Issues with installing FS9 (new comp)

[Travis]

This is a bit long, so bear with me . . .

I just got hold of a new computer (my roommate's, actually) and I have been having trouble with the installation.

It installs fine up until the fourth disk, at which point I get a message saying "MSFS2k4 encountered as disk error while writing to the file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\Cities\Hongkong.cab.  Make sure your hard disk is not full (it isn't), and that the file is not in use (?)."

Options are to click Abort, Retry or Ignore.  I click Retry, it comes right back up, so I end up clicking Ignore.

A couple of seconds later it comes up with another one, this time specifying Kittyhawk.cab.  Same options, same solution.  A bit later, Pheonix.cab, Sanfran.cab, Syndney.cab, Tokyo.cab and World.cab(!?).

When it goes to decompress the scenery files, all those I just listed show up.  However, loading the sim itself, I would get two messages saying that it couldn't find Kittyhawk and Sanfran.  Why not the others?

When I load FS, it starts up fine, and loads the flight just fine.  When I get to the actual flight itself, all the textures that are supposed to be grass on the airports are not only a pale flat blue, but they are WATER?!  I can fall into them with the stock Cessna Amphib and it floats . . .

I tried replacing the water and grass textures, but the sim would crash whenever I would load it with anything higher than minimal settings on Scenery.  I also noted that when I was "replacing" files in the texture folders, some would just not exist in the first place . . . it seems I'm only getting a partial install. :-?

Does ANYONE have ANY suggestions or thoughts as to what might be wrong?

Thanks so much for lasting through all of this . . .

[MOUSY]

Sounds like a bad CD to me...

[Travis]

Sounds like a bad CD to me...

If so, is it possible to get a new one from M$?  If I remember correctly, I can send it in and get it replaced, no?

[videokid1969]

I thing that I found that helps most of the time, if you don't have a bad fourth cd.
Is to take and copy all the disks to a folder on you desktop say yes to any file replacements and then install from the folder. It has worked for me on several times.

[uncleyuk]

[Travis]

I started last night at 11 and didn't stop until 2 AM, and only managed to get up to the World.cab file!  This is gonna take a while . . .

[MOUSY]

Sounds like a bad CD to me...

If so, is it possible to get a new one from M$?  If I remember correctly, I can send it in and get it replaced, no?

No idea... but yea, what these guys suggested should work... and yeah its very time consuming.

[Travis]

Okay, so with the above suggestion implemented (4 hours!) I am now getting error messages when I load FS that "SCENERY.CFG file error.  Invalid Remote scenery path in scenery Area.001.  Click OK to continue."

It also does that for several more Area.###.  So what does that mean?  I think it means that I'm putting files in the wrong spot.  Unfortunately, I put them directly into the spot that they are located in on the disk.  IE - everything in "Asia" on the disk went into "Asia" in the FS scenery folder.  But there are some folders in the FS scenery directory that don't exist on the disk.  Problem is, I don't have a way to distinguish what files go in what folders.

Any ideas?

[MOUSY]

But there are some folders in the FS scenery directory that don't exist on the disk

What's happening is the Scenery.cfg is telling the sim to look for a particualr set of scenery areas in a directory where they do not exist, most likely because they weren't put there in the first place. But I guess you figured that much....

I'm at a workshop now. When I get home I'll look more into fixing this problem for you. The problem of distinguishing what fiels go where may be a major stopper, though...

[MOUSY]

Ok. Looking at my install, the Scenery folder of FS has different Scenery Areas. These are each listed and detailed in the .cfg file. Within each area there are scenery and textures folders; the scenery folders containing the .bgl files.

So for example Area.001 references the World folder. So the scenery folder within World should have about 100 .bgl files.

I'm hoping that each scenery area has its own .cab file with all the .bgl files. I haven't looked into an FS disk in awhile.

Maybe you've gotten that far manually... thats what things look like from my end.

[Travis]

Yeah, that's about where I've gotten to.  I have all the World.cab files in the World folder, but it seems as though there aren't enough .cab files to account for everything in the Scenery folder.

In FS Scenery directory on my computer (*no .cab file on the disk):
Afri = Africa
asia = Asia
Aust = Australia
BASE* = I assume this is for files that are used globally
Cities = Contains subfolders with several largely used cities
Eure* = Eastern Europe
Eurw* = Western Europe
Generic* = More of the stuff used globally
Namc* = Central North America
Name* = Eastern North America
Namw* = Western North America
Ocen = Oceania (islands and whatnot)
Props* = Contains propeller textures (?)
Same = South America
Vehicles* = A bunch of static environment items
World = Global textures and BGL files

Now where would I find the BGL's and textures that are missing?  A search on the ACOF disk 4 for the first file located in the Eastern Europe scenery folder on my computer (AB953060.bgl) didn't turn up any results.  And there are no other scenery files located on any of the other disks.  So where are they?  If I could figure that out, I might be able to find the missing scenery files in other parts of my scenery folders.

This is getting complicated . . .

[JBaymore]

So here's a thought:

Flight Sim 2004 is selling for about $20 now.  What is your TIME worth an hour?  Might it just not be sensible to just get a new copy of the program?

best,

....................john

[Travis]

So here's a thought:

Flight Sim 2004 is selling for about $20 now.  What is your TIME worth an hour?  Might it just not be sensible to just get a new copy of the program?

best,

....................john

You could be right . . .  :-?

But isn't it possible that its a computer problem, and not a disk error?

[JBaymore]

$20 is a pretty cheap test.  Beats hours and hours of frustration.

best,

.................john

[Travis]

$20 is a pretty cheap test.  Beats hours and hours of frustration.

best,

.................john

Well, I'm also kinda liking figuring out how all this junk actually works.