Acceleration Disaster

[grizzard]

This is MY experience .... your mileage may vary!!

I kept reading how Accelerator might help in both the variety of aircraft ... plus speed up the game.  So ... went down to Wal-Mart and picked up a copy. Installed on both my XP system and my Vista system. Vista hard crashed on the first FSX load and crashed harder on each subsequent reboot. Black screen only now .... won't begin to boot. No picture, no message .... just begins to load and shuts off. So it's now in my shop. Could be a hardware problem ... hard to say at this point.  As for my XP system after loading Acceleration it would never load FSX .... that is, it kept giving an error message about being sorry. Yeah, right!! Tried a repair .... no help. Then I removed Accelerator, did a yesterday's Restore of the Registry and then tried again to load FSX.  It then went into FSX but the aircraft "select" window is black. If you do a "Fly Now" it's nothing but a black screen. I tried a repair again but it appears now that in the final analysis MS Acceleration has hosed both my systems, which were actually working quite nice before I attempted to install Acceleration. I'll have to do 2 complete reinstalls now .... the Vista System ... it's more like trying to put out all the fires caused by the B-29s over Tokyo in WWII .... (in MY case). Or more to the point ... it does not seem to be worth the bother.  XP ... ok, Vista ... probably not.

These were 2 pretty good systems ... the Vista with 4 GB mem and a Nvidia 8800 GT, and the XP, 2 GB and a Nvidia 7900 GT. I was having sooo much fun ... until now.

I guess I'll do the Admin's reinstall in the Stickys now ...  

[Microsoft Corporation]

When's the last time you did a chkdsk?  sounds like maybe some bad mojo on the HDDs.   Installing acceleration could have sent the HDD over the edge.

[grizzard]

The XP System is pretty highly tuned and I use it daily for 3/4 hours. It doesn't balk too often, fortunately. The Vista Home Premium is a brand new install just for FSX. I've updated and tuned it a little but that's it. Specs are an Asus M2N mobo, 4 GB OCZ mem, MSI Nvidia 8800 GT, and an AMD 64 Black Edition 5000 cpu, SATA WD hd, 500 Watt psu & good cooling. No other apps .... other than my browsers ...

On the XP I'm getting a message : "Living World Settings in LWcfg.xml are invalid. Please delete LWcfg.xml from your hidden user profile directory" but I've done a search and don't find the file where a Google search says it should be. So ... as of yet, it's still in hiding.

Additionally after the Acceleration install I see a file (using Process Explorer) called "IDirect.exe" running in several places (about 5-6). Symantec calls this file spyware put out by Macrovision and gives instructions on how to remove it which I did. But I'm assuming it's copy protection that MS employs during the install of Acceleration.

So ... that's where I'm sitting at the moment. Any thoughts/ideas apprecitated.  :)

[Wingo]

have you turned "Show hidden files and folders" on? you need to select that to see this hidden profile directory.

I wouldn't adise removing programs unless you are certain what they are, even if Syman says its spyware

Where was the file located?

In your case I don't think a vista or XP reinstall will be needed, just an uninstall of FSX and a fresh install as per the sticky instructions.

[grizzard]

Thanks Wingo .... this is a work in progress!!

Yes .... Folder Options are set to show all files and IDirect.exe was located in the User directory.

On my XP ....... "Uninstall" did not show up as the system locked up in the middle of an uninstall never to reappear again!!  So I doubt it's possible to clean the Registry properly without a walk-through from MS.  I tried to do a "Restore" to the day before I installed FSX (Mar 6th) which appeared to go well but a final message came up saying "A Restore was not possible, please try another date".  I tried 4 different dates ... unsuccessful as well. I then tried to do a Restore from Safe Mode ... which brought up the Restore Dialog window with a blank solid white screen. As a last resort I used a boot cd (Ultimate BootCD4Win) and did a restore from there. Presently I'm doing a sfc /scannow before I restart the FSX install.

As for the Vista system .... I haven't looked at it. Most likely I'll trash Vista and pickup a copy of XP ... (I think officially we have another couple of months). Vista was given to me anyway from a friend who tossed it in favor of XP. It was on a Dell, hard crashed while running a word processing app (OpenOffice I think) and was not recoverable by him. He asked me to replace with XP.

So ..... I knew better .... but it was FREE to me ......  so I fell for it. Yeah ... I know, many are happy with Vista .... but it takes more maint than a room full of toddlers ....    

[grizzard]

Ok ... to be fair to Vista here, a little update. My Vista system crash appears to a motherboard problem and probably not tied to Acceleration. The fact that it happened just at the exact moment I loaded FSX after the Acceleration install was probably just coincidental.  So the system is now down until I can (hopefully) get an RMA on my 3 month old mobo.  Not wanting to be without FSX in the interim,  I thought I would just migrate my install to another system.  Well I guess I'm out of luck here  .... because I get the message "YOU HAVE EXCEEDED THE NUMBER OF INSTALLS FOR THIS VERSION".  :'(  

It doesn't take long to use up your number of installs it ........  it would seem MS would make more allowances than 2???

[reider]

Give them a ring, its no great problem.  For most it only takes minutes to sort out.  Explain the problem and all will be well.  Us system builders and tinkerers do that with no trouble whatsoever, we`re always making changes and reinstalling.

Reider

[grizzard]

Thanks reider,

 I guess I'm naive in some areas. I called them up, explained the problem and support asked ... "How many systems do you have this copy of FSX on right now?" and I replied .... "Well, just one other so we can play across the network, but the install I'm calling about is broken so I'm migrating it to a new system" ......  dumb, dumb , dumb.  My thinking was that if they allowed 2 installs from one copy of FSX it would be for the purpose of setting up Multiplayer across a network ... but, I didn't think it out all that much. I knew I had installed and Activated one copy of FSX on 2 different systems without a hitch so I figured they allowed that ... but, yes, I was wrong. I probably could get a Activation hack by Googling ... but I'm really trying to keep it all legit. Support said that if I would uninstall it on the other system and call him back he would authorize an install on this one .. and I know he was giving me an out but I really don't want to do that. I'll probably go back to Wal-Mart and pick up a second copy ... It IS worth supporting ... and it is a lot of fun ... well ... the wife doesn't care much for it!

I appreciate the response ....