Installing Combat Flight Simulator 2 (CFS2) on Windows 10

 I've always been fond of WWII combat vehicles - battleships, bombers and airplanes. However, I never had an opportunity to play a simulator which allows you to control these vehicles. I am especially fascinated by bombers, how they were used to level entire cities, destroy ammunition factories and bomb railway lines. I tried War Thunder, which, though free was a download of a whopping 37 GIGABYTES. I installed it and was really enjoying it, when I noticed that it was really taxing my low-spec laptop. So I decided to go for an older sim.

I had one more problem though - I did not have a flight stick. These are pretty expensive in my country, so I had to choose a simulator which allows me to use my mouse as a controller.

After a bit of Google-Fu, I ended up on a flight sim forum where a poster said that Combat Flight Simulator 2 allowed using the mouse as a controller. Turns out, I was a bit lucky - the game is now considered abandonware, which means it IS FREE TO DOWNLOAD!

Combat Flight Simulator 2, also known as Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 2: WW II Pacific Theater, is a flight simulator developed by Microsoft and released in 2000. The game puts you in the cockpit of various airplanes in the Pacific Theater of WWII and allows you to get right into the thick of action. What really impressed me about this game is that it offers a highly capable "Mission Builder" which allows you to create hypothetical scenarios of your own, right from selecting the type & number of airplanes to the location of the dogfight/battle.

So I downloaded the game from My abandonware and finally got it working on Windows 10 after hours of hair-pulling frustration. I hope I can help anyone get CFS2 up and running on Win10 minus all the frustration. These steps should work you regardless if you install the game by CD or from a download.

1. First, install the game. Change the installation directory to something other than C:/Program Files(x86) as some people have faced permission issues by installing here. Choose a full installation.
2. Important: The game needs a No-CD Fix to run on Windows 10. This file is available for download on many websites such as My abandonware, GameBurnWorld and Mega Games 
3. Just extract the compressed archive and copy the cfs2.exe. Navigate to the folder where the game was installed (where the game's cfs2.exe file is). If you downloaded the game on C:/, this should be in C:/Microsoft Games/Combat Flight Simulator 2/.
4. Paste the cfs2.exe you copied from the No-CD Fix here. You will get a dialog box saying that a file by this name already exists - click on replace.
5. Go to your desktop and right-click on the Combat Flight Simulator 2 shortcut. Click on the Compatibility tab, select the checkbox Run this program in compatibility mode for, and select Windows XP (Service Pack 2). Also, select the checkbox which says Run this program as an administrator.
6. At this stage CFS2 should be working flawlessly on your Windows 10 computer. If yes, you may choose to ignore the rest of the steps below.
7. CFS2 would crash when I clicked Fly now in all mission types - Quick combat, Free Flights and Campaigns. I would get a dialog saying Loading scenery... and the game would crash. I solved this by the following steps.
8. Launch the game. Click on Single Missions. Do NOT select any other option as of now. 
9. Keep clicking next until you see an option Fly now. Click on it.
10. At this stage, the game should load scenery SUCCESSFULLY and start the mission.
11. After this, the game should never crash while loading scenery again. You can successfully play any mission type - Free Flight, Quick combat, Single Missions or Campaign. I am not sure what causes this crash but its probably related to a missing file/setting that is written the first time you start a Single Mission.
    

I hope you were able to get the game working on Windows 10 by following the steps above. If not please feel free to drop a comment below and I'll be glad to help. Please do NOT ask me about joystick issues - I have never played the game with a joystick and I know nothing about joysticks.

You can find interesting stuff for Combat Flight Simulator 2 such as user-made patches, graphic enhancements and game extras on the Free Flight Site