Finally got FSX reinstalled

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury) 02/19/2017 at 00:03 • Filed to: None

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What a colossal pain in the ass. It kept failing at the very end. A little research shows that this is because of some licensing crap if you didn’t cleanly uninstall it; I couldn’t cleanly uninstall it because I had to reset my computer to get it working again, and that wiped out all of my apps.

A tool was available to fix this problem, but Microsoft no longer provides it. I finally found it at another website and downloaded it, and double-clicking it didn’t actually make it work. This was discovered after another two attempts at this 2 DVD install. Once I found out you had to run it from the command prompt, with very specific case-sensitive commands, I gave it another go. Now I was confronted with another error message from this program that was supposed to fix the error from the initial installation.

Doing a little research on this new error takes you to a MS support page that tells you that you’re in the wrong area and directs you to the initial support page with the non-existent download, but of course that page says absolutely nothing about this new error, leaving you as clueless and frustrated as you were before.

After more research I find that you have to run the command prompt as administrator, and if you do that, this fix will take care of the error when running the patch for the licensing problem. I still haven’t mastered the Windows 10 start button, so it took a little time to figure out how to get to the command prompt in order to launch it as administrator (I usually just type ‘cmd’ in Cortana to get to it, but that doesn’t give me the appropriate rights). Once I did this I re-ran the patch and it completed without errors, as did the FSX install. Finally, some signs of progress.

Now time for the service packs. I forgot that SP2 doesn’t have all the fixes included in SP1, so I have to download that one and install it first, complete with a reboot, then install the second one. Finally, everything is patched and activated and I can finally go flying.

The first flight went great, and even did a go around whilst on final due to traffic. Taxiing to parking took forever whilst I once again waited for traffic. I set up for another flight from some remote airport and the app crashed on me, so I took that as a sign to stop and head over here to bitch and complain...

unclevanos (Ovaltine Jenkins) > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/19/2017 at 00:12

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Still on FS2004 with the little time I have for the simulator. Maybe one day I’ll get a new build and try Prepar3d by Lockheed Martin. Its the successor to fsx since Lockheed Martin bought the property.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > unclevanos (Ovaltine Jenkins) 02/19/2017 at 00:19

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I know what you mean. It’s probably been over a year since I’ve spent any time on the sim.

This 1st gen Core i5 system does an acceptable job running FSX, but I think Prepar3d might kill it. I tried running that app on a high-end i7 notebook with discrete graphics, and it was a tad sluggish. I think you need to have some pretty serious HP to run that app.

I did pick up a copy of FS2004 the other day at the Goodwill Outlet. At $0.89/lb, it was worth it to take a look at this old program. I might even be able to use it for flight training for the cadets on the older laptops I have laying around; we can’t always do combat flying.

TheHondaBro > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/19/2017 at 00:19

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X-Plane > Flight SImulator

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > TheHondaBro 02/19/2017 at 00:22

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I’ll have to give it another go. I’ve got a copy of 10 around here somewhere and it may run OK on this i5.

FSX is a comfortable and familiar go-to, and I know it isn’t the most realistic simulation. Hopefully there’s some good Hawaii scenery for X-Plane since that’s where I do most of my flying.

unclevanos (Ovaltine Jenkins) > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/19/2017 at 00:32

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FSX was a failure before SP1 patch. My dual core couldn’t run it and my FS2004 has a lot of good freeware content. Some were Tu-144 and concorde flights while the majority was WA state flying in C208s, C150s, C182T, and STOL airplanes. I’ll save up for a i5 k series build when the time comes.

On the topic of combat sims, IL2 Strumovik (the old one) was a great combat sim. Taught me a lot about vertical and horizontal advantage. AI would never engage me in the high altitude while flying the spitfire.

CodyVella > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/19/2017 at 00:37

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Never got into Flight Sim X and stuck with FS2004. I remember when X came out you couldn’t edit the AI traffic patterns. I had a real world AI in FS2004 and was super bummed that you couldn’t add it into X so I just never played it, even though I bought it. I wonder if they ever changed it so you could edit the AI traffic.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/19/2017 at 00:44

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Ah the joys of a 10 year old game with questionable DRM.

In any event the easy way to get an elevated prompt with the Win 10 Start Menu is the same as it was in 7 (though I think it may have gone away for a while?):

Hit the Windows key to bring up the start menu

Type cmd

Hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter

You’ll get a UAC dialog and end up with an elevated prompt. Obviously only works if your account is an administrator account (and so just needs to be elevated), if you run a limited account and need to log into a separate admin account, then that approach won’t work.

Jetstreamer > TheHondaBro 02/19/2017 at 04:12

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I politely disagree. X-Plane is still a ways away from being worth a direct comparison with FSX/P3D and it’s flight model that is always being hailed as better introduces more weird shit because developers don’t know how to use it and Laminar has some weird implementations of it.

Both sims have their pro’s but for the moment I would still always choose FSX or better, P3D over X-Plane.

Just my 2cents as real life and previous, though sometimes current, armchair pilot :P.

Out, but with a W - has found the answer > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/19/2017 at 04:24

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The Steam version is discounted regularly (to about $5 I think), might be worth checking out to prevent future issues.

Mercedes Streeter > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/19/2017 at 14:22

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I still have to do my “around the world” flight. Long live FSX!!!

STAGGERED-6 > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/20/2017 at 00:59

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Glad I’m not the only one with the itch to stick a flightsim vein. I recently booted up the old FSX, I made it about two weeks before I was reminded why I haven’t messed with it in years. It’s just not very stable or any good on new machines once you start trying to push for bigger and better, which lets be honest that’s why we all like flightsim. I finally drank the P3d Kool-Aid and I must say, I’m more than impressed. The most stable and best looking experience that I’ve had in any sim. Just finished a flight on the old America West Ramp in PHX where I worked after high school, it’s three mergers later, and the scenery is soo good now I can’t help to feel a little nostalgic.

STAGGERED-6 > CodyVella 02/20/2017 at 01:18

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Check out world of AI (WOAI) it’s a freeware project that has collected amazing AI models and mostly up to date flight schedules for every airline on the globe. The aircraft in the background of my screenshots are all WOAI and will taxi, board, and execute flt plans in both FSX & P3D. Traffic is so congested at the majors now, I ended up having to run an IA smoother to get better separation between aircraft since the stock ATC is junk. I’ve gotten into VATSIM, so it’s not much of an issue anymore, if you’re into proper ATC & ATC proc then give VATSIM a shot as it’s the real deal, human controllers and human traffic.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > STAGGERED-6 02/20/2017 at 14:38

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I’d love to get P3D but I don’t have a system capable of running it well at this point, and if I can’t do it well what’s the point of doing it at all? I tried it a couple of years ago on a high-end i7 notebook with discrete graphics and I wasn’t exactly bowled over by the performance, but I figure that a newer, speedy i5 or i7 desktop should do the trick. For the kind of recreational flying I do FSX is working OK, although not 100% stable. Perhaps I’ll dig out that copy of X-Plane 10 I have laying around here somewhere and give that another go.

Viggen > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/20/2017 at 18:30

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My only complaint is the lack of simple install AI traffic. Military or civilian.