HiI tried a re-install early on in this as I didn't connect the earlier apps failure with DX9. When it first started, I had just installed FS9. At that point, I uninstalled the old apps, de-frag'd, and then re-installed. No effect.I did try 2) tonight. I hadn't thought to try that. Unfortunately, that didn't work either. I think my next step needs to be to contact MS and make sure that they aren't going to give me a hard time about installing the same copy of Win XP on the same machine, on two partitions. If I have to dual boot, I'd still prefer XP on both sides but if activation is going to be a problem I'll dig an old copy of WinME out for those old apps.

I have a dual XP boot, on two separate disks.There is no problem with the activation, as all hardware remains the same.If you create a new boot disk, or boot from a different partition, be sure to use the "custom" installation of FS9, to avoid installing DX9.With a dual boot system you can profit of a "clean boot" (see another thread in this forum) which will free all possible resources to FS9.Best Regards,

Can anyone tell be what the difference is between DX9 and DX9.0b. Any real improvements. My windows version is XP home. thanks

There is a utility available on the net which uninstalls directX, just do a search for directx uninstall or something on google. then you can put the original Version 8 back on, saves you reformatting at least.

Just curious, did you try upgrading your Video & Sound drivers to the latest versions?The only time I have ever seen problems with things like DirectX is with old drivers. It is not DirectX's fault, it is your antique drivers. DirectX is 100% backlevel compliant.Other thing to check, people who have cards like Creavice Sound Blaster can not run DirectX with full hardware acceleration enabled. Go into DXDIAG and move the sider down to Basic Acceleration. Try the same with your Video card if you still have problems.99% of all computer problems are caused by old drivers and out of date updates. If you keep your drivers current and your software all patched up, you'll never have problems.