NZFF

I just thought I would share a tip with you guys that may help your FS2004 loading up time if you have heaps of addons installed like me.

On my harddrive, I created a separate folder called 'Sim Backup' then cut and pasted a heap of aircraft folders that I have installed in my FS9/Aircraft but rarely ever fly (not deleting them permanently in case I wish to fly them again one day, then it is merely as case of coping and pasting them back).

Then I loaded up FS9 and unticked a heap of addon scenery folders that I have installed but rarely fly over, went back to my main FS9 directory and cut the selected folders and pasted them in my new backup folder along with my old aircraft.

It makes my loading time on the first splash screen go by noticeably faster, and also the time from when I go to the ALT menu in flight and select 'change aircraft'. I don't know if it will help you guys with faster machines, but it sure helped me on my 2.4 GHz Celeron

interesting

cheers for the tips Trolly. Would have been useful before, but since I recently reinstalled the sim, my loading times are still under 10 seconds

I moved all my AI and IVAO aircraft into another folder just for this purpose, and bring them back if I need them. It certainly helps!

I moved all my AI and IVAO aircraft

Same, only the IVAO AI though as I hardly fly online these days, but I kept the rest of my VOZ, UT and GNZLAP AI- I couldn't live without them!

hmm I have about three backups of everything, entire folders containing, gauges, aircraft, scenery, sounds, modules , totaling well over 40gb..

only have one addon scenery file installed.. Still takes ages about 60 seconds. I suppose its all the aircraft, theres only about two hundred aircraft in the fs9 aircraft folder, the ivao mtl doesn't slow down the loading time, yet on installing SB3 load time doubled.

There's a utility called filemon, which monitors what files are being read and written on your machine.
Load it up and then start FS.
Man, things get busy!
You will see all those many files that get loaded up, just to initialise the program.
Aircraft are top of the slowdown list.