Simviation Forums

So I ran into the same issue as the original poster here, but it didn't seem to get resolved.

I should state that I retrieved my installed copy off of an old HD that was in my old desktop. My DVD drive has become disconnected on my laptop (yeah, I dropped it . . .) so I can't use my disks. Could transferring in this fashion be the problem?

All that is wrong is I get a black aircraft preview screen. It doesn't really make a difference to me, but it would be nice to solve. I'm guessing it's a video card issue or similar, and if that is all the problem is, no matter.

Any way that you look at it, you'll need a DVD drive, so......


Samsung SE-208DB/TSBS 8X Slim DVD+/-RW Slim USB External Drive $20.

Travis wrote:So I ran into the same issue as the original poster here, but it didn't seem to get resolved.

I should state that I retrieved my installed copy off of an old HD that was in my old desktop. My DVD drive has become disconnected on my laptop (yeah, I dropped it . . .) so I can't use my disks. Could transferring in this fashion be the problem?

All that is wrong is I get a black aircraft preview screen. It doesn't really make a difference to me, but it would be nice to solve. I'm guessing it's a video card issue or similar, and if that is all the problem is, no matter.

As I mentioned in the other thread I have never experienced this so I can't suggest anything. I have run all my MS sims including FS9 & FSX from a remote HD so I don't think that's the cause of your problem.

Well, I'm not running it from the external HD since I don't want to put my USB through that much turmoil. I instead transferred it to the onboard HD en masse, and I'm wondering if perhaps M$ decided to add a bit of a "bums-to-you" in the form of not allowing transplanted copies to display preview aircraft. Wouldn't surprise me . . .

Travis wrote:Well, I'm not running it from the external HD since I don't want to put my USB through that much turmoil. I instead transferred it to the onboard HD en masse, and I'm wondering if perhaps M$ decided to add a bit of a "bums-to-you" in the form of not allowing transplanted copies to display preview aircraft. Wouldn't surprise me . . .

I didn't explain it very well. My examples are the original installations running on the HDD taken from an old desktop PC. I connect this to my laptop via a USB caddy. Unlike other software all versions of MSFS/CFS run perfectly well.

I have also transferred FS9 in the way you describe (simple Copy & Paste), again with no problems. I originally intended this as a backup & discovered by accident that the copy runs perfectly.

Where you put FS at makes no difference at all Internal or External as long as your short cut points to the right place.
Any time you install any program your system will make Registry entries so your system will know where to find it at.
What can happen if you have moved FS than your system does not know where it is at. Usually all you have to do is to just edit the shortcut and point it to where FS is now located. The other way would be to reinstall it. But with out Disks this is a lot harder to do.
What I do when I want to back up a program that is on disks is to format some disks making sure that there is nothing on them than copy one disk to another. In the case of FS2004 the original disks are CD'S I use DVD'S so it will not take as many I think it only used ONE disk.
What operating system did you use to make the copy that you are using.
This could be a issue but not 100% sure I could be way of base
Older versions of Windows used a file system called FAT32
Newer versions use NTFS
There are some differences between the two but do not want to confuse you. Most of the issue has to do with copying one type to another things do not get put in the correct place and you can loose some data.
Like I said I could be way off base here
But there are some issues when converting form one file to another that might cause your problem,
Below is a link that would better explain this.
https://www.google.com/search?q=can+you ... ile+system

I'm not really concerned with the issue: it was just a minor irk.

I installed on that HD 3 or 4 years ago running on XP. No biggie. Soon as I can afford to get this rig fixed I'll use my disks to reinstall.

So I've discovered that if I change to windowed view the preview comes back, but if I go back to fullscreen it disappears again. So it probably has something to do with my onboard graphics. So I have a workaround (sorta) and now I'm ready to go. Unfortunately, since I haven't had it running for over two years several modules and payware systems are going berserk. So I guess I'll have to remove them one at a time and reinstall them as I go. This may take awhile . . .