Greetings all.My FS2004 shows the splash screen when starting up then . . . nothing. The splash screen disappears and that's it. No FS2004 at all.Now I know you are thinking "go to tech support about that one", but guys i am going to beg for some peer to peer help here. I do not believe in investing the money it costs to get flight simulator just to pay 35 dollars per instance to have them tell me the generic default "update your drivers and such" spew.So I will try my best to explain in detail the troubleshooting steps I have performed and see if there may be a possibility someone sees something I missed?The following has been cobvered:________________________________Latest sound and video drivers installed.Latest chipset drivers installed.DirectX up to date.MULTIPLE reinstalls in different directories, so it is not a "bad section" of my hard drive.2 complete reinstalls of Windows OS followed by reupdates to latest driversTested multiple other vbgames such as FS2002, VTM, Morrowind, etc. All work wonderfly. Over 45 other games tested with no issues.Video card and sound card located as far from each other as physically possible to rule out IRQ conflict--------------------------------Okay, so with all of that ruled out, is there something else I can possibly try? I will include my hardware configuration, though as kind of a computer nerd I know that hardware has NOTHING to do with software performance, but just in case . . . She's a home built system with an MSI K7N2Delta motherboard, AMD Athlon XP 2.8GB processor, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB AGP Video, Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS Sound, 200GB of hard drive space with 40GB allocated to FS2002 and 40 allocated to FS2004 (ruling out space issues for sure).Does anyone else have this strange problem with only their FS2004? I'd hate to think that I wasted 54 bucks on this since software cannot be returned.Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, guys.Christopher N. Dittmatr

Update . . . . Upon someone's suggestion I downloaded and installed the no-cd patch from Simviation. Unfortunately this did not help. However, now at least I get an "error report" screen when I try to start FS2004. Whatever is wrong it is not my CD Rom drive. Narrowed down to definately something on my machine.Chris

Hi Chris,You seem to have pretty much covered the hardware and driver issues. The fact that you have run so many different games on the system certainly points to FS. Which leads to this:"Whatever is wrong it is not my CD Rom drive."I wouldn't be so certain that there isn't a problem with the copy protection software included in FS9. There could be a problem with the software itself, or an imcompatibility between the protection software and your CD-ROM.Do you have access to another flavor of CD-ROM drive? Might be worthwhile to test with it.Good luck,

What does the error report indicate when you press the blue details selection?http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;303032http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;310353W. Sieffert

**shrug** I went to answer that question for you and found that it only did the error message once. Now it is back to the old Splash Screen the quit routine -- no werror message -- nothing. Completely uninstalled FS2k4. Reinstalled. Same result. Uninstalled and reinstalled Windows XP. Same issue. All drivers are up to date. All BIOS is up to date. Sound and Video is updated as necessary. Running DirectX 9b -- latest version.:-(Chris

Tested this theory in both CD ROM drive and DVD Drive. Also tried install from both drives on seperate installs. Same effect :-(Chris

Those links come up as bad. Chris

Can you start in Safe Mode?

Here is a quick question for you, when you reinstalled your OS did you format the drive or did you do a more "repair" type of reinstall? The reason that I ask is that FS9 will not uninstall every file related to it, for example I think that it leaves the FS9.cfg file so if that was corrupt and never deleted or erased that may be your problem. I am just reaching for a possibility here.Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

I reformatted.In answer to the other question, I will try safe mode tomorrow and see how that works. I wasnt aware that Safe Mode would even run the sim since DirectX, video and audio are all disabled for this and FS9 will not work without DX9. But I shall try anyway . . . i will keep you posted onwhat I find this round.Chris

I think that what he meant by safe mode was FS safe mode, if you hit the Start button then go to Microsoft Games/FS2004/Troubleshooter you will find an item called Safe Mode that might help you out. Best of luck!Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

I had a similar problem with an Add-on scenery. Is this a fresh install with no add-ons?

Hi,Just a long shot but I had the same issue with my PC at work, which I use during my lunch sometimes to fly MSFS. It was bringing up the splash and hanging. I changed my FS config file under the 'Documents and SettingsUserApplicationsFS9 folder and changed the graphics resolution section from '1024x768x32' to '1024x768x16' (without the quotes). Basically changing it from 32 bit color to 16. My PC at work has Intel integrated graphics (not a good graphics adapter solution but it works). Once it started I was able to change it back to 32 bit color.Good luck,Tom

Delete your fs9.cfg and let fs9 rebuild it automatically on the next start up. it worked for me.hope this helps, good luck

This is indeed as fresh install with no addons.