Thanks for the input guys, I solved my problems (Intervideo was the problem ...)

thanks for the info. Unfortunately it did not work (actually, I had to do ctrl-F many times to find nero elements and Ahead elements). Well, tomorrow I am borrowing a DVD drive from a friend. Maybe that drive will be able to recognise the disk...

my friend didn't want to borrow his DVD drive. He got all nervous about taking it out of his PC. What a shame. I don't want to buy a new drive and find it doesn't work either...These DVD's, are they double layer? I'm wondering if that could cause the problem with my DVD. Although it is supposed to be able to write dual layer, I was not aware of it when I bougt it.

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=48J2This is the drive I have in my FSX only rig. Works fine, it is a very fast burning drive too, so worth buying.

Probably the easiest way is to leave a message at the NEC support page and see if they have any answers.The dvd's are single layer.Ed

I agree with Ed, I'd start by going to NEC's site and also googling your DVD's name. Perhaps others have had similar problems.Barring that, a DVD drive is relatively cheap as computer parts go...One thing about it, if you put a new DVD drive in there, and it STILL did not work, you would know the fault was not with your DVD drive.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Reth, Does FSX run well on your AMD based PC? I'm considering buying a new basic system, but don't want to splash out too much money AMD being the cheapest, would you recon I best get an AMD based system, or rather intel dual core system (dual core 2 goes above my budget for a whole new system)

>Reth, Does FSX run well on your AMD based PC? I'm considering>buying a new basic system, but don't want to splash out too>much money AMD being the cheapest, would you recon I best get>an AMD based system, or rather intel dual core system (dual>core 2 goes above my budget for a whole new system)My PC (specs below) runs FSX amazingly well...it surprises me. Considering I built it as an "interim" PC to see me through the last days of FS2004, I think it's a real performer for having spent just under $1050 for it in January 06, and a lot of that cost was the power supply...From the way you sound, you have an Intel system, probably a late gen P4. If I were you, I would consider the fact that Core2 systems right now are the best value all around. The E6400 is inexpensive and can be overclocked nicely. I wouldn't buy a single-core cpu now, like I have, because the benefits of dual-core are growing by the day. I don't know if you can even buy a fast single-core like I have anymore.If you just can't stand your FSX performance anymore, then by all means upgrade...but you might see what SP1 gives us. It might make FSX workable on your present computer...at least give it a little more life for FSX yet.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Success!!! I borrowed an external DVD player from work, and... It works! I managed to install FSX nicely, without any problems. Well, it made a small hickup when it asked for disk 2. I put the disk in, and let it get up to speed and clicked "ok". But windows kept asking for the disk. So I took it out and put it in. This time I did not wait for teh disk to spin up and I just clicked "ok" immediately. And that did the trick. Installed liek a charm!Now I do have to say, on my system it does run a bit too slow (if you want some level of detail). So when my profit share comes in, I may buy a new basic PC system.Since I have an Apple iMac G5 as my main system (for photography), I don't want to spend too much money on a basic PC system. The cheaper the better.I realise I can'yt have an AGP card anymore as that bus seem sto become outdated. AMD is still there, though starting to lag behind, depsite that AMD has dual core processors (I might set up a RAID installation to get FSX to run faster. Don't know if that will work though). In any case, I won't spend more than 300 GBP on a basic system (actually, that is almost everything, except preipherals as I might get 2 the same harddrives for teh RAID setup...)Thanks for your help guys. Hope to see you out there when Flying FSX!

If money is a factor, before I went with RAID on an FS system, I would instead put that money into a faster cpu. Fast cpu is king in any computer built for FS. If you don't want to spend a large amount of $ then I would ditch the RAID (which will help in load times, but not appreciably with frame rate) and instead put that money toward a faster cpu.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case