I just regained my fps

I just want to pass this along as another way the wonderful world of PCs can play with our minds.Over the last two months I had worked on tweaking my year and a half old system - a VIA P4 3.0Gig RAID -ATI9700PRO ya da ya da ya . . .After a lot of tweaking I had my system where I liked it for many weeks - I could run most sliders full right with "easy" aircraft in easy areas, backing off just a little in those tough a/c or dense areas. I run UT + GA Traffic bgls at 80%, some times 100% in remote areas. With the default start up at SEA I could get 20-22 fps in the Cessna, Max Density and Autogen, 80% traffic. I was happy with that. I gave up looking at the fps counter.Flying happily along over the pacific in Tahiti in the ATR last week - BAM - hard BSD lock up. Forced to "RESET" as absolutely nothing worked had that awful stuck sound coming from the speakers, everything stuck .I wait awhile check it out, and refly the same flight to completion without incident, including a + two hour return leg without getting out of FS for 5+ hours. Now that area is not fps challenging at all. In the mean time I had also added the Avanti in, and of course some various freeware scenery add ons from AVSIM. Didn't do extended flights, didn't notice much.Then I get in the AVANTI after an update in a denser area and start to notice things seem a bit more sluggish, so I hit the fps counter (which I have tried to stay away from). Maybe its just the update. NO. All of a sudden where I was getting 20-22 fps at KSEA I am now averaging 8-10. Backing off the sliders got that back to 10-12, but add in a tough A/C like the ERJ and we're talking 5-6fps.So I spent most of this week trying to nail down the problem. Scan for viruses, and trojans. Remove the add ons I had put in. Restored my fs9.cfg and scenery.cfgs from back ups.I even backed up with WinZip my Scenery.dats and them all rebuild.Recheck all my video settings.Go through task manager, look at processes for odditiesON AND ON - where did my fps go?????????Finally I dig into device manager. Nothing wrong shows. But, I did have a minor change because I had cleaned my system innards after the crash, and had two usb cables that were put back in each others slot. Was not a big deal - everything worked fine, I had even shut the system down and put the cables back in the original order. Device manager and SiSoft SANDRA showed no conflicts. Based on that USB cord problem and the memory of what an impact USB can have, I did a little research on the VIA boards that had suggested to someone to "uninstall" their USB Controllers, reboot and let XP reinstall. What the heck, even if it crashed the system I'd be no worse off, and may be a fresh install was due. Uninstalled all the entries and rebooted.OK system starts, I'm happy.OK start FS and don't expect anything.BAM - fps back to 20-22.One ghost in the machine exorcised.Joe Lorenc