I get great frames when using full-screen mode however there are two things that are happening. First, the mouse turns black and is hard to find on the screen. Second is that if I access the menu up top or right click with the mouse, the whole screen freezes except for the menu and doesnt come back till I am finished with the menu. I am running vista 32 with FS2004 SP 1.

BumpAfter a google search, it appears that a lot of people had problems with this. Anyone know if it was ever figured out how to fix it?

Yeah run in windowed mode and hide the taskbar, I actually get better frame rates in windowed mode than in fullscreen, but ONLY IF I HIDE THE TASKBAR. The poor performance with the taskbar in view is caused by the bump of the start button when it overlays a 3d application window, hiding it removes the performance hit.Also right click on the FS2004 shortcut and select the option shown below.