New install and Activating FSX Gold.

[flytv1]

After about 9 years my HD finally decided to say it got dizzy of all the spinning and wanted to take a break. It was still working but it started developing sector errors and I no longer had confidence in it, and I decided to reinstall Win7 Pro 64… Not a pleasant experience to say the least but after a few hours and more of activation issues, did not like the partitioning, I had all my drivers backed up and installed and got it done.

When I tried to run FSX from my old install / SSD it would not run, it asked me activate Acceleration which could not be done without a complete reinstall. My FSX is / was on a separate SSD but because of all the Registry crap I had to reinstall it. I tried to Uninstall from the Control panel but I got an error and I had to remove it manually. I am fairly certain the crooked Billy’s ears were ringing all day, and it would not surprise me if he did not go to see his ENT. I am glad he finally stepped out of the picture. That guy wasted more of my time, and millions of other people, than anyone I know, and would not mind giving him a piece of my mind.

Most of the problems were with the activation, what a pain. I got it installed and got an error that it could not activate over internet, after about 3 tries I decided to select Activate later. I tried to execute activate.exe but it did not execute / run. I tried it from Command line, Administrator mode… nothing.

I called the activation number 866 740 1256 and after about 20 min I got to a phase where auto activation asked me if I was in an activation screen I responded No, and I got hang up on. My BP is now 270/130, OK slow down, it must be a bad install, erase everything, go in the Registry find everything that had anything to do with the FSX simulator and deleted it, rebooted my system still working and tried it again. This time I installed it in it’s preferred location on C: drive which I did not want to do but tried it anyway. Tried to activate via internet, again, and again and again, I got the same Error cannot be activated over the internet. Reverted back to activate later but the activate.exe would not execute. Called that number again and when I got to the section where I was asked enter the 9 sections by 6 numbers again I entered the numbers that I had saved from my previous install, in the same system, but it tells me its an illegal copy. Looking at my phone I see my forhead veins about double of what they normally are. OK, time to do some of my deep breathing and fast air punching exercises with an imaginary picture in mind. A few seconds later I am ready to try again, many years of TTL and discreet logic troubleshooting will prepare you for this.

Did the Control Panel uninstall and it now worked, but it still left of bunch of trash in the Registry and I removed it manually.

Re install, on my SSD again, I am now around 6-7 hours into it. Got that done and here comes the Activation again. I start my Firefox and get ready to send a nasty message to MS while I am finishing the install and tried again. I could not believe it, it activated. OK slow down there is one more step, the Acceleration. Reboot, Restart FSX and installed it. I am at the Activation my BP is going up, back to the breathing exercise. I click on the Activate now. Almost instantly, Activation success. I almost passed out, I am too old for this crarp. Now I have to reinstall all my acft., SDK, Scenery……. done that and see some of the results below. Is it all worthed? I do not know.

If the MSFS2020 uses the same protection / activation I will not buy it. That would be a first since any of the simulators for PC came out. Message to MS team, STOP using that stupid Registry and Activation, not everyone is a thief like someone we all know. I actually have 2 Gold boxes, one still unopened, see pic., that I purchased at the same time.

The moral of this is the MS activation is horrible, and while they say you can get someone live to help, it is not true, the internet activation is flaky at best, and the only ones that are being punished are legitimate customers.

Conclusion is that MS wants to have some way of gathering data, like the Firefox running in the background, an Internet connection is not sufficient. There is No live person that I was able to get a hold of, it’s a lie. At some point I will start tracking the information that they are collecting during activation and if I find something that they should not be doing I will report it to the US government security agency.

I hope others learn from this, and I also hope that MS changes the way they manage the installation and activation for the next sim.

The pics included were captured in the sim in 4K mode and some scenery I generated.