Hi oh great gurus of hardware, I've got two things going on with my system that I'm hoping somebody can help me figure out...1. Video card troubles. I have a new BFG Geforce 6600GT, which replaced a Geforce FX5700LE. The performance difference is staggering, it's almost a whole new sim. But I'm having one very annoying driver issue with the 71.89 drivers. Every time one of the following things happen in FS2004:- Switch to or from regular cockpit or VC view- Pop up a window- Pop up or change a tooltipMy system will flash an image of a previous screen up for a split second. The screen image is typically something that was on the screen a few seconds to a few minutes earlier, and it will only paint from the bottom of the screen up to the level of the bottom of the popup window, or the level of the tooltip. It flashes for one frame, and then it's gone.I have tried going back to the 66.xx drivers, and forward to the 76.45 drivers, but those cause even worse problems. In those cases, bringing up a tooltip causes the screen to split and crosshatch, showing the top corner of the screen like it's interlaced, and rendering FS unflyable. The flicker with 71.89 is annoying as all heck, but at least it's still somewhat flyable.I've tried with 2x AA and no AA, 2x AF and no AF (all set via the nVidia control panel), nothing seems to help. I am running FS2004 at 1280x960 windowed, which seems to work very well for keeping my frame rates going and making some panels (Eaglesoft) more readable.2.) Rudder pedals. I have a Saitek X36 stick/throttle setup, and a set of CH Pro Pedals, both USB. At first, the CH pedals will work just fine--the setup is absolutely ancient, but both components still work well...when they work. What happens is that all of a sudden, if I haven't trod on the pedals for a while, my plane's rudder will abruptly jam hard left and the CH pedals no longer respond to input. If I work the rocker switch on the X36, that will center the rudder, but the CH pedals no longer function. I can still see them listed when I go into Options -> Controls -> Calibrate Joystick, but if I attempt to calibrate them, the indices don't move, and when I exit, the rudder jams hard over again, always left, and I have to twiddle the X36 rocker to center it. The only way I can get the pedals to function again is to reach around behind my machine, unplug them, and plug them right back in. Then they work fine, until they "disappear" again in 15 to 45 minutes, guaranteed. The rocker on the X36 will always move the rudders. I'm assuming that there's some bad juju between the rocker on the X36 and the pedals, but I'm at a loss for how to stop it.These two small glitches are about the only FS-related problems I have with this thing. It's not top-end anymore, but it's served me well for over a year now, and with the 6600GT in place, should do me for another year until I scratch up enough money to go state-of-the-shelf again.The system in question:- AMD Athlon XP 2500 (Barton)- Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, onboard sound and USB- 1GB PC2700 RAM- BFG Geforce 6600GT OC factory overclocked video card, 128MB AGP 8x- Windows XP SP2- FS2004 SP1Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide.Lewis "Moose" GregoryRichmond, Virginia

Anybody? Are there only one or two of us with 6600GTs having these nasty video problems? :(Lewis "Moose" GregoryRichmond, Virginia

Well...I don't get the screen flickering anymore if I don't run anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Apparently I have to exit FS, change the hardware settings, then re-enter FS, and the setting "sticks" and fixes the flickers. So I lose a good bit of graphic quality, but at least I'm not getting driven crazy with screen flickers. Here's hoping nVidia can fix this crap. And I really can't believe that nobody else that stops through here has had this problem--has everybody on AVSIM abandoned nVidia for ATI already? :)Lewis "Moose" GregoryRichmond, Virginia

Hi Moose,Jeez. You hang around these places long enough and everybody shows up. :) Good to see you're still around!WRT the pedals, are you using the Control Manager? If not, you might try installing that. Even if you don't program anything with it, there's a problem in the XP HID drivers that can cause what you're seeing and the Control Manager drivers work around it.- BobThe StickWorkshttp://www.stickworks.com

STICKY! Good Lord, man, how long has it been? Wow, I see you're still living up to your old Compuserve handle!Where do I find this Control Manager? I went to the link on the Stickworks, but it 404'd, and I can't find a reference to Control Manager on the CH Products website. For what it's worth, I do load the Saitek programming utility every time I boot up, but I don't actually reprogram any of the keystrokes or button presses. Since I'm almost exclusively flying FS2004 now instead of combat sims, I'm used to doing most of the button-pressing stuff on the keyboard except for view panning with the X36 stick hat--though I may start feeding FS2004 some native button assignments, so I don't have to reprogram the stick. I don't, however, ever touch the throttle rudder rocker switch.Lewis "Moose" GregoryRichmond, Virginia

Hi Moose,>> STICKY! Good Lord, man, how long has it been? Wow, I see you're still living up to your old Compuserve handle! <> Where do I find this Control Manager? I went to the link on the Stickworks, but it 404'd, and I can't find a reference to Control Manager on the CH Products website. <http://www.chproducts.com/retail/tech_support_usb.htmlThey've just collected all the USB files together on one page.>> For what it's worth, I do load the Saitek programming utility every time I boot up, but I don't actually reprogram any of the keystrokes or button presses. Since I'm almost exclusively flying FS2004 now instead of combat sims, I'm used to doing most of the button-pressing stuff on the keyboard except for view panning with the X36 stick hat--though I may start feeding FS2004 some native button assignments, so I don't have to reprogram the stick. <> I don't, however, ever touch the throttle rudder rocker switch. <http://www.stickworks.com

I think the new drivers in the Control Manager fixed it right up, Bob. I flew for two hours last night with nary a twitch from the pedals, and they seem to be centering much better with the new drivers as well. Previously their center position was somewhat sloppy and I could get a slight drift going that required recalibration, and I didn't have to do that last night. So far so good...thank you!Lewis "Moose" GregoryRichmond, Virginia