Absolute disaster!!!!

[coreservers]

Today I clicked on the desktop icon for fsx.
I got an error message stating that FSX could not start, insert installation disk and repair. Odd I thought
So I went to my computer and burrowed to the microsoft games folder and clicked to open the flight simulator x folder to be told "the disk in drive c is not formatted, format now" of course I selected no.

I tried to run a repair and after 20 minutes it stopped saying it could not repair folder autogen. so I guess a full uninstall, re-install, lose everything is the only option.

Has anyone else suffered a random collapse of FSX. i've only installed aircraft, no scenery or tweaks.

100 hours of flying down the pan. HDD and PC is fine I've checked it all out. Seems to be a random corruption

I'm wondering if now I'll be hit with the activation problems so many people have had.

Don't you just love microsoft.

[Brett_Henderson]

That's just bizzare.. sounds like a virus  >:(

I can't imagine how clicking on a FOLDER, while navigating , would reference ANYTHING about the root drive (let alone ask you to format)...

Me thinks your computer is infected,,

[coreservers]

I was just thinking the same. however Avast usually picks them up before they get near. I was downloading the 8 part european ground textures from here. could they be infected??

[Daube]

Hmm... I'm not too sure for the virus theory.
It sounds more like a disk read/write error. If your repair tool could not restore the autogen folder, that means that the disk sector is dead.
You "may" repair this sector by formatting your disk, but obviously, a disk that starts having dead sectors is just starting to die. You'd better save as much personnal files as possible right now, buy a new harddrive, and prepair for a total Windows + updates + apps + games reinstall...

[coreservers]

yup just looked at the event viewer again, and....... loads of HDD bad sector errors. I giess it's bye bye for a while.

[Brett_Henderson]

Daube's theory is probably more accurate ..

I'm just wondering how you could even navigate TO a folder on a dead section of the HDD.. and the fact that just one damaged section would prompt you that the whole HDD is not formatted (while you're navigating inside that HDD).. and instead of just not reckognizing the damaged files, but asking if you want to format (while navigating the disk itself), makes me virus supsicious

[Nick N]

I have seen this happen with:

bad hard drives

bad memory

defective processor

defective HDD cable

overheated processor

list goes on


To check a hard drive properly, shut down, put the Windows install disk in the CD, boot up, HIT ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM CD, and once the Windows install has loaded, hit R to use the RECOVERY CONSOLE

You may need to selet the windows install and put in the admin password

once at the C:\ Prompt type the following.. assuming this is the C drive

CHKDSK C:  /R

that will force a full sector check of the drive and may take an hour, two hours, etc depending on the speed of the drive, its size and how full it is. If a disk is really bad I have seen that take 8 hours.

Dont touch they system for any reason until it shows you it finished

If it finds bad sectors, it will mark the file allocation table to NOT ALLOW a write to that area. It will attempt to recover the data inthe bad sector too but may not be succesful

NOTE: This is only a temp fix. If you reformat the drive the bad sector(s) will be available to the system again. If you reformat, it is best to perform the same CHKDSK C: /R to mark the file allocation table so windows will not use that sector in an install. Then run the Windows installation.

If multiple bad sectors are found, or, a bad sector keeps showing up after a repair, I would dump the disk right away

[coreservers]

Well would you believe it. Was running chkdsk /r while you suggested it. but many thanks anyway.

Now I can open fsx again. However I no longer trust this drive. so may relegate it to slave at the moment, as I've managed to get a new SATA 250gb (this 'un's an IDE 180GB)

Looks like hte problem was in the worls\texture folder. some files became corrupt. I've thouroughly scanned the system also and no viruses or trojans present,
I'll have to do a repair on FSX to see if it'll run again.

ta muchly folks.