longbreak754

Hi Andrew, First, WRT creating System Restore points (SRP)- this can be done manually - google how to do it for your OS version OR get a copy of a free utility called Restore Point Creator from HERE - the tool can be used to configure auto creation of SRPs on a set schedule as well as manual ones as required. It also offers other tools such a disk space management for the storage of SRP's and deletion of old ones. WRT a manual removal - it can be done but will require several steps to do it completely. Although IOBit is good its main drawback, as identified by Chuck, is that for it to function best it must be installed prior installing other products. IOBit may be able to clean up after a manual removal of a program installed before it was installed but it may miss something. There a number of other freeware products available (such as CCleaner) that don't need to be installed prior to other products to function correctly and I suggest that you download and install one prior to doing the removal. - see this LINK for an ideal of what is available or google the phrase registry cleaner. Also create a restore point beforehand. First, remove any 3rd party addons, either via an uninstaller if the product provided one (normally payware rarely with freeware) as this will ensure that the associated registry key is deleted, or manually. Note that any manually installed 3rd party stuff will have no associated entries in Windows registry so can simply be deleted anyway (or backed up as is for future reinstallation). Then attempt to remove the sim via the windows program and features utility. If that does not work and you are forced to do a full manual deletion do so by deleting the main sim folder first and then files/folders the following locations - backup any files that you may want to keep, such as the logbook, etc: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\ C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\ C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\ C:\Documents\ Once you manually deleted the sim reboot - this will allow any changes to made to registry entries. Once the PC has restarted run IOBit and see what it finds. Reboot and then run the other cleaner and see what it finds.

Hi Andy, Although a FSX user now when I had FS2004 I used a fuel loader app, can't remember the name of it, but I do remember that it did have a function to print off what was termed 'Dispatch Notes' which basically gave details of fuel and weight loads etc. So something simple to check for....... Does the app you use offer the ability to print out reports - if so check the printer related settings. Many apps, not just FS related, that offer such print functions often set themselves to on or auto print on initial install

WRT the 'fairly fresh' W7 install. Have you installed both the official W7 SP (SP1) and the unofficial SP2 (an MS update for W7 that for some reason MS doesn't call an SP) - google the phrase Windows 7 Sp and you should get a page that lists both SPs. Simply installing W7 and then running windows update will not get you the SPs nor indeed many other updates - W7 is now in Extended Support which means that only security related issues are being offered. Also consider checking that you have the latest versions of essential packages such as .NET, C++ Runtime etc.....

In my experience some of the loss is down to elevation issues. Over the years I have incorporated a lot of FS2004 airport scenery (mainly MAIW but also other stuff) into FSX. It is well know that there are slight variations between the elevation data used in FS2004 and FSX and elevation related issues can be compounded even more if using a terrain mesh add-on. WRT to my experience - I have found that many of the FS2004 stuff works OK but 'dis-appearing' arrows are fairly common. In most instances I have resolved the issue using Airport Designer Editor (ADE) to add a 'airport backround' poly and/or a 'landclass flatten' poly. I have also used this method on a number of FSX native sceneries. Sometimes, the issue can also be caused by unconnected taxi links - again I use ADE to check for this.

@ Azwildcat..... As you have alluded to in the your OP, there a few things that W10 will cause an issue with, especially as its a new install (I assume pre-installed) version. The main cause is due, in part, to how MS rolled out W10 and its lack of 'backward' compatibility due to missing essential software that many older products rely on. The good news is that most of this 'old' software can be added to W10 with no issues. In relation to FSX/FSX-SE the two essential pieces that are missing and causes most of the problems are: DirectX (DX) 9 - FSX/FSX-SE needs DX9 to run. W10 does not ship with DX9 installed - it only ships with DX10 and 11 installed and possibly DX12 if it a post Oct 16 build (DX12 support was added as part of the so-called 'anniversary' update released in Oct 16). The DX9 that ships on the FSX discs is woefully out of date and incompatible with W10. I don't own FSX-SE but seeing as it also appears to suffer from the same issue I assume that the DX9 it installs also suffers the same issue. SOLUTION - install FSX and then download the latest DX Redistributes package from the MS website. Save to a temp location and run the installer with Admin Rights. Visual C++ 2005 Libraries - again required by FSX/FSX-SE to run and again not included by default in a vanilla W10 install. SOLUTION As with DX9, get the latest version from the MS website and install with Admin rights. You can view what Visual C++ packages are already installed using the Program and Features tool.

Hi Mike, I don't own or use Instant Scenery (IS). My observations are based on my experience of using Airport Design Editor (ADE) and installing Scenery Object Libraries and other scenery packages. ADE has a 'library' tool for importing objects from scenery libraries so that they can be placed into scenery. When viewing an object prior to adding it, it displays the GUID that I mentioned in my last post. Maybe there is some way that you can do the same in IS to check out if the files are really 'duplicates'.

