I start the sim and the cockpit appears however there are grey boxes covering all the MCP controls and none of the cockpit controls or icon boxes respond to mouse inputs. So-in essence, I cannot do anything with the aircraft.This is with FS9 on Vista.Roger Curtiss

This sounds familiar, but if it came up before it has been further back than my memory will go.. is this a new installation or one that has been working? Are the FD and ND displays working? Is this a saved flight or a newly created flight? Have you assigned admin rights to the PMDG folder and subfolders in Vista? I'm just shooting in the dark here not knowing how you got to this point.

I copied the FS9 folders from an old computer to an external drive and then the PMDG folders from FS9/Aircraft onto the new computer with a new install of FS9.This was a new flight and the PFD and ND were dark-but this could have been a cold/dark cockpit setup- since I could not click to the overhead panel I could not check electrical status. As far as I know I have admin rights to all folders...but I did not specifically assign those to the PMDG folders as far as I know (nor am I even sure how to do that unless it is a Windows prompt that routinely comes up).Roger Curtiss

Try a repair on the new install. I assume the files you restored were only flightplans and sidstars/navdata files. If any of the new installed files were over written then that could be a problem. Also, the new install should have required authenication. If that didn't happen then that is one of the root problems.