when to reinstall or not, what benefits can be gained?

[britfrog 180]

with reference to my other thread about Nvidia inspector it became evident (after long and deeply interesting talks with the Nvidia techies) that a full reinstallation of windows as well as fsx et al was necessary. OK i used the windows reinstallation process and it backed up my files perfectly it rebooted without losing any info - VONDERBAR!!! as this drive is only used for fsx it was "Simply" and i do use that word loosely, a matter of reinastalling FSX!

And this is where the buts come in i had previously been happy with my fsx installation but the differences that I am now seeing make the old version totally obsolete even though this drive has only ever been used for fsx.

I am forming some theories (which no doubt will be shot down in flames) but my new version is so much smoother,, the clouds are far better even though it is still REX, it is as if i had been running the last fsx in xp or before and now it has awoken to win 7.

All i can put it down to , is what we all do , we try a new gadget/program , dont like it and bin it, but it leaves something behind Always!!.

My REX had started off as REX2 (2009!!) then over a few years was updated through OD then essential , essential plus etc etc I was recently aware that my clouds were not really blowing my socks off so I tried opus and others all no doubt leaving some residue which affected performance,

I recently upgraded my graphics card in an effort to get better visuals , but to be honest it was a waste of money, i was getting more and more unhappy with FSX .

So having a re-installation ended up being a blessing in disguise, after windows played ball i started to reinstall fsx but not as it had been before, I wanted a plan of action that I could maintain. although i have loads of a/c i decided to only install those that i regularly use , if I want another I can install it later, scenery wise I have not installed any ftx/orbyx stuff, that can remain on another hard drive with another fsx running separately if I want to use it, but I installed most of my aerosoft airports, uk2000, france vfr, GEX, , plus rex, it was a case of installing what was absolutely necessary and leave off the rest.

I then looked at the fsx cfg with the aid of kostas flight sim blog, made a few mods without going over the top, keeping the cfg uncluttered and more important simples!! something that I stumbled upon in the cfg was Procspeed= 12339

I noticed in older backed up cfg's that this figure differed even though the hardware hadnt, in some it was 8339 and others 9275 and i noticed as well that this figure went down the more stuff I loaded onto fsx so each time the pc wrote a new cfg i boosted this back to what it was when it first loaded fsx, the results are worth it, even though I havent a clue which processor it refers to.

the downsides?

A huge pain in the arse was flight sim shop despite emails requesting another download server as theirs re-sets every few hours cutiing off anyone who is downloading, I tried 5 times to download the REX essential plus, each ime taking more than 5 hours and then i discover on the 6th attempt their server also supplies a zip file that is corrupt! deep joy! 5 days later I still have had no answers so guess who has lost my business then? what a load of antipodean nonses they are only interested in their relationship with FTX .

Earth simulations my goodness what have they created? what potential new customers must think of their installation process is beyond understanding I spent the best part of 4 hours trying to figure out how to reinstall a product that I had bought last year, was there any help available via email or whatever, that will be a big NO then. these guys must be losing customers left right and center through their ridiculously difficult installation process and it is so totally unnecessary i installed over 40 aerosoft products in less time than it took to install 1 of ES , what is so frustrating is that the product is generally pretty good, i would like to buy Alderney , but do I want to go through 2 of their installation processes? no i would prefer frontal lobotomy.

Another real nonse was having to re-activate windows again even though windows had only reinstalled an already activated windows, try doing that in a foreign language!! after a lengthy and deep meaning discussion with the french microsoft gestapo who couldnt understand why i needed to reinstall windows and who were not keen to give me a new activation number , i weakened and gave them a typically gallic gesture and called the uk office and was activated in a matter of minutes, up yer kilt froggie!! what added fuel to my anger was all this work was brought about in the first place by a windows update that gave me the blue screen of death on reboot, and the resulting recovery which just further corrupted windows so that many things didnt work at all.

at the end?

So here I am 4 days later,or is it 5? and what have I gained? well REX essential plus now produces really excellent clouds, very realistic smog/fog , even the sea looks much better and a better colour as well (before installing FSWC) although i have everything governed to 30fps, i did go mad for just a moment and saw 120fps on the runway at gatwick (UK2000) the smoothness is sublime, it is clear that even though i had updated the graphics card and all the drivers something somewhere was throttling the new card back, now it has an open road ahead -bliss! I had some time ago done a reinstallation of fsx but with the original windows but this didnt give anywhere near the chages I have now seen performance wise. Even The PMDG NGX virtual cockpit seems to have more depth to the buttons etc

So despite all the grief if you have, like I, an oldish installation, which has seen add on after add on, do yourself a favour and do a full re-installation with a plan of action it is a win /win situation

[mutley 4,487]

Well BF I can back you up 100% there, I went back to FSX after trying to maintain FSX & P3D together and it was no fun. As the benefit of having P3D over FSX is still presently marginal with a decent PC I too decided to rebuild with a new SSD OS drive an a Veloceraptor for FS and another couple of drives for scenery and other non FS games and programs. I followed Kosta's guide and made only minimal changes to FSX.cfg and bit by bit reinstalled essential addons.

It's never been better, after our chats I re-installed Alderney using the ESI program with no problems although this time I have downloaded all my purchases and installed from the ESI pack. I had forgotten how fantastic that scenery is! Why don't you buy the DVD version?

Anyway, thanks for an interesting update, I will have a look at my original procspeed and see if its different and I am really pleased you are enjoying the sim again!

[britfrog 180]

there are little things that make a difference, how many times have you flown say a 2 hour leg only to find that when you get close to the destination you get a fatal error and fsx gives you a ctd, well tonight i flew lfmp/egnt with great clouds and fog and everything worked properly, very satisfying, At least it eanbled me to beat REX into submission so no longer have weird and wild, high level wind changes, thats a plus! will try lfmp/lowi tomorrow, now that is really demanding on the p.c. with austria pro scenery

wish me luck!