Stupidly I can't recall where I read that others had this problem - I did a search (honest!!) but cannot now find the post.If anyone has had this problem - ie FS9 starts up and (in my case initially rebuilt the scenery database etc )after a couple of minutes of HDD activity it just hangs there at the splash screen - no progress bar is shown like it used to to either. FSX of course runs OK. If there's a fix I'd appreciate some help. Thanks.

Managed to fix it - seems like there wasn't really a problem at all :)