just purchased and installed the 737NG wit FSX Steam edition.

I created a and saved a flight with the aircraft in the cold and dark state. When I start the engines they run correctly but the fans are not animated when I go to the exterior view.  However if I just start FSX with the plane in the default state, the engines are running and the engine fans are animated.

Don't quote me, but I think the trick for correct cold and dark startup for the PMDG aircraft is based on using a default aircraft to create the cold and dark scenario for the "Default Flight"  Then every flight created after that should have your aircraft, PMDG included, working correctly.

If I'm wrong, I'll take away my dessert tonight!

Yes load the Cessna at any airfield. Shut down, turn everything off. Then save the flight, but make sure to tick the little box at lower right corner saying make this default or something along those lines. 

But to my memory, although this method works for most other planes; example A2A etc, with the ngx, pretty sure you will still need to go into the FMC > PMDG options and select the cold and dark panel state.

56 minutes ago, bob755 said:

 just purchased and installed the 737NG wit FSX Steam edition.

I created a and saved a flight with the aircraft in the cold and dark state. When I start the engines they run correctly but the fans are not animated when I go to the exterior view.  However if I just start FSX with the plane in the default state, the engines are running and the engine fans are animated.

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You can not have as a startup state the NGX or any other complex addon. You need to start FSX on the select flight screen with the default strike and select the NGX from there. You can have the NGX starting with cold and dark state using the provided saved panels. More info on this in the introduction document.

Ok Thanks.

The problem was that I created a cold and dark startup state with a cessna, changed the aircraft to the NGX and saved it.  Loading this state caused the engine animation problem to show.