i am using FS9 with windows 7. when doing a long haul, the computer screen will go into sleep mode. is there a way to prevent this from happening short of going into the computer settings and setting the screen saver to never?

Not sure for FS9. When FSX is the foreground app (ie has input focus) it will attempt to disable screen saver/screen blanking modes, but isn't always successful (particularly if you have a domain-joined machine and the domain requires Screen Locking after x minutes, that happens regardless of what the app tries to do). The main problem is that WIndows doesn't consider joystick input as input (like it does with keyboard and mouse input). If you look around, you might be able to find software that installs as a "virtual keyboard or mouse" that you can set to send some innocuous command (like press and release the shift key, or minimal mouse movement) at some rate slightly faster than the screen saver setting (ie if the screen saver is set for 15 minutes, then send a random "input" event every 12 minutes) - don't know of any software like this off the top of my head, but since the problem exists for any joystick based software, there's probably something like that out there :-> Tim

Thanks for the reply. I will have to look into this. I didn't think of a solution from that angle

Go to Control Panel/Power options/ change plan settings. Set turn screen off to never. Bob