I just received an invitation to join the Microsoft FS2004 survey. After installing the monitoring software FS9 ran like total crap - and a spyware scan today showed spyware on my system - and now everything is completely screwed up. This is the only file I've downloaded lately, and the only file downloaded before my system went screwy.I'm not saying it is for sure the source of my problems, but the timing would say it is, and I cannot think of anything else that caused this. It looks like I will have to format - my registry is messed up.Anyways could anyone else confirm or deny this? I have a feeling there may be some imposter survey emails out there - this may or may not be true, so don't freak out if you are doing the survey too, but if anyone else has experienced some spyware issues after installing it - please respond.

I was afraid of that. That's why I sent an email to Micro$oft last night before downloading anything. I'm waiting for a response from them before I try it.

What was the e mail address from where you received the file? What did the message enclosing it say and did you take part in the original survey? Maybe the answers will help others.

Good idea - if we find different people are getting different info - then something fishy could be going on, but if it's all the same then the source of my problems may have been from elsewhere.I did both the original survey and the lengthly usage survey, no problems from those of course as they were web based, and seemed quite legit. I'm quite sure that the survey as a whole is legit - my concern is that the email itself may have been an imposter. Even then it doesn't seem all that likely, but I didn't have any problems until I installed it either.Email from "The Microsoft Flight Simulator Team" address "[email protected]" subject - "Welcome to the Flight Simulator 2004 Data Survey "(I would like to point out that a lot of spam will have @microsoft.com addresses etc. so that in no way guarantees it is real)Hi David Voogd: Greetings from the Flight Simulator team: At long last the new hardware is up and running and ready to start collecting data from all of you who have been so patient about helping us out. We

Also the spyware was discovered by Trend Micro's Housecall - http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Hi David,Thats the same email and sender address that I received. I downloaded and installed the software. I have had no performance issues after installing.I have scanned with Sypbot, Adaware and the MS Antispyware and nothing. Not much help I guess, but hopefully you can get things resolved.

The download from the FS team is probably not your problem. I have the same and have no problems.

No problems here either!my mail is like that one, the sofware HAS NO IMPACT on the system, I have scaned the system for any malware and its clean as it can be, so I don't think it is the MS program fault.

The same here, same address and no problems with FS acting any different. I think something else has changed in your system.Bob

Thanks guys - I believe the real problem was the "anti-spyware" scanner being a bit overzealous and misinterpretting stuff as spyware - unfortunately it also screwed up some parts of the registry so I may have to format. LOL leave it to the scanner to screw things up!As for the performance issues in FS itself - I'm not sure why when I installed the software I started getting problems - perhaps the installation was faulty.Thanks again

If your antivirus scanner is suspect, was it also active while you installed the MS files? If so, this may have caused the registry / performance issues you now see.