Patience is everything...

[Wing Nut]

Well, I fired up FS the other day and much to my surprise, I got a hate message from my computer happily infoming me that I was low on disc space and I needed to free some up before FS would feel comfortable running.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem.  Only thing is, I have FS on it's own 16 GB partition and still had 6 GB free.  It was driving me nuts.  I defragmented, I did the disk check, I used Norton on it, and just about everything else I could think of.  I also removed and re-installed FS, to no avail.

Finally, I cut and pasted all 9 Gb of my FS folder to another drive, thinking to re-format the drive and then re-install.  With the drive clean and a fresh install, FS fired up fine; which confirmed a suspicion that is must have been a corrupt file that done me in.  I copied back my aircraft and gauges folder first, looking to see if the file was there.  I moved them at 30 planes at a time, then 30 gauges at a time, firing up FS after every move.  No Deal.  FS fired up every time.  

Then I went  to the add-on scenery folder, trying there.  I transferred a few sceneries, two at a time, firing up FS every time.  Then I figured before I do that, I should try the Add-on scenery and textures folder.  This took longer than the Aircraft and Gauges!  Again, starting with the textures, I transferred them into FS 30 at a time, starting the sim after each one.  No deal. I did the scenery folder, and voila!  I got  my message!  After that, it was simply a matter of figuring out which .bgl was causing all this trouble.

So after about 5 hours, a lot of cussing, and several diet sodas, I had an AFCAD file sitting on my desktop that I hated with a passion.  But FS works again!

[Hagar]

Well done Kevin. I would never have suspected an AFCAD BGL could cause that error message. This demonstrates just how difficult it can be to troubleshoot problems these days.

I no longer feel confident about offering advice as there's so many variations. Everyone has a different system + video card & the FS9.1 update can only complicate matters further. Things are no longer as straightforward as they used to be.

[garymbuska]

My only comment to that is AMEN

[codered]

5 hours! Amazing!
I have stopped editing and tweaking FS for quite sometime now.  I have to say that I am happy just flying, and not tweaking, repainting, etc.

[Wing Nut]

Fortunately, I remembered to back up my .cfg files beforehand, so I don't have to go through all the tweaking and adding scenery again...  I did edit out the offending scenery though.

[hbshawaii]

Consider Norton Ghost.  I have a spare 80GB drive that I use to back up my primary HD BEFORE I add something new.  Norton Ghost snapshots my primary drive and saves a backup to whereever I want, in my case, an extra hard drive.

With all of us downloading new aircraft, scenery, AFCAD files, etc.  it's only a matter of time before some bozo shows up with a new "must-have" file corrupted with a worm or trojan horse.  I find at least 5 files a day with AdAware that show up as spyware just from browsing.

I still have an alert that says I have an incompatible FSSound.dll file every time I load FS2004.  Still haven't isolated the bad file.  BE CAREFUL!

[Hagar]

[quote]I still have an alert that says I have an incompatible FSSound.dll file every time I load FS2004.

[Wing Nut]

Same here...  Not one virus in over 5 years.  ;)

[hbshawaii]

Cool, thanks for the sound fix.

Btw, I'm really not paranoid about SimV downloads.  I'm driven, because it happened to me.  It has been quite an experience learning where all the spy/malware comes from, so I try to be extra-careful.  Hasn't happened from

Search for, download and run "Hi-Jack This".  You'd be surprised who has re-written your registry and is using your computer to use Internet Explorer without your knowledge.  Also frequently run anti-virus software.

Remember this... If our computers weren't on a network, we would never receive malicious files.  

Guess what! We're all on a network!

[Hagar]

Normal anti-virus software will not protect you from spyware or stop anyone hacking into your PC. I use AdAware to check for spyware regularly. I believe there's another freeware application named SpyBot which could get the ones that AdAware missed. I also use ZoneAlarm to monitor & block hackers. Not perfect but better than nothing. If you're careful all the time you're online you shouldn't be affected. Most viruses are spead via e-mail by people who take no precautions & pick up the viruses themselves.

PS.

You'd be surprised who has re-written your registry and is using your computer to use Internet Explorer without your knowledge.

Using Mozilla Firefox instead of IE for browsing will reduce the risk even further. http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

[-sam-]

Hi there,

what about a sticky post that collects those problems ?
I also ran into some problems where i had to deactivate tons of addons to find that one bgl that causes problems.

Just in a very short form like this..

Alsace VFR:   Causes a lanclass cut through Germany.
   Solution:   Remove XXXXX.bgl

for example

[TacitBlue]

Adaware and spybot work great together, I was using them untill I had to reformat my system for other reasons, and havnt gotten around to downloading them again (thanks for the reminder)

[Wing Nut]

Landclass cut?  Sounds like a possible addition to the Fun Glitches thread...  ;D

[hbshawaii]

Thanks all.  

Yes, I use both Adaware SE and Spybot, as well as the CA EZ Armor that comes from my Roadrunner account.  I still have a corrupted FSSound.dll and have been swapping files trying to find the culprit with no success.  That came from any number of possible download FS aircraft sites (not SimV).

I use HiJack This! which lists IE-specific changes to the registry.  It's amazing how much stuff gets by this way.  Worth downloading if you know what you're doing with the registry.  That only takes care of part of the problem.  I used Limewire once and got a worm that way, took me 2 weeks to kill it.

So I was looking over my wife's shoulder while she was checking her Yahoo mail and...here it comes...

She opens an attachment!!!!  Doh!

There went my thanksgiving day! 12 hours later, I got rid of the **** she downloaded from a $50 "free dinner" popup and survey.  

Yesterdays turkey was good, though. The malware was better, got past Adaware and spybot both.  Anybody know a good divorce attorney? (kidding of course).  Most guys spend the day watching football.

I agree, there should be a thread about download threats from what seems like legit flightsim downloads.  I trust Avsim, but there are others out there.

My wife wasn't on anything related to FS, but like the rest of you, I trust FS sites to be clean.  If they are not, we should talk to each other.

Patience is everything...

Happy Thankgiving and God Bless!

[Hagar]

[quote]Thanks all.