Thanks very much, I tried it but it still didn't help, but that's OK. I might be getting a new graphics card or better yet an entirely new computer any time now, but that still means no FS until I do so :(.

A quick question. Do you load FSAutostart before you fly?Tom

"...TEXTURE_BLDG=3TEXTURE_GND=5..."Paul,Do you know what these numbers mean and whether they've been documented on a blog somewhere? I always have thought the two possible values for these parms were "0" (No textures) and "1" (Textures)Regards,John

They started up before I started using it, but now I do. Is this a factor?

Have you tried a third party defragmenter program? I just installed FS9 on a separate disk drive (not the OS drive) and am using Ultimate Defrag (there are several others out there, O@O, Diskeeper) which allowed me to put FS9 on the outer ring of the drive. Since there are no OS files on this drive, FS is on the very outer edge of the disk and can be accessed at the fastest rate and vastly speed up texture load times! It also allowed me to defrag using 'name' for file structure placement and the fastest performance. What a difference!You may have other issues with your graphics card in your case, but you may want to give one of these third party programs a try, the one that came with Windows is useless. I used Ultimate Defrag because I like the graphical interface it uses for showing you where it places the files on the drive, but it has some limitations when it comes to daily OS file defragmentation. If you splurge for a new graphics card, also install a new separate fast drive to put FS on and see the difference!Kim

Yep, I'm running O&O right now. Before getting a new computer all together, I'm looking at a temporary graphics card. NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT 256 MB AGP. I hope this'll help. Still have the blurries even with O&O.

If you get an Nvidia, you'll run into the infamous 'no AA' driver problem and may have to resort to Nhancer to fix it. Right now, I have a Nvidia 7950GT and it works fine except for the AA issue. I don't have Nhancer yet but I have a workaround. I start out with FS9 in 'windowed mode' and set up my flight, otherwise I can't see the rotating aircraft in the selection screen (black window only in full screen mode). Before I hit 'fly now', I switch to 'full screen mode' (alt-enter). I have to switch back when I want to select a new aircraft. Others here have reported more serious problems with AA and Nvidia cards however.I set AA to 8X at the card's control panel and no AA within FS9. Anythings lower than 8X causes screen flashing when in the menus. I also set filtering to 'trilinear' in 'options' as well and leave the anti-aliasing set to 'off' in the card's control panel.You might be better off to find another ATI card to try out and see if the card is really your problem. I still recommend a separate drive for FS9. Best change I ever made.Kim