had begun at Friday Harbor and at some point north of there, saved a flight on autopilot at 9000 ft ASL using the Beech Baron 58. I start this same saved flight for each test, and other than occasionally switching from Virtual Cockpit to External view, I am not touching anything. When it hangs, it is doing so of its own accord. I have tried using a Clean Boot to disable everything else on my PC. It doesn't make any difference, so I resumed normal operations so I can do all the other stuff I need to do on my PC on a daily basis. When FSX hangs, nothing else malfunctions. Any other windows or programs I might have running continue to work just fine, such as Windows Explorer, Process Monitor, Adobe Reader (to follow the CTD Guide), etc. But I usually don't run any other programs when running FSX. The most current test result = still under way after flying an hour (longest time yet) using extremely minimal settings in FSX. Having been able to run FSX with very high settings in previously much lower performance Win7 PCs in the past, it doesn't seem logical that I would not be able to do so on this rig.

Well, the only thing noticeable within the last 2 minutes is that a sound file which is periodically being loaded suddenly gets loaded 30 times in succession right before FSX hangs. Would that point to an audio problem?

Thanks Jim, My main beef with reading Process Monitor is that it doesn't seem to scroll as I would like it to. When I get into the middle of a hundred of these "not found" listings, it is hard to figure out if it is even scrolling. Would there be a way for me to filter out a specific line from being repeated so many times? That would help. I was interested in some other viewer so I can do that kind of editing to reject all the fluff I don't need to see. I'll try out csv viewer. Thanks. When I get ready to post all the info I am compiling on what I have done to try to fix the problem, should I attach what will be many pages of document separately, or do you folks prefer I post it all right in line in a post? Info like my PC specs, and each step I try in the CTD Guide, as well as the results for that step. I am keeping a log file on the effort. BTW, I worked to fix this about a week before I found your guide. So in last ditch frustration, making a backup of the SSD I use for all my FSX stuff, I uninstalled FSX completely, formatted the SSD, and scrubbed any reference I could find to FSX on my C drive, before installing it completely scratch. Up until I added FSUIPC for the step in the CTD Guide that calls for it, I had absolutely no addons, tweaks, etc. installed. It didn't help. FSX hangs the same way on a completely pristine installation. And unless I attempt to close the FSX window when it hangs, nothing gets recorded in Event Viewer. Although deemed "not responding" by Win7, it is like Win7 thinks it is still running.

Hi folks. I am working through the nice CTD Guide you have on this forum, trying to find why FSX is hanging on my Win7x64 PC, and before I get into posting tons of info and stuff about my PC and what diagnostics I have done, I have a question. When I run FSX and Process Monitor, I see a bazillion listings that show HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\APL - NAME NOT FOUND. Online research has shown me that HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\APL has to do with running 32 bit apps on a 64 bit OS in some capacity to translate things between 64 and 32 bit. But why the seemingly incessant barrage of attempts for this particular listing? There must be many hundreds of them, in blocks of time, in between other process listings that look to me like they would be normal. I don't know much about this kind of thing. But I'd like to know if this line repeated ad-nauseum is something I can ignore, or does it really mean my PC is lacking something that FSX is repeatedly looking for? It does come at the end of the Process Monitor log when I stopped it because FSX had hung on the screen, in a very long sequence hundreds of times. Also, is there a text editor that can read CSV files? I saved a copy of the Process Monitor results in its native format, and in CSV, but when I tried to open the CSV version, Open Office Calc claimed it exceeded the maximum number of lines and truncated the end (which is where the hang occurred).

