WestWind Airlines

Just wanted to say that one awful thing has bumped my flying time for WestWind...

I had to reformat my PC in order to fix a SP3 install error and of course this resulted in nearly all my games and applications being removed. I've only spent the past few days trying to fix everything.

But here is the worst part - none, and I mean none of my games will install (apparently caused by cabinet files not being extracted correctly). This includes FSX.

So I believe I will have to do another reformat and also I wil be going on vacation on Friday for roughly 2 weeks...

This means I have done NO flights for WestWind this month

I have started one - but I can't finish it...

What am I to do - I assume the robot will remove me from the VA

The robot will remove you after 60 days, 30 days for mgmt!!  So have a nice vacation and then when you come back get your comp up and running!!!  I had problems this past weekend with some antispyware stuff popping up endlessly.  I thought I would have to reformat then friday morning I realised that i could do a system restore and waalaa everything was as ease with my machine!!! 

WWA1965:

I had to reformat my PC in order to fix a SP3 install error and of course this resulted in nearly all my games and applications being removed. I've only spent the past few days trying to fix everything.

This is probbably going to be the most dumbest question, but anyway:

Why did you Install SP3? It's probbably the worst thing (other than Windows ME) that Mcrosoft have released to date!

Basicly I upgraded to it, and at first I had no problems, so I installed it on to a Friends PC and then... "Windows Was Unable to Boot, because the following file: Win32k.exe is Missing or is Corrupt" then after a painfull Safe Mode Boot, we just managed to recover his Data and run a System Restore on it.

So, if we go back to my PC, it now no longer reads Visual Basic Scripts because SP3 Disables "Slow Running ones" when all VB Scripts are slow!

If other people wishing to upgrade to XP SP3 read this, please don't. It's awfull!

I am going to update you on my situation:

 I have reason to believe my Recovery Disc is faulty and is not extracting files correctly. After calling Technical Support (Warranty Covered) they are sending me a new recovery disc from France (Packard Bell). Hopefully I get this disc within the next 5 - 10 days or so seeing as I had to pay £37 for it.

 If this does not solve the problem - then I may have to rip out the Motherboard and get a new one - setting me back a fortune (all for editing one file to make my PC look like Vista)

So hopefully will get this problem fixed by the end of the month - or else I'm going to be in bigger trouble...

Well, I spoke too soon, the disc has finally arrived through the post (and has 2 DVDs may I add). So I spent this morning trying to carry out the typical factory re-install. Unfortuantly the same problem has arose - the installation freezes on certain programs (although more % complete than before)

So, it was another call to Packard Bell Support: they said that it might be my Hard Drive that is broken. And checking the status of the installation - it seems to be it can't find the D: Partition for installation. (Although it can be found through Explorer seeing as the OS is active during the install)

The end of this story is that I will have to wait for the new Hard Drive to arrive tomorrow but with a twist - my dad and I will have to fit the new Hardrive Ourselves! So it should be a fun day tomorrow - if the Hard Drive arrives that is...

Wish me luck!!!

Well - the Hard Drive arrived and we then fitted it correctly according to the manual. We encountered a few teething problems but this was because we needed to call the Tech Guys to have the new HD tatooed using a lot of DOS. Unfortuantly the Recovery Process was still crashing and hanging. After numerous DOS commands, phone calls: we requested an engineer....

When the engineer came he ran a few tests to find out if my Hardware was malfunctioning. Everything passed until he got to the RAM. He found out that for some reason the RAM kept failing a specific test. So: he removed the 'newer' RAM I had and replaced them with the RAM that I used to have installed before I upgraded. These then passed the test. He then placed the 'newer' sticks back in - and these failed horribly... Of course removing them once again...

Once he left - we ran the Recovey Program again - success!! My PC is now fully operational and I am about to install FSX again soon - hopefully the RAM was also the reason why the Cabinet files were not extracting correctly as well.

Can't wait to be flying for WestWind once again! (Have to put my newer hardware back in as well - seeing as FSX is not going to run well on 1Gb of RAM and a Nvidia 6200)