A WARNING !

hurricane3

hurricane3

SOH-CM-2023
Well it finally happened. My whole install of FS9 is ruined. Nothing works anymore ,most of my control assigments won't work, I have no idea how many panels I've lost because I have over 300 planes installed. I have tried everything includung deleteting the FS9 config file ,and trying system restore.
As too why, I don't like to make any accusations with out proof ,but after running I OBITS Smart Defrag2 everything changed. Till the time I ran that every thing worked fine. I knew it had to happen sooner or later and the only thing that might have caused it may be the Smart Defrag may have removed files that were needed.
I have no idea what other sims or programs might be affected although (my wife and myself have separate accounts) she can no longer open attatchments
I will uninstall seven years work and I think I'am done with flight sims, so much can be lost so quickly.
 
Sorry to hear it, that sucks, but throwing in the towel is a bit drastic. Keep in mind you had a seven year roll! It's not like you had a FS crash every other month...throwing the towell in might be something to consider at that point.
 
I wish my working FSX would last that long.... Hell to be honest I normally do a full wipeout every few months to keep things fresh never mind to keep up my reformat skills lol..

Like Bone said a 7 year roll is pretty damn good in the cyber world.. Its hard to say exactly what is the fault, maybe smart 2 defrag, but then again maybe not...

I mean is this on a computer that 7 years old... When was the last time you did a fresh install of the OS...

On top of that it pays to back up as much as you can on a backup drive... I have 3 backup drives that all contain the same data... Makes the reinstall faster if you can call it that...

FS9 like FSX requires patience/small commitment and the ability to accept the fact that sooner or later for whatever reason theres going to be some type of hardware/software failure and your going to have to sit back and put it all back together again...

Theres a price to pay for this hobbie and considering you never have to leave home to enjoy it I would say thats not a big price to pay in the scheme of things...

Hang in there and dont give it up so quickly... Youll end up doing something else to pass away the time and it might cost you more than a fresh install.. ;-)

Creeps.
 
right now I'am just bummed out

Although I have expected it ,I thought it would be the computer ,it is 9 years old, ,when I said 7 years I ment that it has taken that long to get everything together to make my FS9 install perfect for me. During those 7 years I had to reinstall FS9 a couple of times and backed everything up on a zillion CD's
Each install had a little more stuff than the one previously. I think the last actual last reinstall was about 5 years ago, and that includined an OS reinstall also.
Most everything in the tower has been replaced at one time or another.
Thanks guys for all the help and advice over the years ,right now I'am just too bummed out to think straight( a major job for me when things are going well)
 
Sorry to hear that Hurricane... I had a similar incident back in January. I had an older Falcon Northwest PC and after about 9 years, she finally died. The final diagnosis was the mobo, as everything else checked out. I had all of my FS9 files, including my repaints, panel mods, and 3rd party downloads on that machine, as well as a single install of FS9 that had over 200 planes and a scenery package I installed from FS Scene. I had it all backed up on a 4TB auxillary hard drive, but when I purchased the new "FS Test and Build" PC, (an upper end HP), I have been reluctant to jump back into flight simming on the new machine. I installed FSX and FS9 and that was it.

I know how you feel... trust me. At some point, I'll probably get back into the swing of things, but not right away.

BB686:USA-flag:
 
Hurricane

I know how you feel. I have lost so much work over the years. Panel tweaks, MDL tweaks, sound packs, countless paint templates, you name it. I once lost nearly 500meg of paint kits..all of which I made from scratch... in one instant. I was tidying up my HD, moving stuff around and my anti-virus decided it was time to do an automatic update. My system froze solid. When I restarted it....my entire Photoshop folder...the one with all those paint templates and paints...was GONE!

Don't throw in the towel over this. Take a few days to cuss, rant, rave, kick the cat, eat fried Spam and drink warm beer. Then begin rebuilding your install. It won't take as long as you think...because after 7 years you know what you like, what you use, what planes you fly, what scenery you fly from and to. Yeah, you will have to begin retweaking the panels to your liking...that sucks.

Invest 50 to 80 dollars for a nice external HD. Back up your entire sim to it once a month or so. That's what I do. Once a month I copy my 3 installs of FS9 to that external HD that is only plugged in and turned on when I am backing up my installs and sound packs and paint templates.

