bcroston

Once again many thanks for your replies and help. Just to clarify for Angels40, I previously tried installing the Gold Edition both with and without Acceleration. In other words on one occasion I used discs 1 and then 2 followed by the Acceleration disc. On the other occasion I installed just discs 1 and 2. The results were the same. I cannot fully understand what Jim Young is telling me, if the Acceleration disc corrupts the installation then why is it supplied in the box? As I said I had one more go at installing FSX and I used a very old boxed edition called de luxe. The end result was just the same. I was told that installation and activation with the product key had been successful. However when I tried to enter the game I got the same first message starting ( "An error____etc") as I have previously detailed. However on deleting this message the game started and worked perfectly but after about 45 minutes it once again stopped with the second message detailed above ("Thank you____etc). Why during installation does the game tell me that it has installed correctly then when trying to play it I am told that it may be incomplete? Why does it tell me that activation has been successful then say an error occurred during activation? Why does it tell me that my free trial has expired when I have bought the game? Why after about 45 minutes does it tell me to activate FS to continue but does not give you the option or method at that point to do the activation, the game just freezes? Anyway as I have already said I activated it during the installation process and it told me this had been done successfully. I am totally baffled by all this and have no answers to these questions. . I have therefore bought the Steam Edition. the main surprise I got with this was the time taken to download, install and configure. The discs did it it about 30 minutes. The Steam Edition took over 3 hours to download and about 12 hours to install and configure ( I had to leave it running overnight). I have tried taking off and landing successfully and am going to try a longer flight later today. Everything seemed to work well except the throttle on my joystick which will only allow operation between 75% and 100% of power. I have tried to calibrate it going the route OPTIONS, SETTINGS, CONTROLS, CALIBRATION,but so far without success, I shall try again later. I can take the throttle power down to idle by pressing F1 where it stays for about 15 seconds, then goes up to 75% again. Another challenge to sort out!

Many thanks for your help. In reply to Jethro my boxed product is the same as your photos except on the front lower left hand side where you have a G in a triangle I have 3+ in a square. I shall try reloading once more and if that does not work will consider buying the new Steam Edition, especially as it looks from the comments I am getting that my boxed add- ons are likely to work.

Many thanks for your replies. I have had two more tries at loading FSX Gold Edition, the first with the Acceleration pack and the second without. The game has informed me that that the installation has been successful and my product key has been accepted. However Windows 10 does not recognise the game in its recently added list when you left click on the Start button, which suggests that something is not quite right. This time I do have a Microsoft FS icon and when I click on this it just comes up with a list of parts of the game eg Sound, Texture Scenery, it does not launch into the game as it used to. One of the many items in this very long list is FSX and when I click on this the game appears to launch. However a message comes up in a box which says as follows:- "An error occurred while attempting to activate the product. The problem may be due to an incomplete installation of the application. Reinstalling this application may resolve the problem. Otherwise please contact product support for assistance." I have tried reinstalling several times and to the best of my knowledge product support no longer exists unless you have bought the latest Steam Edition. After clicking on OK the game then launches but after about 45 minutes freezes and the following message comes up in a box:- "Thank you for trying Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The trial time has expired. Please activate Flight Simulator to continue playing" There is only one item to click on and that is OK and when you do this nothing happens but the game remains frozen and you have to exit which I do via the Windows key. It is a complete mystery to me, the game tells me that it has been installed and activated correctly and then tells me that it hasn't. I shall just mention the 25 figure Product Key, there are two in the box and the instructions do not tell you which one to use. Number one says Flight Sim X Pro. Number two says Flight Simulator X XP. I would have assumed that one Product Key was there to activate the base game and the other to activate the Acceleration disc. However during the installation process there is no prompt at any point to enter a separate key for the Acceleration Pack. As I said at the start I have tried installing the game with and without the Acceleration Pack. I am beginning to think that a solution might be to buy the simulation again through Steam, it is not too expensive. However I am concerned that all my discs for add on Scenery and Planes will not work with the Steam Edition and it would be very expensive to replace them with new downloads from Steam. I would appreciate any comments on this from anyone who has been in a similar situation.

My PC recently failed and I had to take it for repair. During the repair I had Windows 10 installed ( I was previously using 7) and just about everything was wiped off my hard drive, including FSX. I thought there would be no problems in reloading the simulation from the discs, but I was wrong. The first time I tried reloading I received confirmation that it had installed correctly and my Product Key had been accepted. I started to play FS and it worked perfectly but after about 45 minutes it stopped completely and I got the message that my free trial had expired. I never asked for a free trial, I had bought the simulation years ago and have been playing it for years. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it and the same thing happened. Again I uninstalled and reinstalled it and this time just left it with an aircraft parked on the ground to see if it stopped working after 45 minutes. After an hour it was still working so I thought the problem had been overcome. I exited the simulation as I had to do something else and the following evening went to the PC to play it and it had disappeared, I could not find it anywhere. Usually when any game is installed an icon is placed on the desktop and you simply click on it to start the game.This happened with no problems when I installed FS years ago but now things seem to have changed. Any ideas as to what is going wrong? Does FS not work properly with Windows 10?