At A Total Loss.....Help!

[Old Crow]

Hello,
I have the strangest and most dishearting situation occuring in FSX w/Acceleration.

First of all, I have not been able to use my computer, let alone FSX much since early March. I have been very ill, in and out of the hospital. I live alone, so no one else uses my pc.
A couple of days ago I started up FSX and checked my "Settings/Scenery" area to see what was the most recent scenery added "since I could not remember", any way, what I found Stunned Me. The last time I flew everything was normal and all my scenery was listed there.......Now, there are no "Names", only the numbers of each entry. I quit and re-started FSX only to find no names shown. I went ahead and flew in FTX PNW and had a very nice flight around the area. The scenery was there and active. I checked my scenery .cfg in the main folder and it seemed fine.
Yesterday, I downloaded the most recent ORBX and OZX updates and scenery. Today, I started up FSX and checked my "Settings/Scenery" and found that almost everything was gone, except for FTX Scenery. I went to start a flight and was met with most countries/states and cities being "Gone". I closed FSX and set to "Default" in the "FTXCentral" tool. I started FSX again and was met with "NOTHING" in the "Settings/Scenery", no names and no numbers. I went back to free flight and got the error message "Cannot start a flight, there are no airports or ndb's found, flight simulator will now close".

What is happening? It is not easy for me to think right now, but the thought that Flight Simulator X might have to be "Re-Installed" makes me feel sicker than I already am. I have so many Add-Ons and most of them are Payware.

Does anyone have any idea what could be happening, or have heard of anyting like this?

Thank You for listening,
Dana

[txnetcop]

WOW what a mess to be in. Have you erased your FSX.cfg file and let it start it over and rebuild?

[Old Crow]

Thanks for replying. I had not thought of that. I did not think it would have anything to do with it.
I will try it though.
By the way, does anyone know why this is the Header in the Scenery.cfg :

[General]
Title=FS9 World Scenery
Description=FS9 Scenery Data
Clean_on_Exit=TRUE

It is FSX after all.

[heywooood]

I just got through the same type of situation...

I wasn't having exactly the same issue of disappearing scenery files - but I had Xp crash due to some nasty malware and had to do a complete re-install

All I can offer you is that its not as bad once you start going through it as it seems when you are sitting there dreading the task.

I have a lot of FSX files too - both payware and free stuff and one of the things you will find is that all of the developers are easy to work with if it goes that far to where you have to contact them to recover stuff.

Naturally if you come across some dev. less willing to help (and for me that just didn't happen) than the others - well that's good knowledge for future reference.

Also - you get a chance to weed out some things that sold real well - but didn't pan out maybe

either way - try everything else first- delete your .cfg file and let FSX regenerate one

try to repair your FSX installation from the disk

check all your other programs for missing files (chances are that if some malware is deleting FSX scenery folders it is deleting other stuff as well)

For Windows XP

Did you run the 'error check' disc utility on your hard drive yet?
double click My Computer - right click on your main drive 'c' (or whichever one has you FSX installed)
click on 'properties'
click on the 'Tools' tab at the top of that window
click on 'Error Checking'

after you click yes to check the disc you will be instructed to restart the computer

let the utility run (it can take a couple of hours if your drive is loaded)

and watch to see what it finds if you like (chances are you are going to see an active log report from what you have indicated about those scenery files)

you will likely need to have your comp. checked out - but you might get lucky

[txnetcop]

By the way I have also used the repair function on the FSX disk and it actually worked the first time...careful I was told I was lucky!

[heywooood]

that IS lucky...I have tried to repair FSX from the disc three times and it hasn't worked yet...

on the other hand - error checking the hard drive has found and repaired damaged files a couple of times and restored FSX to flyable status for me....until this last situation that is.

But running the utility showed me that my Xp installation was wonk and led me to take it in for the professional repair it needed.

[Roger]

Sorry to hear you've been so ill, Dana and I hope that's all behind you now!

There are a few scenery.cfgs in various folders and only one is the definative config. I cant remember exactly where it is and if no one has answered the question I'll do a search after work today. There is also at least one tool available that can sort out a scenery.cfg and I'll look for that later too.

Take care.

Roger.

