You may recall that on the forums I stated that I was not going to be using the Microsoft's Acceleration pack. The main reason being that when ever I installed the program and tried to run it, a fatal error occurred after I had tried to select the "Free Flight" menu from the program, and it would crash to the desktop.

Now, before I had posted a message in the forums hoping people would be able to help me, but they perceived it as bashing Microsoft which of course I wasn't. Aggrevation of course was setting in, and after caling Microsoft 3 times, I finally got it working. Yes, that's right everyone who had screamed "bloody hell" at me over what I was doing because they thought I was bashing Microsoft. I love the simulator. You know I do. I've been simming very happily since the year 2000 product line, and you have never seen me complain about one thing. You've seen my systems page on my web site, and I have too much to pick and choose and do multiple restore points, for it would take me forever and too long to get the sim back up and running again.

Anyway, back to the forums with the illustrious members - no one thought to offer me help, or how to fix it because I'm sure no one knew how to themselves. But sure, it's okay to scream "User Error" on you're end, or have some one say it's a "Sub Par system" when in fact it's what's inside the case that counts - the upgraded ram and graphic cards. I'd definitely say it's above Sub par. And for people to even say they would never have to think of what to do to "fix" the problem because they would never let it get that far is just too ridiculous for me to even conceive because how do you know when your Windows User Account has been corrupted unless your psychic? You don't. Plain and simple.

But, if you had problems like I had, here is one way for you to possibly fix your crash to desktops, and fatal errors. Try this one from Microsoft:

1. Locate your Logbook file.
2. Rename to Logbook Old.
3. Go to user accounts in control panel, and create a new user account with administrator properties.
4. Restart computer, start flight simulator, and go to settings. Change everything to 2low, and then now you should be all set to go to free flight.
5. If you have programs like MyTraffic, you will need to locate the CFG and change the Object Paths to whatever number you need and place MyTraffic\aircraft afterwards so the AI will show up.

So you see, there was a lot more to it involved. Phil Taylor, the Project Manager for the Flight Simulator over at Aces studios even responded to my success got it working post. This is what he had to say:

Johny

Glad to hear it was resolved.

I still think people are safer making a restore point and expecting problems. We track crashes and from the stack traces we can tell they are from add-ons. It happens every version. Some add-ons actually depend on undocumented things like known locations of sim variables in the memory map, and that changes every time we issue a new executable.

I will have to remember the new user account trick, that is the 2nd time I have now heard it might be a path thru.

Lastly, that is a mighty set of add-ons you have installed there. I mean that in a good way, just to be clear. Practically speaking each time you add 1 add-on and statistically speaking you have a 1/2 shot of it working. And the probability is multiplicative, so the odds of all of them cooperating, well you can do the math for the number of add-ons you have. Its low odds. I will say that in general aircraft and scenery is usually more benigh, and its the toolsy add-ons that typically go poking where they shouldnt some times and can cause issues.

Phil
PM, Core Platform
Aces Studio, MGS

So to all those people who never had a chance to try or even want to help me out but wanted to say must be you who is doing it wrong, I have to say you have to think before you write words against those having problems, there is a MUCH bigger picture behind the scenes.

Again, I feel it necessary to keep in mind that we should treat others the way that we wish to be treated on the forums, for like I said, there are many dark and sinister reasons behind the problem that even the seasoned Simmer might not be familiar with.

So, until next time, may we all arrive safely at our virtual destinations, happy flying, and keep that blue side up!

John J. Thuot II
ragtopjohnny01@aol.com

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