I've been having an issue with a number of screens in FS9 and was wondering if anyone else has also. Maybe someone has even found a fix, (I'm hoping), so it here's what is happening in case you're interested...When ever I start FS9, the loading dialog appears with a skin at first. Windows then does a screen refresh and the dialog is still there, without a skin. The dialog title is displayed as well as it's progress bar which shows the loading progress correctly, moving and updating it's value. This issue is that the rest of the dialog's bitmap is not visible, it's just black as the background after the refresh.The same behavior is happening when ever I do anything in the main FS9 window. The outer bitmap of the window disappears. The rest of the dialog's bitmap is visible so I can proceed with selecting a departure and destination airport, create a flight etc. So the main window is fully functional, it's just that the dialog's outer bitmap disappears. Interestingly, the dialog's outer window is still there and appears to have a window handle, but I have to do a mouse over to get the dialog's window controls to reappear. (That's the little "X" and "-" in the top right corner of the dialog). Otherwise, they're as black as the main screen background.And for a kicker, the stock FS9 kneeboard is having the same issues. If I press F10 in the cockpit of any aircraft, the kneeboard appears and then Windows does a screen refresh. When the screen refresh finishes, the kneeboard appears completely black. It has no skin and none of it's buttons are visible. I have to do a mouse over so that Windows refreshes the area underneath the mouse and the buttons reappear, one by one, as the mouse passes over them. The kneeboard skin never reappears, not even the kneeboard title, but the all the controls do after a mouse over.These issues have been occurring for quite awhile now and I never did note when they started...darn! I just didn't cared to much before because it didn't appear to be having an effect on anything else. But lately, I've been trying to track down an issue with my aircraft creeping closer and closer in spot view and am looking for a root cause, so it seemed sensible to start with anomalies of any kind. So if any of you FS9 gurus have run into this and have the time to respond, it would be much appreciated. (I wonder if it could be Solitaire :)MarkOne more note, this behavior has spanned motherboards, video cards and drivers, and joysticks. The only similarity between them is I've always used ATI video cards and have always used Saitek joysticks...and Intel motherboards and CPUs. My FS9 system is as follows...FS9.1 1920x1200 all scenery sliders to the max :)AI Traffic at 65%TrilinearNo extended texturesAnti-Aliasing handled by the video cardXP SP2 (Automatic Updates Disabled and Have Never Used It)Latest version of DX9Firefox is my default browser but have IE6 installedAll versions of the .NET runtime (3.5 too)Visual Studio 2005 and the latest C++ runtimeATI Driver Packaging Version (8.541-080923a-069992C-ATI)Saitek X52 Pro (Saitek_X52Pro_Flight_Controller_SD6_32_Software)Core DuoATI Radeon 4870X24gb of some kind of fast ram2 Terabytes of HDD space and FS9 is on it's own drive

Just a shot in the dark (pardon the pun) but you might try rolling back your graphic card drivers, perhaps even to those which came with your card originally.If you have updated them sometimes newer is not always better.

This happens on my computer when I run FS9 in windowed mode. I haven't tried to trouble shoot it, since I run in full screen mode. If you are in windowed mode, try matching the destop screen resolution to the FS9 "Hardware" screen resolution setting. I also use an ATI card. ATI All-in-Wonder 7500 Windows. XP SP3.

It is ATI Catalyst A.I. that is causing the issues. I disabled it and my dialogs appear normally again! So is Catalyst A.I. important to FS9...does anyone have any recommendations? Mark

Well all appears better, just wanted to thank Opa and Serviceman for their help!Mark