[mal998]

Try doing a Restore to an earlier date you know FSX was running properly. Restore function has saved me from having to re-install FSX a couple of times. It's a lot easier to Restore than to re-install FSX and all the scenery and aircraft.

Good Luck

[gigabyte]

The Windows System Restore is a good utility, and if you have not manually deleted files from the folders it stands a good chance of success. You said you just installed FTX, I would select a restore point previous to that as a first step. If that does not work go back one more restore point, if that fails I am afraid you are in for a lot of work either with recovery utilities or with reinstalling.

One thing to remember is that FSX does make a lot of changes to th eWindows registry, and System Restore will do a good job at fixing that if the error is a corrupt registry or Reg entry.

Best of luck and if I can help just drop me a note.

[Roger]

Dana,
Here's a screenshot of the address and the scenery checker program. This is in Vista 32 bit.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/rogera/grab_026.jpg

[Old Crow]

Hi Roger,
I wish it were all behind me! Almost died twice. They thought I had cancer, after all kinds of tests and proceedures they do not know what had caused the Jaundice and Biliruben Poisoning. The last test I had went wrong and I went into Septic Shock, they did not expect me to recover.....thank God they were wrong. I have a stint in my Bile Duct, but it cannot be left more than two months, so they will be continuing to test and see what is next. I am about 50% of my health, it is quite a struggle, but better than the alternative.

Roger, I downloaded FSTscenery.exe and ran it, but I get an error "Run-time error '13': Type mismatch". I do have it in the correct location according to the readme. I tried downloading from several places, but get the same error. ????

mal998 and gigabyte,
I did a restore to a time I thought things were stable and am now back to FSX working ok, but I still do not have the names of scenery entries showing. I have no way of knowing where things are and am not able to enable/disable any scenery entries.
Correction, when I activate different areas using the FTXcentral tool, the ORBX scenery shows up, but nothing else.

Too Frustrating.
Dana

[Roger]

Oh Dana,
I'm really sorry to hear that...we're all rooting for you!
The Run-time error '13': Type mismatch might be solved by a registry clean out. I use "Eusing" registry cleaner which can be downloaded free. You have to click "skip" when it asks for a license.

Hoping for the best.

Roger.

[mal998]

OK, glad to hear the restore worked.

Now don't worry about what's in the scenery config. As was stated earlier the config file that controls what scenery shows up is only located in one folder and I will have to wait til I get back to Miami in order to check my FSX for it's location. You probably don't want to be messing around with that file anyway, it can become very tricky getting the sceneries sorted out manually.

Anyway, the only thing to be concerned about now is what scenery shows up in the game and what doesn't. If you go to the location in the game and the scenery is not there simply re-install it. Make sure you check your Orbx desktop control to see which of their sceneries is switched on or off.

regards,
mal

[Old Crow]

An update on my situation. Most of my scenery entry names still doe not show, but anything new that I add does. FSX is working reasonably well right now.
Now the bad news, I will not be doing much flying for some time, as they have now found Cancer on my Pancreas. I am going in on the 23rd of September to have major surgery to remove the cancer and other affected areas. They call it the Whipple Proceedure. My doctors think that I am very lucky, in that my cancer seems to be very early stage and is located in an ideal spot on the pancreas. After 6 to 8 weeks of recovery from the surgery, I will be given Chemotherapy and Radiation treatments for about 6 weeks. So, the rest of this year is going to be fairly busy.

I wish all of you well and play nice. :salute:
Dana

[FlameOut]

Sorry to hear that Old Crow,

I truly wish you the very best. It is very important that you keep up your spirits and your faith.
If I may, I work in the OR, I'm a CRNA. You will be in for a rough ride no doubt. I know that you have all of the confidence in your Surgeon and your Medical management team at your chosen hospital, and it is probably out of the question for you to travel to another state. I'd like to offer up a link to our Surgeon, for this is his specialty. He'll do at least one of this particular surgical procedure per week... sometimes he'll have three a week.

The Hospital website :
http://www.health.uab.edu/11263/UAB_Hospital/


The Surgeon's Bio page from the above website :

http://www1.uabhealth.org/UAB_PF/physician_10624_John_D_Christein


...when this page loads, the section under his photo will be Credentials, Clinic Information, and Clinical interests tabs.


Good luck and may God bless and send comfort to you.