How To Run FS9 on separate HD on Win7 and Win10

Hello All,

Running FS9 on a separate HD on Win7 and Win10

I have successfully done this and am posting this in case it will help someone else.

I've been happily running FS 9.1 update on a separate USB harddrive on XP and now Win7-32 for years. I use the update fs9.exe that allows running it without the CD. The USB drive contains only FS9 and is not normally connected. When I want to fly I plug it in and it runs fine.

I saw the long thread about running FS9 on Win10 and decided to give it a try. I have a 2nd desktop PC with Win10-64 on it. I plugged the USB drive into it and used a file manager app to run fs9.exe. It booted right up but then I got a black screen. Pressing ALT+Enter cured that.

Then it asked me to accept the user agreement and then went into the "Getting Started" screen, neither of which it did before (it usually opens directly into the Select Flight screen). Then in the Select Flight screen none of my saved flights were listed. The program worked ok but clearly something was missing.

I finally figured it out and these few steps fixed everything:

1) Copied from Win7 PC to Win10 PC this folder and all its files...

\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FS9

(deleted the Win10 FS9 folder that was created the first time it ran)

2) Copied from Win7 PC to Win10 PC this folder and all its files...

\Users\\Documents\Flight Simulator Files

(deleted the Win10 folder that was created the first time it ran)

3) Edited the SITUATION line in the fs9.cfg file that is in the FS9 folder. Changed the username from the Win7 name to the Win10 name. In this case below, the Win7 name is cj7 and the Win10 name is cj4, so for me I just had to change that single number, but this will surely be different for everyone. The last part of the line, in this case "Heading for Zion-7", is the name of the last flight used.

SITUATION=C:\Users\cj7\Documents\Flight Simulator Files\Heading for Zion-7

SITUATION=C:\Users\cj4\Documents\Flight Simulator Files\Heading for Zion-7

Now it works fine on either PC. I did the same to my laptop PC which runs Win7-64 and it works fine there as well.

All three of these machines have i5 CPUs with either 2g or 4g of RAM, with the default video stuff on the motherboard, and FS9 runs great on them.

I hope this is helpful.

Regards,

Clayton