tech question about real-world weather

[DaveW459]

hello all! new to the forum, not new to the site.

i didnt see a tech support thread anywhere, but i may have missed it (just tell me and i'll move my problem over there)

i just thought i might ask fellow '04 users if anyone has ever had a problem like the following:

i got FS 2004 recently, like last weekend, and of course immediatly installed it and flew a long haul in the default 747-400 (great fun, night ILS landing too!). at that time, the option for "download real world weather, updated every 15 minutes" worked flawlessly, and still worked for several days afterward. then it just randomly quit on me in the middle of a flight, giving me repeted error messages and just genneraly annoying me to death.

now, i thought that maybe there was a problem with my cable modem, but no, it all checked out fine (i'm posting on this forum right now, i believe my internet connection is O.K...) then i read about some other things that MIGHT cause the problem, did them all, (manualy opened port 80 in my firewall, deleted temp internet files.) still no go... so THEN i uninstalled FS 2004, restarted, and reinstalled the four disks. STILL nothing!

has anyone else had a similar problem?

the error message it gives me when i try to select the real world weather option from the flight creation menu is: "an error occurred while downloading real-world weather. please check your internet connection and configuration and try again." as i said, everything checks out.

i'm out of ideas and frankly this is driving me nuts, im the kinda person who wants to USE the fancy features if theyre available!

anyway, thanks in advance for any help whatsoever. even if its just to tell me to get weather reports and set it up manualy, hehe.

[Wing Fat]

Sometimes the weather server Microsoft uses goes offline, so the problem might not be on your end.

[DaveW459]

nah, i should have mentioned that i already followed the link from the microsoft support page to check that the server was active, it loaded fine. the news page also loaded... and thats something else i forgot to mention, the news link on the main menu does not load either, says im not connected to the internet.

what really strikes me as strange is that it all worked perfectly for a few days and then stopped working for no reason. at the time it stopped, i had yet to install any addons, but i think i had the patch, i might try a TOTAL uninstall later followed by a deletion of all leftover files and start 100% fresh. i should have done that from the get-go eh? hindsight has a funny way of making you feel stupid.

[DaveW459]

situation update:

just did a full uninstall, deleted all the left over files, reinstalled after a reboot (to make 100% sure there wasnt some ghost lurking in the RAM somewhere)... and big surprise, exact same message.

this is the first comp issue thats given me this much trouble since trying to take mandrake 9.0 off of my second hdd, heh.

thats microsoft for you, a 99.8% wonderful product, the other .2% make you want to pull your hair out!

i guess i'll just set weather manualy, im tired of bothering with it. unless someone has an answer...?

[JSkorna]

Edit: Delete your FS9.cfg file?

Hope this helps,
Jim
ActiveSky Sales and Support
http://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_dev_team.jpg http://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_proud_supporter.jpg

[VApilot2004]

Hello DaveW459

Don't know if this will help , but................

Try running the Internet Connection Wizard on your PC - (Open Internet Explorer - Click Tools, Internet Options, Connection Tab then click setup) If you have already tried this - look in the Network connections folder (Network Neighborhood) and make sure you don't have any bridges here - if you do - delete them - and re-run the I Conn wizard - be sure to say this computer connects to the internet through a LAN or residential gateway.

No help - check your Firewall (XP SP2 came with a new one) settings and verify that Internet Explorer is listed as an allowed exception - if not, add it.

Hope this helps

Regards,
Kelly

[Wing Fat]

What firewall are you running? If you're running ZoneAlarm or something like that try quitting it completely then running FS. For a few versions ZoneAlarm was messing with things that seemed unrelated to a firewall; qutting out of ZoneAlarm completely fixed the problems I was having. The WindowsXP built-in firewall seems to work well and has never caused problems with FS (or anything else that I can tell), so that's what I use now.

[DaveW459]

all great ideas!

i'll try them all in the order recieved, please stand by for further updates.

running the windows firewall, btw, i had zonealarm but it made it so i couldnt log onto amazon.com or ebay no matter what i did, so i booted that puppy!

[Chummy]

You may also wish to take a look at a commercial weather product to enhance your sim-flying experience. I enjoy FS Meteo, and there are others available.

(Do a search in this forum, too; there's been some debate over time about the merits of a weather add-on as compared to that which is included with FS9.)

[DaveW459]

still no good.

deleted fs9.cgf, fired up the sim, same message.

ran IC wizzard, told me that my always on connection should already be working (which it is)

added IE to the firewall exceptions (dont know how it was working, but it wasnt listed... network ppl, please explain?)

still nothing.

idk why it was working then just decided to quit... i've run back through everything i can think of to troubleshoot what cause the problem but i cant come up with any thing i might have changed that would cause this.

my next thought is this: does anyone know a place i can get a listing of all the file locations FS9 installs to? i didnt delete the folder fs9.cfg was in after the reinstall cause i didnt know it was there, lol.

meh, this isnt even a big deal so idk why im so worried about it, its just frustrating.