FSX SimObjects/Airplanes folder "corrupt and unreadable"

Greetings all. I tried to find something on this issue in previous forum posts, the latest thing my searches turned up was dating from about 2009, so probably things have changed a little since then - I hope.

I made some additions - by the book - to the "Airplanes" folder in my FSX installation and things have been going well until late yesterday when I started getting CTDs after about 20 mins or so of operation. I was able to access the folder until about one hour ago when I got the message, "Z:\Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable." FSX still runs but any aircraft that do not have a screenshot posted in the directory have their textures greyed out. I have Avira antivirus and did a scan of the folder with it; there are no viruses, and Malwarebytes says there is no spyware in the folder either.

My system:

Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 940 Processor 3.00 GHz

4.00 GB RAM

64-bit OS

I'm thinking the file got corrupted because there were no screenshots of the aircraft in question provided with their textures - it's apparently up to the sim owner to take the shots, put them in their proper format, and add them to the texture folder. I can do that, however, if I'm understanding this correctly I need to access the individual aircraft texture folder, plus the .cfg file for the affected aircraft as well, to make the pertinent changes. Is there (hopefully) an uncomplicated way around this current impasse?

For any aircraft that do not have a thumbnail.JPG in them there should be the replacement Airplane with a ? through it to take its place. All you need to do is have a .jpg picture of the aircraft and label it thumbnail.jpg and stick it in the texture folder. No .cfg file needs to be changed.

Have you tried just copying the SimObjects/Aiplanes folder to your desktop to make any changes inside and then copy back to your main FSX folder?

Thanks Mr. Zippy for replying so quickly.

Since the sim is still working I've called it back up, made screenshots of the greyed-out textures of the affected aircraft, resized them to 256X128, and am holding them in a temp folder until I can open "Airplanes," then insert each of these into the appropriate folder. Plan is to next reopen the sim, call up the affected aircraft, make a good screenshot of the full-color aircraft, and replace the grey "placeholder" screenshot with the finished one. I'm hoping using the "placeholder" will allow the sim to be run normally and allow that finished screenshot to be taken.

I made a .txt document showing every aircraft that has the "?" you mentioned in the directory. Helps me keep track of things.

I've tried copying and cut/pasting the "Airplanes" folder to the desktop but to no avail.

Forgot to mention my sim is FSX Gold w/Acceleration built in.

This missing thumbnails has never kept a plane from loading for me. The inaccessible/corrupted aircraft folder is a more serious problem and should be addressed.

A repair might be in order. There is a procedure you should follow if you decide to go this route. You might even consider making a copy of the aircraft folder to another location before the repair so it will build a new one, rather than trying to fix a broken directory structure.

Before doing anything, I suggest opening explorer to the drive containing FSX, RIGHT click on the drive letter and select Properties, click the Tools tab and select "Check the drive for errors-> Check Now"

Deselect BOTH checkboxes. By deselecting "Automatically fix..." you will get a detailed report of what was wrong. Otherwise, Windows will just fix it (if needed) and you'll not know what the problem was or what Windows scandisk changed.

-Pv-

OK, will do & report results.

EDIT: Started the check as described. Deselected both boxes. "Checking Disk FSX (Z:) got to 127035 index entries processed before dialog box was displayed. Says, "This disk contains file system errors. To fix these problems, select the Automatically fix file system errors check box and run the disk check again." There isn't any other option currently displayed on the "Checking Disk FSX (Z:)" box except "Cancel."

I thought there was the ability to see the details of the report. Regardless, you should run the fix. Your disk structure is damaged and needs to be repaired.

-Pv-

Btw, before you attempt to fix the file system: this is a serious error on the disk itself, and it usually can not be caused by you doing anything wrong (except kicking your PC at the wrong moment...). If it is no virus, then you have to consider a head crash or similar. This means, that the data may not be recoverable by the automatic repair process. And that this can happen again any time - you should least low level format the old HDD or look for a new one right away.

Before you start messing with it, make a backup copy of the whole drive, preferrably by using a tool working on sector level (because some of your files can not be read). If you have another HDD around that fits the size, clone the old one, errrors and all. Then you can try to recover what is still there.

