Need help: failure to open

[Dragonfly46]

New member with problem driving him crazy.

[Groundbound1]

First of all, Welcome!

I'd wait for a few second opinions, but it almost sounds like your cd-rom drive might be starting to "punk out" on you. Does it have any problems with any other disks?

[Boikat]

Bad CD ROM drive was my first thought, too.  But it's still possible that the #4 disk is bad on the sections that are only used when initializing the sim.

[commoner]

Bad CD ROM drive was my first thought, too.  But it's still possible that the #4 disk is bad on the sections that are only used when initializing the sim.

...mm....better try the NoCD.exe then........Whoops!..sorry shouldn't have mentioned that.........commoner

[Mazza]

Bad CD ROM drive was my first thought, too.  But it's still possible that the #4 disk is bad on the sections that are only used when initializing the sim.

...mm....better try the NoCD.exe then........Whoops!..sorry shouldn't have mentioned that.........commoner

* wag finger * Bad Boy

[Dragonfly46]

Thanks for the comments.  I loaded the program on my wife's laptop, and it ran like a charm, so it's not the disks.  It might be my CD drive, but it takes four CDs to install the program, and at the end, the program claims to have been installed correctly.  I think a file like the scenery index (which hasn't been regnerating when I reinstall) has gotten corrupted, so I'm going to try deleting the folder that has all the flight plans and preset flights (there goes my airline, & it took me half an hour to get a 737 parked on top of Mount Everest), and maybe try to wipe all the files clean  :-[and see if that gets rid of whichever file it is that is gummng up the works.

[Hagar]

I would still suspect the CD or the CD ROM drive. They might simply need cleaning. Unless you opted for a Minimal Install, FS2004 will install all files to your HD but some CAB files will not be extracted from CD until you run it successfully for the first time. This is when the scenery database is written. When FS2004 is fully installed on your HD it still needs to read the code on the CD to run. This is the only reason you need that CD in the drive.