Some observations.
The past few days Ive been trying to "repair" my P3D to a vanilla state after experiencing a botched install of AS16.
During the course of my frustrated sessions in front of the PC, Ive noticed something that I wasnt aware off regarding repairing P3D.
With FSX when you want to repair your install, you can insert your dvds and the software re installs all the files back to the original install, P3D doesn't do that!
Upon selecting repair, the 9-ish gig P3D.exe appears to only look for missing files and re installs what it needs to run. I played around for at least 10hrs trying to restore my files without doing an uninstall to find out that the problem remained after each repair. Which sent me on a mission to work out what was happening for future reference.
Like I mentioned earlier where FSX did everything when conducting a repair, P3D doesnt. Which means if your install is corrupt and you have no idea what is the cause you are left with no choice but to un install P3D and re install (however I will get back to that later) but this has pros and cons.
Un/Re installing. I noticed another issue. Most of your key cfgs and files remain after you un install, so some times you may have to go and delete several files or folders after your un install ( this isn't really new). What was new to me was that your .cfg or .xml unless deleted them will remain and be active .cfg or .xml after your re install. in short no new cfgs so if you have a corrupt .cfg or .xml.
In summary,
The past few days Ive been trying to "repair" my P3D to a vanilla state after experiencing a botched install of AS16.
During the course of my frustrated sessions in front of the PC, Ive noticed something that I wasnt aware off regarding repairing P3D.
With FSX when you want to repair your install, you can insert your dvds and the software re installs all the files back to the original install, P3D doesn't do that!
Upon selecting repair, the 9-ish gig P3D.exe appears to only look for missing files and re installs what it needs to run. I played around for at least 10hrs trying to restore my files without doing an uninstall to find out that the problem remained after each repair. Which sent me on a mission to work out what was happening for future reference.
- Each time after I did a repair my orignal problem of no clouds remained.
- So I then decided to try a different approach, I backed up a few files in the weather folder and then deleted them, then followed up with a P3D repair, this time the missing files were replaced. I confirmed this by the install date and time.
- So I then removed one of the files in weather folder and replaced it with an older (one with a different install date and time) and did another repair and checked the install dates and times both files remained untouched on completion.
- I did this with a few different folders that could have the potential to impact the running of P3D, the above process was confirmed.
Like I mentioned earlier where FSX did everything when conducting a repair, P3D doesnt. Which means if your install is corrupt and you have no idea what is the cause you are left with no choice but to un install P3D and re install (however I will get back to that later) but this has pros and cons.
- Cons, if you have no idea what the problem is, you are buggered and have to do a complete re install.
- Pros, if you know the file or folder thats the cause of your woes you can just delete it (with caution) and just do a repair and get a new one
Un/Re installing. I noticed another issue. Most of your key cfgs and files remain after you un install, so some times you may have to go and delete several files or folders after your un install ( this isn't really new). What was new to me was that your .cfg or .xml unless deleted them will remain and be active .cfg or .xml after your re install. in short no new cfgs so if you have a corrupt .cfg or .xml.
In summary,
- Unless you know the source of your problems (ie the file) you are pretty much alright, its a simple case of back up(just in case) and delete and conduct a repair.
- If you have no idea what the problem is, you may very well have to remove all the files of P3D from your drives and start from scratch with a complete re install.
