On closer review, it appears that FSAutostart cannot start FS9 because my CPU is said to be 100% utilized by the Windows Task Manager even when I am doing nothing at all on the PC. This is nuts. I have two startup profiles in Windows XP including a GAMING profile. In regular Windows Profile 1, the CPU is 2% to 5% utilized which is normal on my PC. But in Gaming mode, the CPU usage is now stated as 100% which is totally insane, so it's no wonder that FS9 will not boot using FSAutostart.Can anybody figure this out?Appreciate any help, thanks!JS

Hi, which process is eating up the CPU? Click on the Processes tab in the Task Manager, the click on the CPU column to sort by CPU utilization.

Ken:Get this: I just checked again with Jeff Williams, master of the PC and FS universe, and we found that a DELL keyboard .exe file is eating 99% of resources. I was speechless!This is nuts: it is the very file I loaded onto my PC after a virus wrecked part of my DELL multimedia keyboard capabilities last weekend. After hours of troubleshooting what had gone on, I reloaded the driver from the DELL factory supplied CD-ROM and the keyboard works great again now; but in my Windows custom GAMING mode on the PC, this DELL keyboard exe file eats up all of the CPU!If I disable this DELL keyboard exe file, FSAutostart works great and I am back to 22 fps with 80% AI UT traffic as well. But then I lose some of the functionality of the DELL keyboard (although the flaps work!)So now, I need to figure out what to do next. Any ideas?Thanks for posting and e-mailing too.JS

You say you had a virus that affected the keyboard before. How are you sure the virus is completely gone? Viruses can be stuburn. You may think you got rid of it, but it actually just went into hiding. The only true way to know for sure a virus is gone after infection, is a low level format of your HD A reset of your CMOS and a reinstallation of the OS. Now I'm not recommending that you do this at this stage, but just wanted to make you aware your virus may still be there. Don't trust completely your Anti-virus software either as some viruses have the capability to fool them so they won't be detected. My sugguestion is to contact Dell support and see if others have the same problem with the driver. It may just be a bug that Dell needs to fix. (Hopefully) Another thing you may be able to try if you can, is try to use a different AV program to see if it could detect a problem. If a virus is affecting your current AV software, it's possible a different one may not be. One other thing! You want to make sure you close all outgoing and incoming ports via a firewall (Preferably with a Hardware Router firewall) except the ones you normally use for your web browser email etc. If it is a virus the hacker may have planted a backdoor access get into your system which he/she could use to get info from your system, or use your system as a proxy to attack other systems. I don't mean to scare you, and except that you said your system was infected recently, it would be a remote possibility. These however are the possible consequences of a virus attack!!

I understand your comments and thank you for them. My PC is heavily shielded already and I am fairly certain that the trojan got in because I temporarily disabled my popup blocker (supplied by my ISP) and I also recall taking down the firewall for a while as well.In any event, I am no expert. Mostly, I am just worn down with PC management-and-engineering for this hobby and for my own surfing pleasure. It's all become such a nightmare dealing with every alarm and alert. I do what I can. I've spent 15 hours in the past one week dealing with the virus, trojan, the keyboard exe files, and today's madness with FSAutostart and my CPU !Not to rant or appear ungrateful. I am just demoralized and worn down physically and mentally by this stuff.FS9 now works although I need to fiddle a bit at the front end and I just took off in a 777 with new GE engines (super deep low G sounds!)and had a great night flight around KSEA with USA Roads below me and enjoyed forgetting all about the horrors of these past few days!Thanks again for your post. Maybe I'll sleep on it.Cheers!JS

Well, there must be a dependency that this driver needs that is not present in the GAMING mode on your PC.Personally I hate those keyboard things ;-)I'm glad at least that it wasn't MY software :-lolI would look for differences between the two profiles, or call whoever setup your GAMING profile for more support.

Yeah,. I guess so, Ken.Thanks again.JS