I've been a regular AVSIM visitor for many years but never had to post until now.I was running FS2002 on my Athlon XP1800, 512 Mb DDR, 128 Mb nvidia FX5200, a Philips sound card, and Win 98 SE with no problems at all. I had tons of add-on planes and some scenery.I just bought a Pentium 4 2.6 Ghz 800 FSB, 1 Gb of dual-channel 400 Mhz DDR, 256 Mb nivida FX5600, Soundblaster Audigy 2, and Windows XP Home. I figured I'd be running FS2002 like a champ. Problem is it won't run at all. When I start up I either get a black screen for a few seconds, then back to the desktop, or I get the "Windows has encountered a problem in module Flight Simulator and must close" something to that effect. I've uninstalled and re-installed three times. I've downloaded the latest nvidia video drivers, and re-downloaded DirectX 9.0b. The screwy thing is, FS2002 occasionally will run and when it does it runs perfectly fine, no problems whatsoever. Any other thoughts on things to try? I'm planning on getting FS2004 for Christmas and hopefully won't have problems with it.Thanks!

Hi Jim,With your setup you should indeed be running FS2002 without any problem and I sympathise with your problems.I can only start by asking the obvious questions. Since you have reinstalled FS2002 a few times there is no question of add-ons causing a glitch in your system - but what about other running processes? Have you closed down all background applications to see if these may be causing the problem?One question. When you do get the FS "phone home" message box popping up have you clicked on the details link? It should tell you the module in FS that the start up process got halted on. This would narrow down the field of suspects..boneshttp://fsaviation.net

The problem seems to be with the file "imgui.dll". I did a search on the board and see that some other people have had trouble with this file but there was really no resolution.Like I said, the screwy thing is that every 7 or 8 tries, it'll start and run normally.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...75&Product=simshttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...Ben-us%3B245063http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;303032http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;310353When you installed fs2002 on your new computer, did you just copy it from the old computer vice installing as a new application? If so, it may cause the problems you describe for several reasons. One, Win98 and WinXP define your peripherals differently in your fs2002.cfg file, i.e., joysticks, graphics adapter.One thing you could try is copying the entire fs2002 folder to a save area on your hardrive. Rename this copied folder to FS2002OLD. Next follow the instructions of the first item above to completely remove the fs2002 installation (NOT the FS2002OLD folder). Reinstall fs2002 as described above. Prior to adding any third party downloads, ensure fs2002 operates properly. If so, then copy the new fs2002 folder and rename this copy FS2002NEW. You can now add third party downloads to the fs2002 folder, since you have a default installation in folder FS2002NEW. If something you add causes a problem, you have the choice of trying to remove it from the fs2002 folder or deleting the entire fs2002 folder and replacing it with a copy of FS2002NEW. Eventually, you will want to get rid of FS2002OLD, and maybe FS2002NEW, when you are satified the new installation is operating properly.W. Sieffert

Thanks for those links, I think I've solved the problem.I did a clean boot (Selective Startup) of Windows XP and FS2002 ran. I added back the System.ini and restarted and it ran again. Then I added in the Win.ini and restarted and it still ran. I added in Services and restarted and it still ran.Then I switched back to Normal Startup and got the same error when starting FS2002. I started to close programs that were running, and the first one I closed was Norton Password Manager. I tried again and FS2002 started fine. I've since started it 4 or 5 times with no problem. Makes sense too, on my old computer I had Norton Anti-virus and Personal Firewall running but didn't have Password Manager.Thanks again for the help.