What a pain: reinstalling FSX

[hey_moe]

I use a program called Wipe Disk to write zeros to my hard drive and then do a quick format when installing the Operating system. Takes me about two hours to do this plus installing all the programs and security on that hard drive.After I get everything back to like I like it I then go and start the long process of installing FSX. It takes me almost two days to reinstall all the planes and all the scenery. Then all the tweaking and adjustments of everything. Out of all the addons... FEX for me has always been a pain in the hinnie for me. Anyway what part of a format takes you guys the longest. I know most of you guys are faster at this than me cus I a old fart...Mike

[lawdawg]

I don't know any faster way. It takes me at LEAST that long, prolly longer honestly.
When ya do all the tweaking involved. yep, a royal PITA.
I feel for ya.....really.

[Dirtman]

Yo Moe;

Being that I'm just a lowly CFS2er (& novice FSXer at best), I dunno if this will work 100%; but I am sure this will greatly reduce the time it takes to restore your FSX.

I recently yanked FSX out. (I needed the HD space and am not really all that wild about FSX) but before I did, I made a copy of the complete FSX folder to my external HD.
Please note that the copy runs just fine on the external.

Now please correct me if I'm wrong here:

I would reinstall the base FSX sim from the disc's (to setup all the registry entries & main menu tabs)

Then just replace the entire FSX folder with the copy from the external HD.
- no tweeking needed
- then add any accessory apps to FSX

Done .... quick, fast & in a hurry
... 13656


Is there any reason(s) why this would not work?

............... 136551365513655

[MCDesigns]

To be honest, I try real hard to keep a clean install of FSX. I have backup folders are the important parts, scenery folder, CFGs, etc. I rarely let an auto installer near the FSX folder unless I know the company. I am selective about what aircraft I install. All scenery is kept in a directory outside the FSX folder. All this with the goal in mind to never have to reinstall FSX, LOL.

[txnetcop]

Like MCDesign said keep a backup folder after you get FSX loaded with all your aircraft, sceneries and stuff and copy it on top of your new install. I've had no problems doing that. It is a pain in the arse
Ted

[harleyman]

It takes that long for me too..

i constantly kill HDDS....LOL


I have gotten very good at reinstalling.....:bump:

[dharris]

I have made backup copies of fsx in the past and it worked but took a while to transfer back to the main fsx drive. What I do now is make an image of the fsx drive and back that up to an external drive. When things go south I just mount the fsx drive back to it's original spot. It is much faster and I believe it makes for a smaller file to archive. I have all my drives imaged in this manner and no longer have to reload utx, fsx, gex, fex, usg, and all the aircraft.

[kjb]

I hear ya, I got to do it a few times recently. I installed Win7 RC1 on a separate drive and installed FSX. Then the computer decided that it didn't like booting, so I built a new one and installed FSX on both the XP drive and the Win7 drive. Oh joy! On top of that, I did the same with FS9, MS Office, AFX, Instant Scenery, Paint Shop Pro...

[Rezabrya]

Two Questions.
@MCDesigns, how do you do that? What sceneries are you talking about? I have GEX, REX, UTX, and FSGenesis Mesh, plus a lot of other small sceneries.

@TXNetCorp, Wouldn't that cause a lot of registry problems with the addons that put entries into the registry?

[Boomer]

I feel your pain Moe, I do the same thing once a year.

I did it 2mo or so ago & still dont have everything back in :isadizzy:

[MCDesigns]

Two Questions.
@MCDesigns, how do you do that? What sceneries are you talking about? I have GEX, REX, UTX, and FSGenesis Mesh, plus a lot of other small sceneries.

@TXNetCorp, Wouldn't that cause a lot of registry problems with the addons that put entries into the registry?

To help with both questions, most addons can be installed to dummy temp folders and then transferred manually. I have a folder oputside of FSX called FSX Sceneries that all my small sceneries go in. Only ones I really give access to FSX are ones that are set up to change files back and forth, FTX, REX, GEX. TongassX, UTX etc, and I only do that to ones I know are trustworthy. FSGenesis can be done manually and installed outside of FSX like a normal scenery since it is just mesh.

With aircraft, they go to the temp folder and then I install manually (then delete them with the uninstaller) to avoid any issues and to eliminate all the needless, stupid registry entries. I hate when freeware developers use an autoinstaller, many times they have no clue how to configure it properly. I firmnly believe, if you are going to add things to your FS, you need to learn how the files are set up.

My Addon Scenery folder in FSX is empty and I only use it when testing something I need to see quickly.

Hope that helps

[Rezabrya]

So what about planes that need special activation procedures? Can you still do these manually?

[hey_moe]

I don't really have a problem formatting, it's getting the flight stuff back and all the tweaking involved after that....look at it the bright side of it...what else we got to do anyway...Mike

[Rezabrya]

I think all the repaint stake the longest, and the big sceneries. GEX and REX take a good long while but nothing compared to repaints. Having to go in and edit all those cfg's... it's a nightmare.

[MCDesigns]

So what about planes that need special activation procedures? Can you still do these manually?

Like which ones? you can try it the manual way, if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work and you can install it the way they want. personally, I try to stay away from any kind of install that is less than straight forward.

Iknow in FS9 I had a few dummy installs that wouldn't work because the installer searched for the FS9 EXE and couldn't find it. I just copy the FS.EXE to the dummy folder and they work fine then.

[Rezabrya]

Wow I never thought of that. Thanks for the help!

[Bjoern]

I've made my FSX portable (killed the activation), so all I do when reinstalling is inserting my backup DVDs and unzip FSX's folders. Just insert the registry path and done.

[Hanimichal]

... Just insert the registry path and done.

How you do that?

[Bjoern]

How you do that?

One way:
http://tweakfs.com/download/fsx_reg_utility.zip

The other way would be manually writing up a .reg file but I'm not going to explain how to do that now.

[Pips]

Can I ask why you guys go to the trouble of doing a re-format? What advantages are gained?

As you can guess from the question I have never done one in my life! :)