AndertonSounds like a clue to me - installing X3 should NOT kill 8.5.
It really sounds like something went horribly wrong with the X3 install....
It might be worth a call to tech support to figure out why you can't run 8.5. That will perhaps lead to the fix that will also allow you to finally enjoy X3.
Thank you, Craig - You make me glad that I repeated the story of what happened twice now when dealing with X3 installs. The demo never would work, just killed 8.5, and nothing was normal until I uninstalled the demo. I thought surely nothing of the sort would happen when installing X3 itself later on down the line. But it was exactly the same, with the runtime errors appearing on my 8.5 installs (both 32 and 64)--At first X3 wouldn't work, I re-installed, and it worked - But then, yadda yadda--the rest - Couldn't use restore points, 8.5 dead etc.
And I did contact support about this. The replied saying to reinstall all C++ Libraries - Well, I'd already done that. Days and days of trying to fix C++ - I think someone here at the Forum had it right that it wasn't C++ itself causing the problems. But - it's still a mystery just what it is.
All I know - Everything, and I mean Everything was fine before the X3 demo, and then the full X3 installs. Both resulted in killing 8.5, and nobody knows why.
And so forth. It's a bore.
Randy B.