Hello Gang!Can someone she some light as to what may cause FS2004 to take a long time to start whenever you launch the program? Is it too many aircraft in the Aircraft folder? Sceneries in the Scenery Addon folder? What gives???Sincerely,Dennis D. Mullert

All of the above. Defrag your disk to help yourself out a little.

Hi Dennis,I agree with Fred "All of he above".Here's what I did and it made a major difference in start up time and aircraft and scenery change time.I've downloaded loads(i mean loads) of freeware addons and have found they can really slow down start up of FS9 as well as changes once it has started. BTW, many thanks to our freeware authors who kindly share their talent, time and effort with our community. Also, many thanks to AVSIM for their most excellent site which is a fantastic resource for our community. I appreciate it very much...... First. I removed whatever addon aircraft I really don't think I'll use often. You can set up a holding folder giving it a name such as "/aircraft not in use" and move those aircaft to that folder. Then if you want to use any of those planes in the future you can just move that aircrafts folder back to /aircraft.Second, I've installed many many scenery addons. I've set up separate folders based on areas or regions I like to fly. (Note: the " " are just for use in this message to distinguish the file names)Examples: "/scenery Alaska BC Wash" "/scenery Europe" "/scenery Islands" "/Scenery Canada" "/Scenery USA" etc.I put the freeware addon scenery folders into the above folders as indicated based on their area.Then I make individual copies of the original "scenery.cfg" file naming them with the same names as my files above. Example: "scenery Alaska BC Wash.cfg" "scenery Europe.cfg" etc.Then I identify (in the appropriate "scenery xxx.cfg file") each of the scenery addons which apply to that "scenery xxx.cfg" Now, as an example when I want to fly in Europe I delete "scenery.cfg". Then i copy and paste "scenery Europe.cfg" and then rename it "scenery.cfg". Now when I start FS9, the "scenery.cfg" applies only to Europe for any addon scenery. Needless to say, the default scenery for all other areas is still available for use.Doing the above means that i manually identify (or activate) scenery addons in the various "scenery xxx.cfg" files.Also, since it takes some time to set up the various folders and files, I've made a special point of saving the "scenery xxx",cfg files and the various "/scenery xxx" folders on cd s. Now if I have to relaod fs9 for any reason, it's fairly easy and not time consuming to just reload the "scenery xxx.cfg" files and "/scenery xxx" folders from the cd s.Hope this helps.

I found that doing a clean reinstall of FS2004 cleans things up and causes it to run smooth again, however it's a lot of work, but worth it in the end (same thing goes for Windows). HMM maybe I should get off my butt and format this thing sometime.

Howdy,>Now, as an example when I want to fly in Europe I delete>"scenery.cfg". Then i copy and paste "scenery>Europe.cfg" and then rename it "scenery.cfg". Do the same meself; great minds think alike, eh? :-lolHowever, instead on manually copying the .cfg, I've sped the process up by creating a simple .bat file for each scenery.cfg file.The following assumes you have a default installation, and that you have a folder in Program Files called World where various subfolders (Default, Oceania, Caribbean, Europe, et cetra) store the appropriate scenery.cfg. Entries enclosed by " " are longer than 8 characters, which DOS don't particularly like.For a Caribbean scenery .cfg .bat, open Notepad, and type the following:c:cd"program files"world"caribbean"copy "scenery.cfg" c:"program files""microsoft games""flight simulator 9"c:and Save As caribbean.bat Voila! A batch file that switches your scenery .cfg file.(Of course, you can create shortcuts on your desktop to activate the various .bat files. Of course, it goes without saying, REMEMBER to periodically backup your scenery.cfg file(s), especially after adding new sceneries.)Just another way to get around the 1000(?) scenery entery limit imposed by FS.