A Friend of Mine Needs Help

[CodeTRUCKER]

Hi,

A friend of mine on another forum is having some problems with his Win7 and Microsoft Flight Simulator.  Below are two posts he made and a third of what I offered.  If you can give me somewhere to go to help this fellow, I would really appreciate it and you can build your ARK (Act of Random Kindness) too! 

His First Post

At a point in the not-too-distant past, I loaded FSX and the FSE client onto my windows 7 PC. I tested whether they would both load and if I was able to find the client in FSX. They did.

Then I realized that my yoke had gone south and I shut the FSX/FSE down and haven't used it since.

Yesterday I received a replacement yoke from an exceptionally cool FSE member, free of charge. (He even paid the shipping which I wanted to pay) Life should be perfect. !!

NOT! When I brought up FSX it had none of the pre-sets I had put in when I installed it. When I brought up FSE client it failed. I suspected corruption and deleted it to re-install. The re-install failed because it cannot find Simconnect of some version.

Now I am not crazy or stupid. Well maybe a little of each but all the way in either one. What I don't understand is how something that tested working two or three months ago could just plain not be there anymore. So if any of you are extremely clever, and I suspect you are, or if any of you have experienced this yourself please offer advice. First, where do I get Simconnect it was obviously there before.

His Second Post

So what the heck is Global Assembly Cache?? That's where its telling me to install the Microsoft.FlightSimulator.SimConnect version (big version number)

I was able to find the DLL but have no idea about loading in the GAC.

I just re-installed FSX completely and still get this error. I know you guys are smart, which one knows this??

Maybe I just have to delete it again and let it install in the x86 program files where it wants to. Then it should be able to find this file.

My Response

One of the tips I read in some off-topic comment some years ago stated that *every* change in FS9/FSX *should* be immediately followed by a reboot of the computer. When you bring Windows back up, the very first thing is to open the flightsim and the first flight should be in the default aircraft at the default airport (Meigs or Seattle International, respectively). You don't have to fly a whole flight, just get it started down the runway. Hit the "Esc" button and go do what you wanted to do with the airplane you wanted. AFAICT this only has to be done once for each add-on install.

The gist of the post was FS9 and more so with FSX, was so integrated with the OS that numerous low-level settings needed to be "set," or something like that. The problem was other Windows software did it too and if FS9/FSX wasn't run first the other software would "set" those switches(?) not allowing the flightsims to run optimally and could produce some anomalies.

I have no idea whether this is the real reason or if it has anything to do with your weirdness, Sarge. I can say that when I remember to follow this procedure, I have never had an issue. As a rule now, if I add anything to Windows, I reboot. Fortunately, I have not had any problem if I load something beside FS9/FSX after a non-MSFS install, but I always use the reboot-then-fly-the-defaults method whenever I change something in FS9/FSX.

Thanks for any help!
CT

[Stoic Joker]

It's hard to view those posts in context as there is know way of knowing what has already been tried. I'm inclined to think that if there is a "Global Assembly Cache" question that it might be worth using the MS .NET cleaner to completely remove and reinstall all of the .NET stuff. Which I've had to do on many occasions for a variety of reasons/issues.

A link to the original thread might not hurt either ... If possible.

[CodeTRUCKER]

Thanks, SJ.  Unfortunately, you have to have an account to get to it, so a link wouldn't work.  Thanks for the help, but it's mootbecause the guy decided to reformat his drive.  Everything is fine now.  I posted what you said for the future reference of others. 

If you have a particularly good site to get the cleaner from, I would appreciate it.  The are hundreds out there and I am overwhelmed.

[Stoic Joker]

Oddly, it's not actually a Microsoft utility (although it should be...), but the author's site appears to be here:

http://blogs.msdn.co...8/08/28/8904493.aspx