Thank you all for all your help/ But I guess with all these suggestions, nothing will help.My days of Flight SIM is over, I give up, it will never be the same.Find me on Pogo games as BigLarry1950, will be glad to chat.

On the memory issue...Windows XP home edition (32 bit) can only recognize up to 3.5 GB of memory because of the architecture. Right now the problem seems to be hardware (new drive, data cable, something not connected properly), but can't say for sure. If you replaced the hard drive...maybe you bumped something in the case, and didn't realize it. Go back into the case, and check to see that everything is connected properly. Something that may look connected but only is partially connected could have an effect on the system. If everything looks good, try reinstalling FS9 (no addon's), and see what happens. Good Luck!!!

Well now that there's no resolution for this, I'll give it up. Even with scaling FS-2004 down to Medium-Low settings, performance still sucks.and tweaking everything else down below what I had before. There's no point continuing with FS. I guess replacing a hard drive was a bad decision.gl all and have fun flying.Big Larry

Hi Larry, I feel for you mate. One day they will optimize a flightsim that everyone can get results from instead of just catering for the latest 'whizz-Bang' equipment that only the fortunate few can use? I won't hold my breath waiting though.Why not join us on 'Live For Speed' eh? Its free to use and you can even race in multiplayer on one track. Later you may want to join us on my 'Schumie' server (check the list) and race with a freindly atmosphere. I am 69 now and still beat people a quarter of my age on a regular basis. :(

Larry if you or anyone else is interested join us here http://racing.lefora.com/ Average age is 65 :(

Well I've been trying for 2 month of this, there's no remedy.No matter what tweaks I've tried, I get no improvement.What is frustrating, is it starts out working great for first 20-30 minutes, then it just deteriorates after that.I am tired of poor response and garbled sound from ATC.Windows XP on a 4 gig RAM system with dual core 2.8 GHz processor.Ultimate Terrain, COA added traffic.

Sounds like a memory leak. Did you patch fs9 to fs9.1? You also said you installed the sound drivers but did you also install the rest of the Motherboard drivers as well?

I really hope you don't give up. It's so worth it once you get it right. I was always hampered by my computer being just not quite good enough to run FS9 the way it should be. I decided to take the plunge and build my own computer. I had 3 goals when building it. (1) Run FS9 maxed out. (2) Be upgradeable should I ever decide to switch over to the dark side (FSX, doubt that will happen though). (3) Spend less than $500. I did this 1 month ago. My specs are in my sig and the total was $484 after shipping and rebates (would have been less but I had to buy Windows for $99). Newegg and Tigerdirect are always running deals where you can build a smokin' system a little at a time. So if all the help you're receiving doesn't do the trick, I encourage you to save those penny's and build the system you want. Here are three shots I just took to prove to you that you don't need to spend a fortune to get it right. All sliders are maxed using Rex Overdrive (1024x1024 HD clouds), it's smooth as silk. The three shots are in situations that used to bog down my old system to <10 FPS.Good luck and I hope you don't leave this great hobby behind.

I quit -- It'll never be the same as it once was. Why would putting in a new hard drive screw up Flight Simulator so bad, that it's no fun any more.Even with all the tweaks, diagnostics and bumping up the memory, it's useless.Wish y'all all the fun that was intended for this game.Best wishes.Larry

I really hope you don't give up. It's so worth it once you get it right. I was always hampered by my computer being just not quite good enough to run FS9 the way it should be. I decided to take the plunge and build my own computer. I had 3 goals when building it. (1) Run FS9 maxed out. (2) Be upgradeable should I ever decide to switch over to the dark side (FSX, doubt that will happen though). (3) Spend less than $500. I did this 1 month ago. My specs are in my sig and the total was $484 after shipping and rebates (would have been less but I had to buy Windows for $99). Newegg and Tigerdirect are always running deals where you can build a smokin' system a little at a time. So if all the help you're receiving doesn't do the trick, I encourage you to save those penny's and build the system you want. Here are three shots I just took to prove to you that you don't need to spend a fortune to get it right. All sliders are maxed using Rex Overdrive (1024x1024 HD clouds), it's smooth as silk. The three shots are in situations that used to bog down my old system to <10 FPS.Good luck and I hope you don't leave this great hobby behind.

@basic_ilsnice fps, can you show some shots at a heavy airport, wit lots of ai, and from a vc of a good aircraft ?@Larrylooks like an IRQ sharing problem.you can google it, see if you can force the sound card (onboard?) irq to another one not sharing the hd.do you also have the problem in other games?