As the topic says, I have some goofy things going on with FS, as well as some other things, but I'll keep it on FS for now. First of all, I'll say I have all the latest drivers (soundcard, video, motherboard) I can't maximize FSX in windowed mode without the entire screen turning black. If I resize the screen to just barely not cover the entire screen, I do get a picture. I get all sorts of strange graphic distortions within FS, and the screen will flash rapidly for a few seconds from time to time--that happens when FS isn't running as well.I've tried several different display drivers. I'm using an eVGA mobo with the SLI 680i under Windows Vista 32 bit with a GeForce 7600GTX. This board is the first time I've used SLI, so one question I have is does it matter which PCIe slot I put the video card in? I've kept it in one slot the whole time--the slot closest to the CPU.Any ideas?Thanks,Tim

>As the topic says, I have some goofy things going on with FS,>as well as some other things, but I'll keep it on FS for now. >First of all, I'll say I have all the latest drivers>(soundcard, video, motherboard) >>I can't maximize FSX in windowed mode without the entire>screen turning black. If I resize the screen to just barely>not cover the entire screen, I do get a picture. I get all>sorts of strange graphic distortions within FS, and the screen>will flash rapidly for a few seconds from time to time--that>happens when FS isn't running as well.>>I've tried several different display drivers. I'm using an>eVGA mobo with the SLI 680i under Windows Vista 32 bit with a>GeForce 7600GTX. This board is the first time I've used SLI,>so one question I have is does it matter which PCIe slot I put>the video card in? I've kept it in one slot the whole>time--the slot closest to the CPU.>>Any ideas?>Thanks,>TimI am having the same problem with FSX, not with other programs. I have an Nvidia 8800 GTX single card with the latest drivers running under Windows Vista.

So I've played around with it a little bit more, and when I have it in windowed mode, not maximized, I can manually stretch it to cover just about the entire screen, but as soon as it touches th taskbar, I get a completely black screen.Something else interesting...everytime I start FSX, I et the popup saying Vista has changed to visual basic mode. Is that normal?Tim

Have you read phil taylors blog http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007...-available.aspx

I deduce that you have an SLI mobo with a single graphics card. Ok I have a similar setup (Lanparty SLI mobo and 8800GTX graphics card). My BIOS gives me the option to choose which PCIex slot is to be the master or intial display. You might care to check this out and correct it if it is wrong. Your Mobo manual should indicate which PCIex slot is which. Checking this is a good place to start. I don't know how your mobo manual identifies the PCIex slots but put your graphics card in the highest priority slot ie. slot 0 if they are labelled 0 and 1.Hope this helps.John

Well I looked at the manual for my mobo, and I see there are two PCIe x16 slots--one is GPU 1 the other 2, and then there is a "graphics expansion" slot. Whatever that means. Anyway, my card was in the GPU 1 slot, so I tried moving it to 2, and I see no noticeable difference at all. Also, I don't see any setting to select which slot to be primary. One more annoying problem is that I can't connect my monitor using a DVI cable. My graphics card has 2 DVI inputs, but the only way I can use my monitors is by using a VGA cable with a DVI adapter--very annoying...Tim

Could be a Vista driver issue. The DVI converter is not an issue. Although at the moment I am running DVI direct I used converters (with 1 and 2 Graphics cards in and out of SLI) for several years without a problem. I would put my money on a driver issue, it may be the driver itself or it may be a bad installation.John

A "black screen" search on AVSIM indicates others have fixed this by simply deleting the FSX/FS9 cfg and letting it rebuild itself. Perhaps this will solve your problem.Jim

Thanks for the tip, but I also found that solution and to no avail unfortunately.Tim

Try turning off Aero. It uses DirectX 9 and is probably conflicting with FlightSim.http://www.ppcug-nj.org/newsltrs/200704.pdf(Search for Aero)"Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

Hey thanks for the tip--that sent me in the right direction. If I switch to Vista basic theme, it still will not display correctly, but if I switch to Windows Classic theme, it will work...Tim