FSX Acceleration hassle

[Airspeed]

Hi All,
Some may recall that I had a rebuild of my system last year.
Since then, I've been bugged by Acceleration opening with a "Sorry...... ERROR CODE 1-80004005......"
This has meant that after half an hour, I'm told appraisal time is up now you have to activate.
Originally it WAS all activated, but the rebuild crunched things somehow.
Trying to fix the problem, I removed all of FSX and Acceleration, and reinstalled.
FSX goes fine, asks me to enter my product key code and it runs trouble free.
Install SP1, successful
Install SP2 doing it stops reverses everything and tells me system not updated
So install Acceleration. All goes fine, "successfully installed" LIES LIES, it will not let me activate, won't even ask for the magic numbers in the DVD packet.
Tried MS telephone activation. "You must have your computer turned on, the programme running, and the activation screen showing"
I'm then told to call back when I'm ready to follow their instructions.
There's another tiny file in FSX just called "Activate" When I click this, I'm asked do I want to let this affect my computer. YES! But it just disappears

I have uninstalled Acceleration, turned everything off, come back later and reinstalled in the vain hope that some little bit will twitch the right way, but it doesn't.
I've also tried doing a "REGISTRATION FIX" which begins with "This works" and takes me through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE BLAH BLAH, and when I get to the end, I don't have to clear all values except "PartMgr" because that's all there is.

I know heaps of you have moved on from FSX, but if anyone can help with this, I'd be so very grateful.

[Airspeed]

Red faces department speaking
Despite the world accepting lower case, spelling errors and goodness knows what, regedit treats "PartMgr" quite differently to "partmgr". And how it ever changed to that, I am at a loss to explain
This from a software outfit that told me such lies as:
This device is working properly
You do not have enough memory to run this
Internet settings prevented this file from opening (transferring from DVD to SSD)
and ignoring direct instructions to take no action when loading a DVD, by jumping in and trying to run files.

Anyway, my Acceleration is now activated again, though I feel totally humiliated.

[GHD]

It is good to talk to yourself

[Nigel H-J]

Good to hear that you have found the problem, now sit back and enjoy your flights.

Regards
Nigel.

[Paul K]

It is good to talk to yourself

Agreed. It's the only way I get an intelligent conversation.

[Tako_Kichi]

I know it's a bit late but one of the best things I ever did was to switch to the Steam version. I have had no issues in more than 1,450 hours of use. Keep an eye out for the Steam sales as it regularly goes on sale for 5-8 bux US. You can always buy it at that price but not install it and then put it in when the boxed version goes tits up .....AGAIN!

[Airspeed]

I know it's a bit late but one of the best things I ever did was to switch to the Steam version. I have had no issues in more than 1,450 hours of use. Keep an eye out for the Steam sales as it regularly goes on sale for 5-8 bux US. You can always buy it at that price but not install it and then put it in when the boxed version goes tits up .....AGAIN!

I actually have Steam Edition on board. How simple do you think it would be to reallocate 300 aircraft and $ of add on scenery, and will non-SE downloads work with SE, Larry?

[Aharon]

Trying to fix the problem, I removed all of FSX and Acceleration, and reinstalled.
FSX goes fine, asks me to enter my product key code and it runs trouble free.
Install SP1, successful Install SP2 doing it stops reverses everything and tells me system not updated

You do NOT need SP1 and SP2 for FSX Acceleration because SP1 and SP2 are already built in FSX Acceleration

Regards,

Aharon

[Airspeed]

Thanks Aharon.
I had some hazy idea that they were required and I'm still not thinking clearly.

[Tako_Kichi]

I know it's a bit late but one of the best things I ever did was to switch to the Steam version. I have had no issues in more than 1,450 hours of use. Keep an eye out for the Steam sales as it regularly goes on sale for 5-8 bux US. You can always buy it at that price but not install it and then put it in when the boxed version goes tits up .....AGAIN!

I actually have Steam Edition on board. How simple do you think it would be to reallocate 300 aircraft and $ of add on scenery, and will non-SE downloads work with SE, Larry?

Well, life is never simple Mike as you probably well know!

It will take time to move the aircraft over but at least you can have both sims on the same PC at the same time which makes file transfer a bit easier. Back up all your 'My Documents' stuff and all the hidden stuff in 'C:\Users\Yourname\AppData\Yadder_Yadder_Yadder' etc. so that you can replace the bits you need later. Important folders to directly copy (off the top of my head) are things like 'Effects', 'Gauges' and 'Modules' as they contain stuff that aircraft invariably need. Any freeware aircraft folders that you manually installed can be copied over but I would re-install any payware with installers as they tend to spray sh!t everywhere when they install and you are bound to miss a file or two somewhere if you just copy files over (don't ask me how I know, I just do OK! ). I always kept my scenery in a folder out of the FSX tree and directly on the root of C: (i.e. C:\FSX Scenery) and so I just pointed FSX/SE to that location but I did re-install all my payware scenery for the reasons stated above.

In my case I was actually copying from a previous iteration of SE on an old physical hard drive and onto a new computer build with a dedicated M2 SSD just for Steam games so I temporarily connected the HD to the new system, transferred all the needed files and then removed the HD again. I would say that you can expect 2-3 days of faffing around transferring files and re-installing if all goes well! If the brown stuff hits the whirly thing then all bets are off!

With regard to your last question "will non-SE downloads work with SE" I have ZERO SE specific anything on my system, all my add-ons are regular FSX ones!