OBIO
 
Hurricane,

It happened to me, but I was prepared, I had everything on CDs as I still do, when my FS9 crashed, I was alarmed but I was prepared, I just transfered all my airports, effects, airplanes ect back into the new install, I am up flying again and this was three weeks ago.

Cheers

Casey
 
What Casey said is so important it bears repeating. Back up everything you don't want to lose. I have a 300 gig portable hd with ALL my files with copies of everything on my main hd. Whichever crashes I'll be fine. I feel for the op but am still surprised every time I read a post like it.

May I suggest you take your computer to a tech. He may be able to save your stuff and get your computer running again. At least he may be able to salvage files from your hd.
 
Hi,

OBITS Smart Defrag2
I think you can discount this software as cause of your problems
Defrag NEVER erase any files
Defrag arrange files and folders
Sometime (if the defrag process is interrupted randomly) some files can be corrupted (rare event)
It's to notice that backups made by some dedicated softwares (like Acronis) can be corrupted if they are defragged and so the restoration process can't work correctly (corrupted backup)
Had you check if you have bad sectors on your HD ?
 
Cladius

I have to disagree with you on whether or not a defrag program will erase files. I once lost all of the weapons for my CFS2 Alphasim aircraft during a defrag session. The sim was running great all day, and the weapons were working just fine. I shut down CFS2 to run a defrag and see if I could get a few more frames per second. Ran the defrag utility (can't remember which one I used). Fired CFS2 back up and all the weapons for the Alphasim aircraft were gone. For some reason, the defrag util did not like the fact that the weapons file started with a ~ (tilde I think it's called). Luckily I had my entire install backed up on my external HD and was able to quickly copy the weapons files back into my install.

Is a defrag program SUPPOSED to erase files. No. Can it happen. Yes.

OBIO
 
I checked for bad sectors

Claudis thats one thing I did was check for bad sectors and everything is good. As far as I can tell my computer is working ok except for a few thing like not being able to get attachments in my emails ,also some shortcuts for the Recycle bin would bring up the propertys instead of what ever the shortcut was for,same with windows explorer.
I managed to fix those but it will take a while to see what else was effected.
I do have every thing backed to CD but last time it took a month about 5 hours a day to get everything back.I don't understand that I had 0 problems till I ran Smart Defrag.
Anyway if I ever do decide to reinstall,(hell it took me over an hour to uninstall all the addons before I got to the main FS9 folder.)I 'am just putting in a little scenery and the planes I really like, but right now I don't care if I ever see another flight sim.Thankyou all for your support ,it's good to have friends
 
There is a free program called Recuva that will recover a scary amount of files you thought were gone.I have used it with great success.I lost 175 Gigs of info in a hard drive failure once,nothing I couldn't live without but disappointing to say the least.:jump:
 
Two things come to mind. One, you are going through a process which at the end will likely find you planning the latest and best yet re-install, just watch (we've all done that). Two, give a thought to the Geeks or similar to recover your work. I did that for about $40-$60 (can't remember) but they got all the FS files back on a CD. The world didn't look so cruel after that.
 
well too late for recovery

As I said before I was pretty much bummed out so I just went ahead and uninstalled FS9 and everything that went with it ,so now if I ever get over being pissed , I gotta start from scratch. Even though I've backed up everything to CD it would be a very long process to put everything back ,which is why if I do it I'am keeping it simple.
My big question is ,if Smart Defrag didn't do it, what did? Along with the Gamebooster (which I reinstalled) but only intend to use the game defrag part. I was using Security 360 which was finding stuff that my PC-Cillian was missing,Advanced System Care , which has a junk files cleaner(which I'am gonna avoid) registery fix( not sure about this)System Optimiser, (another question mark) Registry Defrag,but you guys said defraging won't cause you to lose files, Disk Docter ( which is like doing a disk chk only faster, and disk cleaner which is like the one that comes with Windows.
Ok their are some others(a bunch) that were for advanced users which I avoided. Now of the ones I've mentioned ,which is most likely the one that caused the problem. It almost had to be one of the OBIT programs since I had no problems before.
I checked my controllers(all CH) with CFS2 and also the CH control Manager and they all check out OK.
Although I haven't checked all the other sims for sure it seems like FS9 took the heat.
So any expert ideas on what I ran and shouldn't have? Thanks
 
OBIO said:
Cladius

I have to disagree with you on whether or not a defrag program will erase files. I once lost all of the weapons for my CFS2 Alphasim aircraft during a defrag session. The sim was running great all day, and the weapons were working just fine. I shut down CFS2 to run a defrag and see if I could get a few more frames per second. Ran the defrag utility (can't remember which one I used). Fired CFS2 back up and all the weapons for the Alphasim aircraft were gone. For some reason, the defrag util did not like the fact that the weapons file started with a ~ (tilde I think it's called). Luckily I had my entire install backed up on my external HD and was able to quickly copy the weapons files back into my install.

