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FTX Central won't let me select a drive and now can't Select a Simulator


Oaknest

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I had an old install of X-plane 11 on C: and the current version of X-plane on an external SSD drive E: that has the room for scenery like UK South.  Started FTX Central v3 to load UK South, selected install from manual download zip  file, and without asking where I wanted the scenery files to go, FTX Central just started extracting everything to C:.  It then failed with lack of disk space.  So I deleted X-plane off C: and restarted FTX Central hoping it would find the only copy of X-plane I had left on E:.  But FTX Central just pops up with "Select a Simulator" without giving a list of simulators or even a way to browse for a simulator.  After reading through support posts for this problem I deleted appdata/local/orbx and appdata/local/temp/orbx, but still does the same thing.  I tried to uninstall FTX Central so I could reinstall it, but it's not listed as something Windows can uninstall.  Other forum posts say to edit the registry, but I'm not doing that.  I bricked a computer once editing the registry, and X-plane doesn't use the registry anyway. 

 

A simple scenery install for X-plane should NOT have me going off into the registry and appdata and system log files, or spending hours reading through forum posts.  I've added many scenery files before without any problems.

 

So how can I just delete everything and start over from scratch?  I still have the manual download zip file.

 

And why on Earth didn't FTX Central ask me to select or verify which X-plane directory I want to install the scenery to!?!?

 

Windows 10 PC, X-plane 11 in home directory on drive E:

 

Oaknest

 

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Hello,

welcome to the forums.

 

FTX Central reads C:\Users\your name\AppData\Local\x-plane_install_11.txt and looks

to where that points for X-plane.exe.

 

If you then move your installation to somewhere else but leave x-plane_install_11.txt

unedited and the original installation in place, of course, it will install to the location

to which it is being directed.

 

Because you deleted your copy of X Plane from the C drive, FTX Central no longer sees X-Plane.exe

where you are telling it to look and therefore does not recognise it and cannot open for it.

 

Steam provides a very effective way of correctly moving their installations which writes to

x-plane_install_11.txt and avoids the problem.

 

You might try visiting x-plane_install_11.txt and amending the text to point to where you have now

moved X Plane and then FTX Central will install your product to it.

 

By the way, as clearly explained, "I deleted appdata/local/orbx and appdata/local/temp/orbx" is how

FTX Central is uninstalled.

 

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Thank you. X-plane_install_11.txt was the piece I was missing. Looks like it's working now. 

 

But FTX Central really does need to give you the option to decide where you want to install the scenery. X-plane let's you have multiple copies for things like beta versions. And x-plane let's you put scenery on different drives where you have room with a shortcut in the x-plane directory. 

 

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It is no harder to create a symbolic link than to create a shortcut.

Better still, if the symbolic link is created before the product, whatever it is,

is installed, it goes directly to the desired drive.

I suppose you are trying to make a point but anyone willing to create shortcuts

to scenery on another drive should not find creating a symbolic link instead to be a challenge.

I would think that the practice of creating links is common among those X Plane users who already

have massive files of photo scenery.

Expecting any developer, payware or not to allow for every combination that customers

wish to use is not realistic but as explained, is easily remedied.

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A simple selection in FTX settings for the destination directory just like the one for the temp directory would have greatly helped me and save me a lot of debugging time. If nothing else, that would be a great way to verify whether or not things are setup the way I expected before I commit to the lengthy download conversion steps. 

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Also agree FTX needs to have an easy way to specify the location of X-Plane.

 

I had exactly the same issue as Oaknest, GB South filled by C drive, so I moved x-plane to another drive.

Could not get FTX to then respond as it kept freezing at 'Select Simulator'

 

Need a better way to select X-Plane's location than editing mnaul editing ' C:\Users\your name\AppData\Local\x-plane_install_11.txt'

 

 

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