All of a sudden, my computer has suddenly developed a case of serious stutters. I was locked at and getting steady 16 with UTUSA and sliders to the right. Then over the past couple days, and at its worst today, I was dropping down to 4-9 almost immediately on flying. It would be at 16 for a minute or 5 minutes, but then it would drop and stay there at the low numbers. I tried everything, defragging, I went through my textures and reduced the AEU and airland1 textures per the directions tried all sorts of combinations of terrain settings in FS9.cfg, even tried to delete and create a new FS9.cfg. It finally dawned on me it may be the heat of my laptop. The weather has been hotter, and today I had put the laptop inside a box as a sunshade because tomorrow I'm going to be demoing FS9 outside for a gathering.Well, to make a long story shorter, I put an icepack under the computer, and the performance managed to stay around 16 with only one short drop for a little bit through a 10 minute flight. And this was only a minute after putting the icepack underneath, I imagine leaving it there would probably do better. So, watch your heat.2. In the process of creating the new FS9.cfg, however, I've generated a CTD source. I can't save flights anymore. Everytime I try to start a flight I saved after the FS9.cfg remake, FS crashes. If I start an old one, no problem. I've compared the files, and I can't see any difference. I tried to use a .WX file from an old flight in a new one, but still I get a crash. FS starts, the little white window comes up saying loading textures, but the bar never starts and then I get a CTD. Any ideas?ThanksThomas

Any thoughts on my problem with the crash while loading a newly saved flight?Hmm, I suppose I could delete all the new flights, and go back to the old fs9.cfg. Guess I'll try that first.It's weird, I can't see any major difference between the old and new .FLT files.Thomas