Well said. :) Flying the A5 feels very much like flying a car. I know, and there's the rub. On pretty much every PC I have used since USB became popular, I have at best a 50% chance that all my USB devices will actually get detected. It doesn't seem to matter much what brand of hubs or cables I use. When one of them goes hinky, the only solution is usually to cut the power and USB connection to the device, then restore those connections. I even ran a program for awhile on my older Windows XP system that delayed the detection of USB devices for 45 seconds during the boot cycle. That seemed to help a lot. I think it is simply lousy technology that Windows (in many versions now) doesn't properly initialize all the time. I've seen this clear back thru Win98.In order to reap any performance increase using USB3 hubs, would your cockpit devices not also need to be upgraded to USB3 variants? And the cables too I presume. If there is one constant in the Windows OS, it is that nothing is constant. :) Each PC is unique (unless built precisely the same), and has its own issues. What runs for one may not run for all.

fbass, your cockpit setup sounds wonderful. But based upon all my experiences with USB and how miserable it is, I'm going to guess those 29 USB connections are somehow part of the mix. It seems clear Flight is a very basic and simple program for garnering interest in those new to flying. In short, it probably "can't handle" your highly sophosticated hardware environment. BTW, kudos! You are the very first person I have EVER read has even attempted the approach of the fantasy specification of "127 devices allowed on a USB connection". I have enough issues with EACH of my USB devices, and they are less than a dozen. I don't know how in the world you manage to keep 29 connections up and running in Windows. IMHO USB deserves its own "what a joke" topic. :-)

Regarding the Product Key - I saw that empty field during the installation, but since there was no prior "purchase" of anything, I am not aware of any such Product Key. The Windows Live ID I used to sign in was created back when I used a Windows Mobile PDA in 2002, and had not been used since. At some point they wanted more personal information for my Live ID, and after inputting that the game started. I never saw a Product Key request a second time. Where do I find such a key, if I in fact have one?

I tried converting the X52 profile's throttle to a directional axis, and then programmed in the key presses for increase/decrease. But as soon as I throttled the engine up, Flight over-rode the X52 settings and continued to work with full throttle being forward. I don't see any mention of axis reversal in the X52 profile editor. I'm pretty sure I have the setting to reverse the throttle somewhere within FSX's settings.

I understand what you are saying, as I have my Saitek X52 profile for FSX running when I play MS Flight. When I first set it up, I went into Flight's settings and programmed the controls on the aircraft to use the same buttons and keypresses as I have assigned in FSX. The only thing I have yet to figure out in Flight is how to reverse the throttle (Z axis). You see, I fly helicopters a lot in FSX. And it is unnatural to have the "collective" (throttle) moving away from you when decending. So I have always reversed that axis in FSX, and fly planes the same way, moving the throttle stick toward me to increase the throttle. It took awhile but I got usesd to that. I am so used to doing that, I find myself moving the throttle the wrong way in Flight, because it doesn't allow me to reverse the Z axis. Really screws things up when landing. :)Anyway, I checked with Notepad as you suggest, but the G11 volume control isn't generating any keypresses that I can see. I use a Logitech Bluetooth mouse, and it's dongle is plugged into the RH rear USB port on the G11. I wonder if that has any bearing on this issue?The only software I am running together with the G11 is the Gaming Software version 8.12.030. I do have several G-keys programmed, but I am not using any of them while running MS Flight.Edit -Moving the Bluetooth dongle mentioned above away from the G11 keyboard did not matter. BUT...... I changed the Flight Aircraft Control setting for aircaft On/Off from the default B key to CTRL+E, like FSX uses for engine start. THAT stopped the issue with the volume control killing (or starting!) the engine. So for some reason MS Fight interprets clockwise rotation of the volume knob as being a "B" and "G" key pressed. Really strange. Has to be some kind of bug.

I am using a Logitech G11 gaming keyboard on this Win7x64 PC where I have Flight running. This keyboard has a built in volume knob at the top center of the keyboard. When I decrease the game volume with the knob, I have no problems. But for some reason if I use the knob to increase the game volume, it immediately switches any airplane's engine off, and cycles the landing gear (if I am off the ground).Has anyone else seen this issue?The game seems to run OK now aside from this problem.