On another forum we were discussing whether to upgrade hardware or software or both. I said, profoundly:"At least I don't miss any capability I don't have."Boy. I am sorry I said that. Now, after many years of trouble-free service with FS9, I miss a capability I have always taken for granted - the capability of pointing and clicking on the panel while flying! Suddenly FS is not working with my mouse correctly. My mouse is a Logitech Cordless Optical mouse. It has been working great without trouble for at least a couple of years. I do not like the fact that you cannot turn it off so it runs out of battery power about once a month. (I just changed the batteries a couple days ago.)I am still running Win98 with no significant problems.But I think the problem is in FS. I always run with a compromised window in FS - not "full screen". The reason is that I seldom fly more than five minutes without changing something so I want all menus available for clicking at all times. Recently, the FS menu bar disappeared. But I can bring it back by tapping ALT. So without trying to figure out why it dissappeared, I developed the habit of hitting ALT with my thumb when I want that menu bar. Yesterday I noticed difficulty finding my mouse arrow when I needed it. It was hiding. I had to move the mouse all around to find the pointer. Well, today, it is worse. Now it really hides when the panel is on the screen. The only way I can make it visible is by holding ALT. But then I move it to the point on the panel where I need to click and it won't click. I have to take my thumb off ALT and then click the mouse for it to take effect! This makes changing numbers on the autopilot impossible. It makes doing many things very difficult.Why did it happen? What happened?I have gone to my mouse control and changed the way I move the mouse pointer and changed the way it looks. It is now bigger and has a trail.I have looked through FS9.CFG for anything relating to the mouse and found nothing.The mouse behaves fine outside of Flight Simulator.

I seem to remember my mouse doing this a long ways back and if memory serves me correctly the fault was either in having vertical sync or Anit aliasing on. As for the menu bar - right click on the screen within fs and there is a box with some options on it one of which is to hide the menu bar. Douglas

Thanks for your suggestions. The solution you mentioned for the menu bar worked fine.My mouse is working fin now and is even more visible than before. While trying to fix it, I chose a larger and more visible cursor.But what fixed it was shutting down the system for a while and rebooting! Evidently it didn't like the way I woke it up this morning.