Barry,pity U didn't copy all of the text from MS. At compact install it says that performance will be affected. It doesn't say so at complete (nor express for that matter).I'm no expert at any field, but can assure U that sceneries (or any other files) are NOT unpacked at runtime in any FS install. That would take so much time, even MS knows that's not good for it's customerbase ;-)Cheers,Cas(And enjoy your installation of FS9 !)

>Barry,>>pity U didn't copy all of the text from MS. At compact install>it says that performance will be affected. It doesn't say so>at complete (nor express for that matter).>>I'm no expert at any field, but can assure U that sceneries>(or any other files) are NOT unpacked at runtime in any FS>install. That would take so much time, even MS knows that's>not good for it's customerbase ;-)The reason I didn't copy any of the texy regarding the COMPACT install was that we were not discussing it at all. We all know that the COMPACT install does not install everything onto the Hdd and is the worst type of install for performance. We were/are only discussing the differences between EXPRESS and CUSTOM/COMPLETE.Barry

"Either MS is extremely sloppy in their use of the English language - or there is something significant in this."I don't think so. I chose the 'Complete' option and the installation took around about 11 minutes. Near the end of the installation I remember sitting waitng while it decompressed the world scenery files region by region.As I stated above my full installation occupies 2.75GB HD space which, I presume, is MS's rough 3GB. Would be interesting to see what the rest of you have.Mike