Unsolved
2 Intern
•
133 Posts
1
1080
November 6th, 2021 13:00
Support Assist deletes registry entries for PMDG flight simulator addon
Hello,
I enjoy flight simulation on my computer and have discovered the following issue. When I install a certain third party aircraft into my Perpar3D flight simulator, it installs the aircraft and a secondary program PMDG Operations Center that contains purchase data to verify the product has been purchased as well as ability to perform certain processes outside the flight simulator. I have discovered that Support Assist when running consistently deletes registry entries that remove the ability to install and uninstall the aircraft from the Windows 10 Add Remove programs app, and delete the information that shows that I have purchased the program. I have to reinstall everything, and it is time consuming because I have reconfigure some 40 aspects of the aircraft due to the re-installation. Many others have reported this same identical problem with the program in question on Flight sim forums with Dell SupportAssist on their computers.
I contacted PMDG who own the program that is deleted from the registry and they did indicate that they are aware of the problem and attempted to contact Dell to assist in resolving this but had no response.
Since I have Premium Support, and with every tech support inquiry the expectation reasonably will be to run all SupportAssist diagnostic algorithms I have the conundrum of having to laboriously reinstall my PMDG products if I want Premium Tech support. Note that no other applications on my PC have their registry entries deleted.
I would like this problem escalated to the proper level to fix this issue for myself and many others in the gaming community who own Dell computers and have this problem, but am unsure how I can bring this to the attention of the proper Dell team.
lmacri
3 Apprentice
•
1.7K Posts
0
November 6th, 2021 17:00
Hi Greg100:
I'm not a Dell employee but see both my 12-July-2021 comments in ex-jedi's thread Prevent Automatic Recycle Bin Emptying about the over-aggressive registry cleaner that executes when the "Tune Performance" scan of SupportAssist runs. The Tune Performance section of the Dell support article SupportAssist for Business PCs with Windows OS Frequently Asked Questions states in part that one of the functions of this scan is "Checking the registry for invalid entries, missing file references, or broken links and deleting them".
To prevent this problem I've turned off all automated background scanning in SupportAssist at Option (gear icon) | Settings | Automate Scan and Optimizations | Scan Your System and Drivers At: as shown below. The only manual scans I run from the Home tab of SupportAssist are "Get Drivers & Downloads" and the occasional "Scan Hardware" - I do not allow SupportAssist to run any system optimization scans (i.e., "Clean Files", "Tune Performance" or "Optimize Network") because I find they do more harm than good.
Hopefully someone from DELL-Cares will contact you directly via a private message and investigate your particular issue with the registry entries for your Prepar3D flight simulator program.
-----------
64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H1 build 19043.1288 * Firefox v94.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v.4.18.2110.6-1.1.18700.4 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.4.10.144-1.0.1499 * Dell SupportAssist v3.10.3.3 * Dell SupportAssist Remediation v5.5.0.16041 * Dell Update for Windows 10 v4.4.0
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620
DELL-Cares
Moderator
•
27.3K Posts
0
November 6th, 2021 21:00
Hi there!
I’m Vinod from the Dell Social Media team. I understand you're facing an issue with the flight simulator game. YOu have mentioned that reinstallation of the game and the operating system has been performed. May I know what is the operating system running on the system? YOu can follow the steps below to access the same.
Select the Start button > Settings > System > About .
JPL_19
2 Posts
1
March 19th, 2022 10:00
I just experienced the same issue. This is quite infuriating as I know have to perform 9-10 reinstallations and hope the vendor (PMDG) does not flag me for excessive installs. Very poor piece of software that would do this type of damage with no opportunity to address or restore.
Running an Alienware R13 on Win11.