Thanks for the info. I'm going to try the repair as the machine suggests and see what happens. After that, I think it might be a good idea to at least make copies of the "Airplanes", "Rotorcraft", and "Gauges" folders since that's where the stuff from the payware add-ons goes when you do add it.

After the repair is conducted I'll post results.

OK, repairs have been completed. This is what the system has to say in its dialog box:

"Some problems were found and fixed. Any files that were affected by these problems were moved to a folder named "Found" on the device or disk. Your device or disk is now ready to use. If you removed the device of disk before all files were fully written to it, parts of some files might still be missing. If so, go back to the source and recopy those files to your device or disk."

There are a lot of notations about "orphaned files," with associated numbers. At the end of that section, the following is shown:

"Usn Journal verification completed. Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap. Windows has made corrections to the file system.

102398560 KB total disk space.

67724480 KB in 98525 files.

37028 KB in 4477 indexes.

308156 KB in use by the system.

65536 KB occupied by the log file.

34328780 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.

25599640 total allocation units on disk.

8582195 allocations units available on disk."

I'm going to find that folder and examine it. Again, I think it would behoove me to copy the files I mentioned earlier to an external archive (which I have) then maybe report this to a local tech and see what he says.

I just wanted to add a couple of things:

1) My keyboard has seen so much usage some of the letters are beginning to be worn off, so it's time to replace that, I think. I've noted a few of the keys are beginning to "stick" or be non-responsive when I strike them. Although the possibility is remote, it's still to be considered that the worn-out keyboard may have a tangential effect on what's going on in the "F"/"Z" drive where this stuff I've described is occurring;

2) I have another non-flying sim on the "F" drive, which is an external drive hooked up to my desktop. When I had some work done on the system several months ago, the tech doing the work added FSX to the external drive, but partitioned it so FSX is in its own part of that external drive, called "Z" drive by the machine. The non-flying sim on the "F" portion of the external drive suffers no ill effects at all and, after the recent addition of some add-ons for it, now in fact functions and displays better than ever.

I guess my question or observation is that if the "Z" (FSX) portion of the external drive has some problems, yet the balance of the drive on "F" runs normally, am I looking at some sort of damage to the "Z" portion of the disk? If this is so, I may be in for a spot of luck as, being an external drive, I don't have to unhook the entire machine and take it in to the shop - just the external drive. I'm thinking of asking the tech to mirror-image the contents of the "F"/"Z" drive to a new external drive, eliminate the partition between the two, and keep the entire thing as one drive.

Farther back in this thread, I set out my computer's OS and other specs. Based on those, just how big an external drive can I mate to the desktop? Can anyone quote me an average price for a BIG external drive, with lots of disk space? Thanks!

PS - I think we can eliminate the lack of thumbnails as the cause of this problem. After that repair I was able to get back into the "Airplanes" folder and, after some looking around, discovered some of those aircraft that had "?" pictures in the aircraft directory did in fact have thumbnails, but they had the wrong pixelated dimensions on them. After fixing that, I've found I still had another CTD where the same cleanup was performed that was documented earlier - only it was after a restart. I think we're going to give FSX a rest for a while until I can find a decent external drive with lots of room and get it transferred over.

First check the SMART-status of the external drive.

That will indicate if it's close to failure or not.

You will then know if the drive is worth saving, or if you need to backup everything from it and discard the old drive.

The manufacturer of the harddisk often supplies a utility to check the smart-status.

If you can't find that, there are also seperate ones. But use one that is suitable for your drive.

...personal:

i'm backing up a crashed ehd at the moment. Copying to a good one.

First i tried copying a few folders. That went ok.

Then I copied the complete contents. And got a long list of files that wouldn't be read!

(Weel around 600 files, but out of hundreds of thousands, so only 1%)

Those few folders I did earlier did have those files(!). So these files had copied over only once. I did manage to rescue 99,5% of the contents.

With that safe I did some investigating of the drive. SMART-status said failed. So the drive can not be trusted and it's time to buy a new one. Good to know that!

Good luck.