Well I thought I'd fire up FSX earlier this evening to check out OpenLC and it crashed on the splash screen.

I've just spent most of the evening trying to fix it... event viewer was no help... removed all entries in my dll.xml, removed UT2 from my exe.xml in case something had gone wrong there, deleted fsx.cfg and let it build a new one, checked and double checked something hadn't overwritten my FSUIPC with an older version.

Nope, it's dead. Something has been changed or corrupted and I'll be buggered if I can be bothered to wade through all 450GB (and 1TB of photoscenery) to find it. I suppose it was going to happen sooner or later, creaking under all that weight of addons almost a year after I last did a reinstall.

FSX is currently being uninstalled with all addons. Time to start over fresh. I might even give P3D2 another try.

On a brighter note, I tried out my (portable) XP install earlier on my laptop and found it runs beautifully with SSAA turned off and just using FXAA instead.

Wow that sux Pielstick wonder if it was something recently installed?

Only had to redo my FSX install once when Simconnect stopped working and none of the various recovery methods seemed to work.

I found it was a good opportunity to reinstall and leave out all those dozens of add-on aircraft I never seem to fly very often and scenery add-on areas I never seem to visit, I found that FSX loads up and loads into flight much faster now.

I never did find the culprit that corrupted my FSX install, but I am much more conservative now on what I install or even update on my FSX install as it took a couple of days to reinstall everything.

Ah..the fresh install. Even though it is a major hassle, there is something nice about running a clean install..

Good luck!

BeachAV8R

I feel your pain, Pielstick. Been thinking about it myself... I get a CTD every other flight nowadays. But with the price of SSDs this low, I'm thinking of getting one for FSX only.

This is probably a stupid question, but you tried running the FSX repair from your disc, right. Saved my butt once when I screwed something up, and I was very surprised that it didn't touch my add-ons.
Not that it matters, of course. You've already reinstalled.

Always a real pain, but as Kludger alluded to above, it can be a "cleansing fire" of sorts.

Sorry man. I just did it myself not that long ago. Like Thai food. Cleansing yes.....but ouch.

I recently noted a couple of corrupted scenery textures. I dread the day I have to reinstall everything.

My FSX had reached the point where there was hardly any default stuff left. If I ran the repair and it had started overwriting stuff with default files I'd still be having to wade through the massive installation to try and get everything back to how it was.

Never mind. It's done now.

My FSX had turned into a Frankenstein's Monster anyway.... it had so many addons installed it was going to buckle under its own weight sooner or later anyway.

From the ashes it shall rise again....

I bricked my FSX install some time back, so I had to do the exact same thing. Still, FSX with all it quirks and stabilization issues is starting to wear thin on me. I'd give P3D another try, but as a owner of version 1.4, I refuse to pay full retail for a second time especially due to the fact that once the 64bit version is released, you'll have to buy it all over again.

Plus as I understand it, the UI is still pretty much unchanged, and the UI in P3D is a terrible piece of design work. It's just awful.

I thought I'd give FSX a break for a few months and try and give P3D2 another chance.

I've got some Orbx stuff installed so I'll see how I get on with it.

The 64bit upgrade when it comes will wipe out compatibility with just about everything, so we'll all be back at square one with buying addons anyway. Most of the FSX addon devs are too much about the money nowadays to offer a free 64bit upgrade to their existing customers.

Probably at bit late now seeing as you've already nuked it but if by crashing you meant it was just sitting on the splash screen forever there's a good chance it was just a corrupt logbook file.

Documents\Flight Simulator X Files\Logbook.BIN

If it happens again delete the Logbook.BIN and that should fix it.

Really? My understanding is that the config architecture for the addon side of the house is completely different, and therefore not going to be affected by a 64bit version.

I'd not heard either way from LM if 64Bit would be the "add on Apocalypse," but I suspect the word you'll see brought out a lot will be "support." The question isn't if something is outright compatible, but weather the dev supports bugs/issues that arrise on a 64 bit install. I imagine some of the more static Add-ons, like scenery and texture packages (REX) wouldn't need any changing.

That said, if new versions are needed, weather or not a free update is pushed would hinge on how much work is needed. If it's 75 hours of work to update an existing product, it's fair for the devs to charge a fee for the upgrade.

In some cases though, I do feel a bit entitled for them to push a "free" upgrade, as devs like Milviz have stated the reason they charge a separate fee for the P3Dv2 version is that P3Dv2 is an evolving platform, and the extra cost ensures they keep their product compatible with future updates. This is juxtaposed to a "finished" platform like FSX, where once you've worked out the bugs you never have to go back and work on the product.

Pretty much any addon that references a dll or module will need to be updated to work in 64bit. From what I understand there are multiple programming languages used throughout MSFS/P3D and it will be a pretty momentous task to get these all singing from the same 64bit hymn sheet.

The real biggie (and the one that surprised me) was when Wes Bard (P3D Development manager) said that the BGL scenery file format is not 64bit compatible so will need to be rewritten, and all the developers will have to go back and update their scenery to work in a 64bit version of P3D.

The day P3D2 x64 is released we are all back to square one again with addon compatibility. I also find it very unlikely developers will go back and update their product back catalogues, perhaps only for the more popular products, and even then I fear in many cases it won't be a free upgrade.

Contrast this with XP10 which made the jump to 64bit in 2012 and pretty much all the addon devs updated their stuff to 64bit for no additional cost.