I am so jazzed right now I can hardly type. I share this tale in the hopes someone else will benefit. I spent not less than 8 hours over the past few days troubleshooting and trying to save my total installation after having a hang during re-boot necessitating a reset button press, followed by a most ominous message that a certain file was missing or corrupt, ie, you won't be booting to Windows without an Emergency Recovery Disk. Fortunately I had one, and after successfully rebooting to the desktop, I began the lengthy process of reinstalling all 48 critical updates, SP4, etc. This was a serious crash as you can see. So, after reinstalling DirectX 9.0c, rebuilding fs9.cfg, doing a total nVidia driver cleanout and re-loading my recently installed 71.20 nVidia Forceware Drivers (thanks for the tip Michael Greenblatt, of FS-GS), I found I had a very serious loss of video performance. The 71.20's put my machine at the next level of performance for FS9...and ALL other gaming ware I have on this box now. Well, this crash ruined my joy, as I had only had the new drivers installed for a few days until this unfortunate crash happened. I have an explanation for the crash, and fortunately it does not involve these newer drivers.My PC is probably at risk for a number of stability issues, most notably, overclocking (to a safe level I believe), and many complex programs and some pro midi music and digital audio hardware and software. After laboring with every trick in the book, I was about to commence to the horrid task of reinstalling ALL of the special software on this box, it's 3 scsi drives, tons of software, passwords, keys, add-ons for FS9 alone, ahhhh!Well, the little friend in my taskbar tray, PowerStrip, save my sorry arsss bigtime. I brought up the adapter info tab, and low and behold several elements of the AGP system were not checked--sideband, fastwrites, 8x, 4x -- all were unchecked. I had already done dxdiag.exe, and from this dialogue, the AGP system LOOKED PERFECT! So, I unchecked PowerStrip's Read--only box, and set each one as it always had been before, closed PS, restarted PS, and voila! There was hope! Started FS9--!!!!!!!! 8 fps on my home small airport's taxiway, in my fav CRJ. AWEFUL! No Help! I pressed on . . .Opened PS again, and noted the HARDWARE ENABLED box was whited out. May have been before, but I didn't notice until now. Then it dawned on me. I never reinstalled the Intel Installation Chipset driver for my mainboard--which of course is needed for the AGP system. Hey, it had been quite a while since I did this install. I went to ASUS site, got the latest software, installed it, rebooted . . . JOY!I tell you, my PC jumped absolutely hugely in performance, and it was #### good before. TW2004 at 4xAA, 1280x1024, 16xAF: frames were 32 with nVida 66.93s WHQL, now are 57 with 71.20s. That's bizzare. Greenblatt says they are the first to fully utilize all 16 pipelines effectively. I guess!I stand corrected to the guy challenging his performance in FS9. We have similar machines. Now, at 4x AA, 8xAF, 1600x, in ANY aircraft, it is locked at 31 almost always, in any weather with the rareest of exceptions, all add-ons blazing. I had very good perf previously, it's just very significantly better now. This AGP story was just the crash problem and hopefully the lesson is not to trust dxdiag as the final word in dx problem identification. These drivers are truly remarkable. Many thanks to FS-GS for his technical support.Had to get this off my chest . . . now to go fly!!!Noel

"-I spent not less than 8 hours over the past few days troubleshooting and trying to save my total installation-""-I began the lengthy process of reinstalling all 48 critical updates, SP4, etc-""-After laboring with every trick in the book, I was about to commence to the horrid task of reinstalling ALL of the special software on this box-"You should consider getting a drive imaging program such as Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost.Kurt M

"You should consider getting a drive imaging program such as Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost."...use the former myself and it's a doddle to use. Swear by it :)Mike

Why version 71.20, there are newer ones out are there not? Also, where are you getting this PowerStrip? I installed the 71.20 drivers and did not get that application installed?Thanks for the help.

Me too! I've used both of these imaging programs and True Image is, IMNSHO, lightyears ahead of Ghost. It's always interesting to me how folks often see significant performance improvements after a fresh install of both the OS and FS9. No magic about it, it's just a matter of cleaning out all the "crud" that collects over time. I have an image of the system that gives me a fresh start in about 15 minutes. And I use it often. An investment in a second (or third or fourth) HDD and some good imaging software is about the best investment a simmer could make regardless of the complexity of the install.Doug

PowerStrip is an extra freeware utility, and doesn't come with the Nvidia drivers. Google it, and you'll find any amount of sites where you can dl it.BestGrahame (EDHL)

>PowerStrip is an extra freeware utility, and doesn't come>with the Nvidia drivers. Google it, and you'll find any amount>of sites where you can dl it.>Best>Grahame (EDHL)PowerStrip is payware, but try-for-free.Allcott

Noel,Are you getting the shimmying with your Geforce 6800 GT?I've got MIP mapping down to 4, and there is still some shimmying textures.Fantastic framerates with this card, but the shimmying dampens things a bit.Bryan

AllcottSorry I boobed on this one. I don't actually use it myself as I have an ATI card, I was just trying to help.I googled it,and at a quick glance, I thought it was freeware! Oops, sorry!BestGrahame (EDHL)

I have a PNY 6800GT and I have not had any issues with "shimmying" and I have had MIP mapping set at all levels high and low.

It used to be freeware in the past. However you can try Rivatuner as well.

Kurt, how would that work with three scsi drives, all fairly well filled? I guess it would be a case of doing three images, perhaps on different partitions of one large drive maybe. The way scsi drives are handled in boot sequence may be different so it may be more complicated I don't know. I would love to have a 15m restore solution. Thanks for the tip!Noel

Bryan what do you mean by shimmying?Noel

Noel,I'm using an old version of Powerquest Drive Image, which has been acquired by Symantec (Norton Ghost), so I'm not familiar with the the newer versions by other companies. You can probably get more accurate info from the company websites. Acronis has a .pdf user guide you could check thru. I'm sure other companies will have similar info available.http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/produ...eimage/faq.html Kurt M

Shimmering, I'm sure.Be well!Jaap Verduijn.