MSFS 2004 issues - help please?

[Jim Prower]

Some copy+paste from another forum.

I'm having a rather serious issue with my Flight Simulator 2004 installation. It seems, despite reinstalling over and over, (at this point, thrice, plus a system Restore) the game will not remember any changes made to it after the program is closed, including, but not limited to - add-on scenery and Aircraft. I looked, and it seems it cannot write any of the separate folders it needs to run, including:

Flight Simulator Files
Appdata/roaming/microsoft/FS9

These folders are missing entirely from my computer. I'm running Windows 7 64, and have not had problems before - the problems started after updating my ATI Radeon graphics card drivers. The drivers came with a program called "Catalyst Control Center." I have uninstalled CCC, but the problem still persists.

another odd thing is the red box which forms at the edge of the window any time the resolution is changed. I have never noticed this before, and feel it has something to do with the problems.

I apologize for the rather lengthy and somewhat depressing post as my first, but I really would like help.

Default

Apologies for the double post, but I feel an update is in order.

I have attempted all of the things suggested to me, and none has made a difference. I am even attempting to run the program in compatibility mode (XP SP3) and elevated as an Administrator, but still no difference. I noted that, when turning off UAC, the program crashed the computer (BSOD) when exiting. I did a boot-time scan with AVAST and found plenty of nasties in Java. I don't know if this is part of the problem or not, but it hasn't helped matters.

The only things I can think of is to keep updating my driver and hope I eventually get one that works, or dig WAY back in the System Restore files, hopefully find the old drivers, and hope that the internet hiccup doesn't come back...if it does, it's getting a deep scan, and going back to the new drivers.

I especially don't want the bugs back on my machine, so I'm not keen on restoring at this point.

Since then, I've found the ORIGINAL drivers for my machine...and...nothing. I don't know what to do at this point. Any suggestions would be helpful. I have reinstalled over and over...do not know what's going on.

 

[nick09]

Try running speedfan and check the SMART data for your hard drive. It could be that you have some bad sectors on your hard drive from reinstalling it all the time. It's just a guess if you can't make a folder in certain areas.

 

[Jim Prower]

Only thing "wrong" with the drive according to that was that the G-load sensor was at a rating of "1." This seems more like a file permissions thing to me, anyway.

 

[TenEightyOne]

If you backed up files to re-import to your /Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator 9/ folder then check that they're all write-enabled.

Failing that a drive check could well be in order!

 

[ECGadget]

Or try installing to a different location and manually getting rid of the files from the old one.. I had that problem with my laptop, Installed it on another drive and it worked... of course, then I uninstalled it coz I got FSX xD
A disk check would also be useful, see if you got bad sectors, might be causing the problem...