I had several years of successful operation of FS2004 on a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz with 3 GB of ram and an ATI Radeon 9550 video card. The operating system was Windows XP running on Service Pack 2 – because forum discussions a few years ago indicated possible problems with Service Pack 3. (I can’t seem to find those discussions any more on internet forums.) Major problems began to appear and it was finally time to start over with a new computer and a fresh install. Things are not going well. As noted below, a fresh install of FS2004 has now been made on two computers running Windows XP Service Pack 3, and the same problems are appearing on both. With no add-ons at all, and the fs9upd patch installed, a test flight from KSEA to CYVR is OK, but when I attempt to file a flight plan for the return CYVR to KSEA flight, the Flight Planner window (Alt/F/P) will often open up and there will be no data in the window – and a frozen FS2004. If I am lucky and the Flight Planner Window has data, the system will probably freeze when I attempt to activate the flight plan. If I am lucky enough to get past this point, FS2004 will probably crash during the subsequent flight. Is it possible this is related to running Windows XP Service Pack 3 instead of Service Pack 2? OR Has anyone seen another reason for this behavior. Would removing Service Pack 3 solve the problem? Details The new computer is an Intel Pentium 15 660 3.33GHz processor on an ASUS P7Q57-M board with 4GB of memory. It is using a NVIDIA GeForce GT240.0 video card. It is running Window XP Service Pack 3. Using the Affinity procedure to run only on CPU 0 helps a bit, but the above problems will eventually surface. Using my second licensed copy of FS2004, I tried reloading FS2004 on the original Pentium 4 3.0 which had been loaded with fresh copy of Window XP with Service Pack 3 and transferred to a new case with an upgraded power supply. The same problems are occurring on this ‘original’ computer that served so well for many years. Since Microsoft has reduced their support for Service Pack 2, it would be desirable to stay with SP3 – but going back to SP2 for an operational flightsim is not a problem. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

I can't offer any suggestions which might resolve your issues but would just report that I have been running XP with SP3 for well over a year and have experienced no issues with FS2004 updated to Ver 9.1.Of course every machine is "different" but I suspect the problems are not related to SP3 but something else - perhaps your video card and/or the drivers you are using. Newer drivers are not always better.Good Luck in finding the culprit.