FPS counter ruined my flight

I don't normally have it running but my last multiplayer session I left it on.After around two hours, I started to get texture flashing problems from all views. I tried the 'refresh scenery' function but that didn't improve the situation?Eventually my aircraft stated to spin as fast as a propellor thus making flying impossible from that time onwards.I closed the sim, opnened it again and it was still the same. FSX is on the same seperate hard drive and I fired that up to see if it was a HDD failing but, FSX ran well.The next day I took the panels off my P.C. and cleaned what dust there was away from my graphics cards.Then I carried out a 'system restore' anly to find that FS9 was still the same. While FS9 was running I casually turned off the FPS counter and WOW, no more problems?Anyone else been down this road?