FS9/FSGW3 .exe doesn't .exe!

[SSI01]

I wasn't sure if I should post this here or in the "general" thread, but since it had to do with an offshoot of FS9 I decided on starting here.

I keep shortcuts to all four flight sims - FS9, FSSW50, FSSW60 and FSGW (Flight Sim Golden Wings) 3, in a separate folder on my desktop. Within the past week I have noted although the shortcuts for the other three function fine, for some reason the shortcut for FSGW3 does not function. That is, after double-clicking on it, I get a black square on the desktop like it's trying to load the screenshot for the sim, but it never goes beyond that.

I've tried rebuilding the sim from scratch using a fresh install of FS9 then converting it to FSGW3 using the add-ons from the "Old Hangar" website. I've also tried importing the FS9 .exe file, then changing the name then the routing in the "properties" dialog box. I've also tried copying the entire thing to a new drive, "E", which is the drive the OS is on, hoping physically separating it from the others (which are on "C" drive) would help it work. I'm stumped about what to do at this point.

[wombat666]

Have you replaced your previous GW3 cfg file with a new one?
Moving to another drive might cause some confusion.

[zswobbie1]

Does the .exe within the GW folder work?
If it does, create a new shortcut.
Have you deleted the gw.cfg? & tried to run exe from the GW folder to rebuild the cfg?

[SSI01]

I'll try deleting the FSGW3.cfg and start using the ".exe" inside the sim folder itself. Let's see what happens.

EDIT: That "FSGW3.cfg" file is located in the main "FSGW3" folder, correct?

[SSI01]

I found the FSGW3.cfg file and pulled it and an accompanying .txt file. I then used the ".exe" file in the FSGW3 folder to start the sim. I got the square black start-up screen but it has not gone beyond that stage, no matter what.

[rich12545]

Have you tried building a new FSGW3 from a fresh FS9 install by following the directions in the Golden Wings folder? But first delete the fsgw.cfg in FS9 and Golden Wings folder in My Documents.

[SSI01]

Actually Rich I did do that. I have FS9 installed on the same drive as the other three iterations of that sim. What I did before was drag/drop the mint and unaltered FS9 installation I have on another drive into this drive where all four altered iterations of it are located.

I think maybe I can get away with what you recommend if I temporarily rename the original FS9 in this folder to something else, then make a fresh installation of FS9 using the disks, then install all FSGW files as you recommend and rename it. Let me give that a try.

[wombat666]

One point that you should avoid.
Do not rename the .exe file in your other installations from fs9.exe to anything else.
I did that once and my GW installation went feral.
GW works if you follow the instructions on the can, any other variations of FS9 are fine as long as they retain 'FS9' as their title (You can change their folder names however), you end up with shortcuts in the order of FS9, FS9(2), FS9(3) and so on, I use different icons to sort the short cuts out.

[SSI01]

Hello Wombat, and everyone else.

I've cleaned off every vestige of FSGW3 from the drive it was on, and did a direct from the can installation of FS9, then added everything that needed to be added to bring this to FSGW3 standard. In addition, I changed the FS9.exe name in the new installation to FS9 (2).exe. Made the shortcut on the desktop "shortcut to fs9 (2).exe" as well. Still no soap. Because of the size of the "aircraft" folder, it was always a little show loading (around 15-16 minutes), but after waiting a full 20 with the last attempt I shut it down and am sending this to report progress - or the lack thereof.

[wombat666]

Just to clear up any possible misunderstanding (it happens) rename your new installation of GW3 which I assume is 'FS9.2' to 'FSGW.exe', as per the Golden Wings instructions.
Make sure you have a copy of your FS9.cfg renamed as FSGW.cfg and saved in the same location.
Your shortcuts should show up as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and FSGW.
Any other 'FS9' installations will automatically renumber themselves as you can see (I hope) in the enclosed screen grab.
Mine are only out of sequence because I grouped the different icons together.

[SSI01]

I'm going to do as you recommend, but I uninstalled and then reinstalled FS9 as a pristine installation, skipped FSGW since it was giving such a hard time and have installed FS Silver Wings instead. It is working fine in two other iterations of FS9 and I'd like to see if this will finally get things back to normal. Right now I'm transferring a complete installation of the 1940s iteration of FS9 onto an external drive. Once that's done and there is no vestige of another version of FSGW on the drive it was originally on, I'm going to try firing up the new Silver Wings version of FS9. Let's see what happens.

Before I took this step, what happened when I tried what you suggested was that now and then I'd get the "hourglass" showing the program was being read by the machine after the .exe or the shortcut was clicked. This lasted for a short time, then things would go dormant. On two occasions I actually got the program to report an anomaly in the scenery library, so it got as far as to read those files twice.

I'm also getting a "rundll32.exe" error when I try to install an activation key from Sim Skunk Works on the FSX side. I'm wondering if either the installation of the SSW F-84F or the FRF-104G might be responsible for this error as it did not occur until the second one was installed.

[SSI01]

I tried one additional thing, as suggested earlier, to determine if some add-on scenery I installed lately may have disagreed with the rest of the sim. I pulled the Add-On Scenery folder from the modified sim, and substituted the Add-on Scenery folder from the pristine copy of FS9 I have on my system. Even after doing this, I still can not get the sim to execute. This would indicate to me the problem may lie in the machine and not in the sim. It turns out I'm having problems starting one or two other sims lately as well.

Looks like it's time to have the OS changed to Windows 7 and have that rundll32.exe problem attended to as well. That's all I can come up with unless you gentlemen can think of something else I can try before I take it to the shop for the changeover.