Alpha 8.5 suddenly not reading planes; it did yesterday!

[Ms_Tamany]

We have Win XP sp2, with AMD Sempron 3200+ CPU, and 1G RAM. We've had FMS Alpha 8.5 running just fine for months, and have not made any chnages in the system. For some unkown reason, though, tonight, when my husband started FMS to fly his favorite little model (the Slowfly), which he flew just yesterday, FMS had a conniption, and tossed up this error message:

'Error in file 'Slowfly.mdl' on line 1:
Bad Version Information'

followed by:

'Error in file 'Slowfly.mdl' on line 1:
Unknown model-type. Assuming type AIRPLANE'

When he tried to load a different model, he got the following error:

'Access violation of address 00401E9B in module 'fms.exe'. Read of address 00000003.'

On clicking 'ok' and trying to pick another model, he then got several iterations of THIS error:

'Acces violation of address 004021B8 in module 'fms.exe'. Read of address 0000007B.'

Now, ALL of these errors just popped into being on Feb. 3rd. We have very good protection against viruses, trojans, worms, and spyware, and we have done nothing to make any changes in the system, so we're quite baffled as to why FMS could have suddenly developed a complex or something.

I've been combing the forums, looking over every message on all 8 pages of problems, for anything that might help, and have found that the 'unknown model type' error could be from using Beta 7 .par files with Alpha 8, but the problem with that is that, well, the same files worked just fine yesterday, so WHY would FMS suddenly have difficulties with them?

I've also found that, at least as of two years ago, access violations in 'fms.exe' got the suggested fix of deleting the 'init.dat' and 'fms.ini' files from the program folder, and letting the program rebuild them on the next boot. However, other messages have indicated that this shouldn't be a problem in Alpha 8.5. Again, of course, there were no problems the last time he tried to fly, so WHY would FMS suddenly be having troubles?

If anyone has any advice, other than uninstalling and re-installing (already did that twice), or rolling back to Beta 7 (and losing the models he's downloaded that work for Alpha 8.5), then please let us know.

Thank you very much!

[ggunners]

Make sure you're loading the correct model type. FMS must read .par files.

-- ggunners

Edit (moved your other topic here, Michael Möller): The error message:

Error in file 'Slowfly.mdl' on line 1:
Unknown model-type. Assuming type AIRPLANE'

Says you are trying to load a file called Slowfly.mdl, FMS does not support this model type. I believe it's used with another simulator. I'm not sure how you were able to attempt a load of this file unless you set up a file association and are launching from the Windows Explorer.

Otherwise, when you start up FMS, there's an option to load a model and it will only load an FMS "Slowfly.par" file. Try deleting the "Slowfly.mdl" file and restarting FMS. It should load the default model "SU-26.par".

-- ggunners

[Ms_Tamany]

It was the very same plane he had been flying the day before, the exact file, and for whatever reason, FMS suddenly didn't like it.

[Michael_Moeller]

What I can see from your error messages you are using an old FMS model (maybe from some old FMS DOS Version). Check wether you are in the right folder when you open a model inside the FMS.

If you can't open any models anymore because FMS aborts trying to load a corrupt or wrong model or setting, you can try to "reset" the FMS:

- Run RegEdit to edit your Windows registry
- Browse to the key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Flying-Model-Simulator"
- Delete the whole folder "Flying-Model-Simulator" from the registry

All settings and configurations of the FMS are stored in that registry folder. By deleting it the FMS is reseted to the original configuration.

Michael Möller