I uninstalled an add-on aircraft and at the end of the uninstall process the installer asked me to restart my system. Odd, but okay - so I shut down all my apps myself and then hit "Finish" to let the installer reboot my machine. After rebooting and re-installing the product (I had tweaked it out and wanted to revert back to initial install) I went and opened FSX to find that a black screen was all that would appear in the aircraft preview window. When I click "Fly Now!" it loads the flight fine and I hear the plane running and when I pan around with my joystick I can hear the sounds change as the camera moves, and I hear ATC communications running fine. I tried (temporarily) removing ENB, I tried when Shade was running and not running, I tried forcing FSX to make a new fsx.cfg file, I tried resetting my ATI graphics settings back to default, I tried moving the window to other monitors (I run 2 gfx cards), I tried resizing the window, I tried starting FSX without the frame-limiter batch file, I tried rebooting my machine again and I tried doing a complete shut down and restart - none of these had any effect. Still black screen, still FSX running just fine in all other aspects. I had upgraded to new ATI drivers (11.8) recently but had run the sim several times fine since then. The only other thing is this weird yellowish bloom that crawls across the aircraft preview screen to gradually cover it completely when the sim first starts. Doesn't appear when the flight is loaded though: Any ideas? I'm on the verge of doing a re-install of FSX and would definitely like to avoid that if possible obviously!

The "yellowish bloom" that crawls across the preview screen is FS Bob. That's what you have loaded in item 1. You somehow made FS Bob your default aircraft. FS Bob is a freeware utility from Orbx/FTX. It's a utility that allows you to get up and close to the nice FTX scenery. I have downloaded the utility but haven't installed it yet. Best regards, Jim

Beautiful, Jim! Y'know I puzzled over this one, but didn't notice the aircraft name! Good one!

FS Bob isn't my default aircraft it's just the aircraft I have selected for my default flight which I load for scenery design. Anyways that's not the issue. It doesn't matter what plane I have loaded. I can go into the aircraft menu and select any plane I want. Black screen

Return to a single monitor. Fix the problem then set up multiple monitors again. In your OP, the photo included did not show a problem and correctly showed FS Bob. You state this is not the problem so why the photo? It's strange FS Bob shows up but not other aircraft. I believe now your issue is with your multiple monitor setup. Best regards,Jim

In your OP, the photo included did not show a problem and correctly showed FS Bob.

No, it didn't correctly show FS Bob. I'm not sure what you normally see when you load up FSX but for me, since the time I first installed it in 2006, you get a background picture of earth and sky upon which a 3D model of whatever craft you have selected is visible rotating slowly. Ever since I installed FS Bob 2 yrs ago when it loads I get the background image and just no model (understandably). Now I get a black screen. And I also get no rendering at all when I load a flight, although in all other respects (sound, AI, menus) FSX appears to run just fine. Damn. I found a system restore point just earlier than the uninstall that I think started all this and just finished a restore... no effect :(

well I went out onto the WWW to search for some more answers and came across a similar issue although in this case the guy installed an add-on aircraft that caused it rather than uninstalling. Anyways he fixed it with a Repair from the FSX install disc so I popped in the FSXA install disc, selected Repair from the install menu and crossed my fingers... Happy to say it worked. Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions though.