FS2004 hang on opening screen or crash at startup

I want to share a solution I found with you. FS2004 had been running fine on my system for months when it suddenly began to hang up or crash to the desktop at startup. I read a lot of web pages about fixing this problem and tried quite a few of the solutions offered but none of them seemed to work. It was maddening. Then I stumbled upon the following page:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...195&Product=gmsThe part that solved my problem was the section titled "Method 2: Verify that DirectX is installed correctly." When I ran dxdiag, sure enough, my DirectX was broken. I believe that this happened as a result of my testing of a new registry cleaning tool. Anyway, I installed DirectX 9c and my problem was solved. I also disabled the Nvidia helper processes. If you're having this problem, check your DirectXSyd