Lost gauges after defrag

[beaky]

Finally got around to defragging the drive I have FS9 installed on, and just noticed that with some of my planes (including some default planes), there are gauges missing from the panel, either in 2D or VC or both. There's no rhyme or reason to it that I can see, but i'm honestly not sure where to look.
I have the install backed up, but rather than rewrite the whole thing (or reinstall the sim;  my #1 disc is shot and I was only able to make backup dupes of 2-4), I'm wondering if there's a specific place to look for these gauges... just tried overwriting the main Gauges file with no success.

[Hagar]

Not sure what happened there. I regularly defrag my drives & never had this problem with any of my M$ sims or any other program come to that. Sorry but I have no idea what to suggest.

[Woodlouse2002]

Try a system restore to before the defrag. Can do no harm.

[MattNW]

[quote]Finally got around to defragging the drive I have FS9 installed on, and just noticed that with some of my planes (including some default planes), there are gauges missing from the panel, either in 2D or VC or both. There's no rhyme or reason to it that I can see, but i'm honestly not sure where to look.
I have the install backed up, but rather than rewrite the whole thing (or reinstall the sim;

[Mobayrasta1]

I am also having the same problem. Had not defragged in many a moon, did it last weekend and now I am missing gauges payware and freeware. It really makes no since what so ever.

[beaky]

Thanks for the input... I already tried overwriting the main Gauges folder with the backup- no joy.
I'm wondering if there are lines in the main .cfg regarding gauges...? Or is there some other master program file that references gauges?

[Hagar]

The only reference to gauges I know of is in the individual Panel.cfg files of the aircraft.

[Gary R.]

I have had similar things happen to me already but always on panels that I had modified.  I do a lot of panel re-working.  Also, sometimes after a MS windows update or after a system restore I have lost parts of aircraft folders.  Panel, aircraft.cfg, etc.  I don't know why it happens but now that I have the extra capacity of a second hard drive I am certianly going to back up my aircraft folder ona different hard drive.  I spend too much time re-working a panel only to have glitches like that happen.

[Hagar]

I think that we established in another thread that a Windows System Restore can sometimes delete all CFG files on the same drive as the OS. In this case it would be a good idea to make regular backups of your entire FS9 directory to a separate drive. I could be wrong & it's never happened to me but it's better to be safe than sorry.

[beaky]

Update: For some reason, all my backed-up aircraft files from "A" to "J" are also gone (on the same drive; should've put them on a disc!).
However, I have discovered a pattern. In the affected aircraft, the same gauges are missing... some show the gauges in VC view but they don't work at all.
The list, if anyone's curious:
Altimeter
Artificial Horizon
VSI
DG
VOR CDI/OBS #1
Turn Coordinator

I was exploring my install discs to see if I could find the original files, but those discs don't seem to be formatted in such a way that one can do that.
The good news is that although I couldn't copy the #1 disc with the utility I use, it does run in my PC.
So I'm contemplating a re-install of FS9... disabled System Restore a while ago, so if I were to jump back I'd lose a lot of other settings I'd rather not re-do. I'd rather re-install.
 I've already backed-up all my add-ons, so it shouldn't be too big a deal re-installing the sim. Really needed to clean house anyway...
Question: can I get away with adding a second installation (on the other drive) before getting rid of the current install, so I can make sure the new install is OK before committing?

[Hagar]

It's possible that one or more of the default cluster gauges is missing or corrupt. It should be possible to retrieve default gauges from the CD providing you know the name of the gauge. This could be in GAU or CAB (XML gauge) format.

PS. The exclamation mark ! in this line in Panel.cfg of the default C182 denotes a cluster gauge.
gauge02=Cessna!Altimeter, 278, 106

The cluster gauge is named Cessna.gau & includes various Cessna gauges including the Altimeter.

[beaky]

Seems I was wrong earlier about extracting .gau files from the FS9 install discs; didn't realize that a .cab folder is just sort of a Zip folder.  Found all the gauges on disc 2 in the MSGAME 3 .cab file. Had to extract them first to another folder, but then simply dumped them into my Gauges folder, and- voila! all my gauges are back and working properly!
Where they went in the first place, I don't know... the next bit of work will be to weed out some of the aircraft and other stuff  I never use, then make a proper backup disc of the whole install.