Faster to reinstall the OS than install ORBX sceneries

[gdavej]

I believe that FlightSim store has recently changed their method of unpacking the ORBX sceneries, a bad move from my point of view.

I recently purchased NZQN Queenstown, but when I tried to install it, the unpacking took forever. After 60 minutes, I gave up and killed the process, this unpacking process used to take mere seconds!. Throughout that hour, the hard-drive light on my PC was constantly lit up. I have no idea what that installer was accessing on my hard-drive, but there's no way it should be accessing my hard-drive for over an hour without doing anything. It doesn't even take an hour to reinstall my OS.

I've contacted FlightSim store Support, but haven't heard anything back so far. Has anybody else had similar issues? and does anybody have a resolution to this issue? I really do not trust software that sits there for hours, apparently doing nothing other than accessing my hard drive.

[Meshman]

There have been posts around about the difficulty of getting good downloads. I would think that you need to reattempt the download using a good download manager.

[gdavej]

There have been posts around about the difficulty of getting good downloads. I would think that you need to reattempt the download using a good download manager.

I don't think the file is bad, it downloaded okay, and if there was an issue with the download, I wouldn't see any popups. As it is I see a popup saying it's unpacking the file, and it just hangs at around 80% complete for an hour, whilst the hard-drive light is constantly lit. I think it's the new unpacking procedure that FlightSim Store has initiated, that is causing my grief.

[falcon409]

. . . . . .I really do not trust software that sits there for hours, apparently doing nothing other than accessing my hard drive.
I doubt it's accessing your HDD in the sense that it's somehow doing something damaging or sneaky. . .it's simply trying to unpack the files related to your scenery. As meshman mentioned try using a download manager like "Internet Download Manager". . .much faster I think and in many cases allows for restarts on downloads that get about halfway through and then drop for some reason. On larger downloads it can save you a lot of time having to restart from the beginning.

[Daveroo]

i had just wiped my hard drive clean (using CCleaner,got all the crap out) and i re-installed Vista ,i then installed steam and FSXSE,and at first all in installed were my ORBX products,all north america stuff,a few airports,and then a few of my planes,but all of my ORBX scenery was redownloaded fresh from the flightsim store,and i had no problems what so ever,it did take some time to do the unwraping..but was 8 minutes at most (i timed that one)..

[Daveroo]

I doubt it's accessing your HDD in the sense that it's somehow doing something damaging or sneaky. . .it's simply trying to unpack the files related to your scenery. As meshman mentioned try using a download manager like "Internet Download Manager". . .much faster I think and in many cases allows for restarts on downloads that get about halfway through and then drop for some reason. On larger downloads it can save you a lot of time having to restart from the beginning.


i dont think the problem with him is the download itself..i think something might be happening when he is running the unwrapper...there are several steps on those,and the one takes awhile for sure..8 minutes for me was the logest..seemed like an hour though..but with his...maybe something is hanging up within his puter?

[gdavej]

i dont think the problem with him is the download itself..i think something might be happening when he is running the unwrapper...there are several steps on those,and the one takes awhile for sure..8 minutes for me was the logest..seemed like an hour though..but with his...maybe something is hanging up within his puter?

I'm sure the downloaded file is okay. It's the unwrapper process that is screwing me. I do have a lot of stuff on my PC... 4 hard-drives each with 2Tb, and all those drives are at least 50% full, so that's a fair few files! I'm pretty sure that the unpacker is scanning the drives looking for something, what that something is I have no idea (certainly not the location of FSX or P3D since they're defined in the registry). Whatever it's doing though, it strikes me as being mega-inefficient. So far I've tried twice to install the scenery I purchased... the first time I gave up after 40 minutes, the second time I waited for over an hour, before aborting. It looks like I will need to let this run overnight in order to get past the unpacking step. This definitely puts me off buying any more Orbx products.

[Meshman]

Another issue may be the anti-virus, if any. Moving the download to a specific folder and telling the AV to exclude scanning on that folder might help???

[gdavej]

Another issue may be the anti-virus, if any. Moving the download to a specific folder and telling the AV to exclude scanning on that folder might help???

Sure the anti-virus (Kaspersky in this case) undoubtedly slows the whole process, but it comes down to the elapsed time. The AV should take, at most a few minutes, to scan the files; but 60 minutes? I've just started the process again, and I'm going to watch a movie while it "unpacks"... probably a long movie!