Is a defrag program SUPPOSED to erase files. No. Can it happen. Yes.

OBIO
Click to expand...

I have to disagree as well, I too have lost a bunch of flightsim stuff after a defrag. Ticked me off too, I lost a bunch of custom stuff that I hadn't backed up yet.
 
Hi,

Fired CFS2 back up and all the weapons for the Alphasim aircraft were gone. For some reason, the defrag util did not like the fact that the weapons file started with a ~ (tilde I think it's called). Luckily I had my entire install backed up on my external HD and was able to quickly copy the weapons files back into my install.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's a bad idea from the develloper to use a "tilde" in file name .. as Windows use the "tilde" syntax for a meaning ....

1) There are often a large number of what we call "tilde files" hidden on a computer. These are temporary files that the computer creates while doing something else. Unfortunately, these files tend to hang around long after they're needed, cluttering your hardrive and sometimes causing problems. It's a good idea to delete them about once a month.

These troublemakers can be found using Windows Explorer. They are located in the c:\windows\temp directory. In this location you can find anywhere from 1 to a gazillion files that start with a "~" (a tilde). Often they will also end in a "tmp" extension. Delete 'em. Your computer doesn't need them anymore. Every once in a while, your computer will still be using one of these files. If so, you will get a message that says, "Cannot delete ~file.tmp. Access is denied." If you get this message, just don't delete that file.
Click to expand...

Source:
http://www.getnettoday.com/articles/maint.html

So .. you understand why problems can occur !
 
I have Smart Defrag 2.0 beta and it works marvelous, never had a problem with any version of it. I also have O & O 14, no problem there. I run CrapCleaner, IOBit's Advanced System Care Pro, the works, never a problem to FS9 or FSX, both of which run all the extra meshes, scenery packages, weather packages, REX, etc.. Must lie somewhere else, but I will say this.

Why does everyone like Disk Doctor? This program worked like a Trojan on my system, took me two days to entirely get rid of it. Installed itself without my knowledge when I was trying to get another program from CNET, scanned my system, found beaucoup problems (or so it said), then asked for $$$ to get rid of them. Eff companies and programs that function in this manner. And therein may lie your problem!

Caz
 
not taking chances

After reading Claudius post I decides to reinstall the OBix suite of programs. Now after reading OBIO'S post I've changed my mind and am not taking any chances. I uninstalled Smart Defrag ,I've been using Windows defrag for years with never a problem. Maybe it doesn't go as deep as Smart Defrag but I never had a problem. Second I uninstalled the Advanced System Care ,which includes a lot of programs I'am not sure of.
The only thing I kept was Obix 360 security which as I said before seems to find things that PC-Cillian doesn't, I have run CCleaner and Registry Cleaner by Software Online as well as the Windows tools like Disk cCeanup for years with zip problems .I also use Dell Support tools for a very long time also with out problems .
So thats how I'am gonna play it ,in other word in the famious words of somebody " if it ain't broke don't fix it"
I haven't decided about Game Booster but I think it's going bye bye ,as I used MSCONFIG as per CFS3's instructions for years and nothing shuts done backround programs better for me , as long as your careful ,when you set it up.
Still haven't decided if I'am going to reinstall FS9 , probley sooner or later I will , it's a matter of what to put back and what to leave out ,cause if I do put it back it's gonna be a lighter version.
 
by the way

GameBooster never did work well with FS9 on my system ,the textures take longer and longer to load. Maybe a faster vid card would help but until my ole 128 ATI dies, (actually the 3rd ATI 128 now ) my 256 Navidia will remain in reserve.Maybe by then I'll need to get a new puter but I used to be able to run FS9 and still can run CFS2 with all sliders right. CFS3 and IL2 and Forgotten Battles and Third Wires First Eagles not so much, but still within reason. BOB II decided it wasn't going to run on my puter anymore,(kept Freezing on loading) so it's gone.
 
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