yeah, I know - done to death.. :) but people still have them and sometimes it's not fixed by UIAutomationCore.dll, or other fixes... cleaning up my old email today, I came across this note to myself. I'm not the author, and I don't know where it came from, but it worked for somebody at some time, so it's worth a shot if you are one of the "still freezing" guys:-

....sometimes the window were freezing. I had sound and everything on the background but the image was frozen. I'm using Windows 7 but I saw many people with Vista having the same problem and perhaps with FSX as well.How to fix it: Right click on the FSX icon; Properties; Compatibility; "Disable desktop composition".

I use this and still get black screens after going to the menu.