Game reinstall

[majorandme]

Potentially a dumb question.  I am just having so many issues with DCS lately, including crazy slow boot times and freezes, Open beta not opening at all, oculus not connecting, etc.  I have backed up my saved games folder to protect the logbook and previous game/campaign downloads.  After I uninstall ad clean up the computer, I should not have issues downloading previous purchases (F-14, F-18< Persian Gulf, Nevada test Range, SC, etc).  Correct?  

[Art-J]

Nowadays purchases are tied to your ED shop account rather than hardware, so you're right, you won't have any problems redownloading these as long as you haven't forgot your login and password.

I personally consider a full reinstall not necessary and an absolutely last-resort solution, however and here's why:

a) If source of your issues is hidden somewhere inside the root DCS folder, slow repair & cleanup command should in theory rever that folder to 100% stock, vanilla state. Just as reinstall would do, but much faster. Based on my experience I'd say it does that job pretty well (although I had to use it only a couple of times I admit). 

b) If source of your issues is hidden somewhere inside Saved Games, then neither full reinstall, nor repair & cleanup will do anything for you anyway, especially if you think about restoring the whole Saved Games backup folder with all the who-knows-what garbage inside. 

If I were you, I'd start with temporarly removing / renaming that old Saved Games, doing slow repair & cleanup, then checking if the boot and freeze issues still persist.

If they don't and the game runs better, then I'd start restoring only absolutely minimum content from Saved Games (like controls and logbook), followed by the other folders one by one to check if one of them doesn't bring the mayhem back.

If they do persist, the culprit might be somewhere outside of DCS actually, but we'll need logs to try to figure it out.

[majorandme]

Art-J

Thanks mate.  I will give this a go.  I have backup up the saved games folder to an external drive.  So I go in and delete the content but leave the empty root folder, then run the repair, or delete the folder entirely?

Slow repair and cleanup command is found where?

Cheers

Found a video on how to do the repair, so no worries.

[Art-J]

Saved Games\DCS folder can be emptied or deleted, the game will recreate it with all sub-folders upon first next launch. They'll just be mostly empty at this stage.

About repair, I don't know how old the video you found is (there were some tweaks in recent years about how the procedure was done), but if you just go to your Start -> Programs -> Eagle Dynamics -> DCS menu, you will find the repair link over there. Click it and follow instructions. Bt the way "Check for extra files" window is modern equivalent of old Cleanup command which removes any extra files and folders that should not be there in vanilla install (ie. custom mods, skins and whatnot).

[MAXsenna]

Art-J
Thanks mate.  I will give this a go.  I have backup up the saved games folder to an external drive.  So I go in and delete the content but leave the empty root folder, then run the repair, or delete the folder entirely?
Slow repair and cleanup command is found where?
Cheers
Found a video on how to do the repair, so no worries.

Just rename the DCS.xyz folder in Saved Games. You should consider getting Skatezilla's GUI Updater/Launcher. It has a ton of features, and makes it really easy to repair.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[majorandme]

Thanks guys.  I tried to run the updater cleanup from the command prompt and I got an error saying the DCS updater file could not be found.  I found it on my own and am running it now.  Once complete I'll try the updater cleanup again  I'll also look at the Skatezilla updater. Thanks for the tips!

Cheers

[Captain Chuck]

Skatezilla is what I would use.

[majorandme]

No luck yet.  Ran the updater and it won't load.  Downloaded Skatezilla, but I cannot load a build.  How is this done?

[Art-J]

6 hours ago, majorandme said:

Thanks guys.  I tried to run the updater cleanup from the command prompt and I got an error saying the DCS updater file could not be found. 

Most likely some syntax error in the command. Don't think about it, though. Skatezillas utility is indeed more convenient - it does all the things manual typing commands can do (and then some), but using faster and more friendly user interface.

Back to the utility:

a) right click on the "Sim Build Slot #1" button and navigate to your DCS folder (1st screen below);

b) after it's done THEN you can left click on the big "No build selected / Click here to select a build" button above to choose build from the 1st slot you've just defined. Slot button will become highlighted by blue "bracket" so to speak (2nd screen below).

Now the utility should be properly connected to your DCS and all the buttons on the left should start working, including the repair & cleanup ones.

 

[majorandme]

Thanks mate!  She's running!