By duplicate 'file names' I mean just that and not duplicate 'entries' of the same file For example two separate libraries (say called Lib1 and Lib2) may have texture files called ABC.bmp and ABCD.bmp - in Lib1 the ABC.bmp file may be a car object, in Lib2 a tree object. The ABCD.bmp could be reversed so becoming a tree in Lib1 and car object in Lib2. Each individual item is assigned what is called a GUID (an alpha-numerical ID) and this is used to reference the objects within the libraries' when objects are placed within a scenery, which in turn is stored within the .bgl scenery file. Basically, when the .bgl file is loaded by FSX, it references the GUID to display the correct item. If you use a single folder to store all objects then, in the case of the example above, if you install Lib1 first and then Lib2 when you install Lib2 it will, depending on your system settings, either automatically overwrite files or ask you if you want to overwrite the original or rename the new files. If you answer A. yes - it will overwrite, B. no - it will ask to rename the file or automatically assign a new name based on the old name with additional characters - ABC(1).bmp for example. Thus, depending on what action was used: If A - Any scenery that uses the Lib1 package will not display trees and cars as the GUIDs don't match. Those that use Lib2 will display correctly. If B - Any scenery that uses the Lib1 package will display trees and cars correctly as the GUIDs match. Those that use Lib2 MAY display correctly as the GUIDs match a file reference BUT IME are more likely not to display at all or with issues as the filename will not be recognised. the issues range from a partially drawn object, black squares or 'failure to load' error message.

Definitely install as separate packages.....some packages may have duplicate file names. The best place for them in the scenery listing, IME, is as far down as possible BUT above the default FSX/FS2004 entries.

WRT to .dll file - The .18000 seems to be the one that works for most people. Try it and test. If it doesn't work delete is and load the other one........ Something you can do when a freeze happens is to open task manger/resource monitor and see if a 3rd party app that you are not aware of is trying to do something in the background - for example trying to connect to the internet to update.

Walter, Have you tried the tool I suggested. When your first install it, it reads the scenery.cfg file and creates a list of what it finds there. It will then highlight problem areas. Another option to try, if you have not done so, is to simply delete (or rename) the current scenery.cfg file. When the sim is started it will create a new one based on what it finds.

Get the following freeware tool Scenery Config Editor (found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/fs-sceditor/). Its a great tool that works for both FS2004 and FSX and can help you identify problem areas. Take time to read the included readme file as it gives some great tips. It also allows you to activate/disable scenery from outside of the sim - next time you start the sim it automatically updates the sim scenery database. It even has an option to do a 'batch' update of multiple scenery folders located within a single higher folder - i.e. if your scenery setup is based on a series of folders under a root folder - say, for example, something like C:\Addon Scenery\UK airports and C:\Addon Scenery\USA airports. you can use the tool to individually activate the UK or USA folders or you can tell it to activate everything under Addon Scenery. It will read both UK and USA folders and they will be activated as separate folders in the priority list.

Firstly, I an not sure from your post if you are a aware of the location that the .xml file is stored so here are the details - In FSX SP2, the exe.xml file will be located in C:\Users\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX\ - along with other default FSX files such as the FSX.cfg file. Also note that there may be a file called dll.xml located here - more of which later. I don't have FSX-SE but my understanding is that if you have both FSX and FSX-SE installed the SE files will be installed in the same location but under a different folder name - ie at C:\Users\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX-SE. If there are no similair default entries there then they may well be buried in a steam specific directory, most commonly found at C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\steam\steamapps\common\. A simple solution might be to install into FSX SP2 again - this will give you a copy of the .xml file. Then do a manual install into FSX-SE, copy the .xml from SP2 to SE and then edit it to reflect the SE location. It is worth noting that when you run the auto-installer it does specifically ask if you want to create an .exe.xml file - the box is unchecked by default so must be checked. Also, once the install is complete you can view the details of where it has installed items - so that can give you a pointer as to where it has created the .xml file. The .xml file can be edited in notepad. If there is no .xml present you can create one by simply creating a new text document and naming it exe.xml. This is what the contents of the exe.xml should look like: Launch EXE.XML False False False False AICarriers D:\Addon Scenery\AI Shipping\AICarriersV2\aicarriers.exe -nogui In the example the items in BLACK are the basic file commands and should be present only once. The actual commands that are required to allow AICarriers (or any other addon that requires use of a .exe.xml type file) to work are in BLUE/RED and there can be multiple entries for each individual add-on. The lines in blue are common to most addons - those in red are the specific to the addon. The entry is what is displayed in the Add-on menu and the entry is the same as the location that the main AIcarriers folder and .exe file are located. WRT the dll.xml file – if you have installed any other addons, for example the FSX SDK package, FSUIPC and other (mainly payware) addons, it may already be there. Basicially, the dll.xml is another name for (and does the same thing as the exe.xml does) and is the more commonly accepted file name used by developers. The contents of the dll.xml is exactly the same as those in the exe.xml. If one is present in FSX SP2 or FSX-SE you could simply cut and paste the BLUE/RED lines into the dll.xml file.

Bob, RE the Error 1607 report: Look at the following link. I helped a friend who could not install a piece of software (not FSX but a financial product) with the same error and the first option in the link fixed the problem: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/910816 RE DX issues - simply run the built-in DirectX Diagnostic Tool by clicking the Start button , typing dxdiag in the Search box, and then pressing ENTER. This will cgeck your DX install, which on W10 will be DX12 (note new versions of DX are backward compatible with older versions), and highlight any issues.