hmmm - I was flying the takeoff and landing mission (helicopter) and thinking - I should post a positive review at avsim - just to balance out things. Frame rates are ok, and the sim looks gorgeous on my low end machine (3GHz P4, nVidia 7300GS , 2 G ram) then zonealarm popped up, minimizing the FSX to ask me to allow/deny something to phone home. Clicked deny, and tried to get back to the sim - I can't! It is still running, shows in the task bar, and the task manager shows it as running (as opposed to not responding), yet I cannot anyway or how get back in. Clicking on the minimized window does nothing, using the 'switch to' in task manager does nothing, alt-tab does nothing. THis is not the first time I noticed this, and the program has essentially crashed - it has just done so very politely. I don't know if you would categorize this as a CTD or not.Dang - just when I was started to enjoy it!!

I've had a similar occurance. I've been flying with frame rates around 20 and then they just drop to between 2 and 6. No matter what I do they do not improve. When I press the ALT key to exit the sim locks up completely. I can not even invoke the task manager or minimize FSX. I must hard-reboot the system. I can't pin down what I am doing that causes this and my system is far from basic. Any ideas?My System:HomebuiltMobo MSI 975X platinumCPU Conroe E66002gigs Corsair XMS2BFG Geforce 7600GT OC