Here's a problem for all you experts out there. I think of myself as a bit of an expert, but I am not able to solve this.Having used most of the previous versions of FS with great enthousiasm, I bought FS9 as soon as it was available. I was in for a considerable disappointment. The program won't run on my machine. Installation went very smoothly, but every time I tried to run the program I got the (generic) error message that "flightsimulator encountered a problem", was "sorry for the inconvenience" and "had to shut down". This happens right after the CD-rom check and before anything was put on the screen. Microsoft, when asked for help, suggested problems with my videocard (Geforce 3 Ti 200) and its driver. But these problems pertained to difficulties with the screen after the program started. I never got that far.Thinking that maybe the problem was my updating 98 2dn ed. to XP professional, I formatted my C-drive and performed a new, clean installation during the Christmas holidays. Same result: FS9 refuses to start and displays the same error message, which is not very informative. Again, I asked Microsoft for help, but the only suggestion was that I should shut down anti-virus- and firewall-programs before installing the videodriver and FS9. Which I did and which didn't help. No further suggestions form MS.I am running XP Pro on a machine with an Aopen Ax4b Pro motherboard with 512 Mb and a Intel Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz. Videocard is the Geforce 3 Ti 200, running under the Nvidia 53.03 driver and DirectX 9.0b. I am running quite a number of very diverse programs (including FS2002), but FS9 is the only one that gives me this problem.Anybody out there with suggestions? I am pretty desperate.

Probably not going to help much but I had some problems with the 53.03 drivers and went back to the 52.16.However it didn't stop things running - just slowed them down.Dave

Are there any entries logged in the XP Application or System error logs?

Update your MOBO Controller Chip drivers, i.e., Intel, VIA, SiS, AMD, ALi. If you didn't install MOBO Controller Chip drivers after you installed WinXP, then that could be part of your problem. The drivers provided on the WinXP CD are basic and don't provide the functionality to use the CPU to AGP interface.If you have Intel chips, you will also want to download and install the Intel Diskdrive Accelerator software.Lastly, make sure you are starting FS2004 on an Administrator account for the first time or the installation will not succeed.http://download.aopen.com.tw/downloads/def...anguage=EnglishW. Sieffert

Thanks for the advise, guys. In response: I tried several of the Nvidia drivers to no avail. Even went back to the 45.something. Didn't work. There was an error report, but it didn't help. Here's the text: Faulting application fs9.exe, version 9.0.0.30612, faulting module ~df394b.tmp, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x000548ed. A temporary file that is causing the problem? That's not saying very much. At least not to me.On the chip set files: that was good advise. I completely forgot about that, mainly because I seem to remember that Intel discontinued the further development for the 845 chip. Anyway, I tried the files found on the Aopen site, but again, didn't work. Still, I have a hunch that there is something wrong with the hardware.So what now? I've been counting my money and maybe I'll buy me a new computer. It's been three years.Thanks again for the advise.

I know that those brief log entries aren't very informative but sometimes they at least point in a certain direction such as atc.dll, etc.I don't know what the ~.....tmp module does precisely but I think I remember someone saying it has to do with copy protection, although I'm not sure. The module name looks similar to the name that you see running in the processes list of Task Manager when FS9 is running.

The name is also similar to the modules that get left over in the Documents and Settings/Owner/Local Settings/Temp folder which is used for storing cleanup and restart information from installs, etc.The name looks to be merely a hex random number followed by .tmp. I viewed one of the ones in my temp folder using a hex editor and the info in the module reads 'Macrovision CleanUp Application', however they are created by FS9.Could it be that your disk4 has a bad track or maybe related to the CD drive or CD software that was forgotten during your install.

Hi !How did you solve the problem ?I'm having the same problem on the startup of FS2004.Tnks.