Saturday, December 01, 2007

Software shouldn't be this hard....

I own the PC game Microsoft Flight Simulator X. I'm a huge flight simulator fan and enjoy taking an aircraft up for a spin a few times a week. I found that FSX was a little slow even though I have a fairly fast computer, so I looked into things I could do to make it run better.

It turns out that FSX has a service pack. Awesome. I tried to download it and it always timed out part way through the download. Nice. Once I finally got it downloaded, I tried installing it. No go. Did a little digging and discovered that the SP only installs on a pristine copy (unmodified in any way) of the program. Here's what I had to do:
  • Un-install Flight Simulator X Accelerator
  • Un-install Flight Simulator X
  • Clear Windows of any mention of Flight Simulator X
  • Re-install Flight Simulator X
  • Install the SP
  • Re-install Flight Simulator X Accelerator
That only took a few hours. Leave it to Microsoft to make their software so difficult to use.....

[update]
After thinking I had everything worked out, MSFS X kept crashing on me. Not just normal crashes either - the kind that require complete forced reboots to regain control of your computer. Stupid f*@#ing program. Off you go now..... Maybe when I'm using Vista in the distant future will this horrendous program make another appearance on my computer. But not before.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your sounding more like the converted MAC-Borg each day!

Karl Plesz said...

Maybe so. But seriously, I just had such high hopes for this program and it has been a huge disappointment in an increasing number of ways. It ain't cheap either....

Anonymous said...

I agree. My version of Accelerator keeps turning off my computer. And I have never found the flight characteristics of MFS X to be all that great. Not to mention the MS Combat Flight Simulators. It seems so ridiculous that the largest software manufacturer in the world can't seem to write good software.