Dear All,I have solved the Fled problem (no I didn't throw the PC out the window!). I never thought I'd be happy to see Fled againKudos to Hans who was closest with his analysis and gave me the clues and I needed to solve this. But thankyou all that offered support and ideas.The problem was a registry problem. You have to manually find it and delete before reinstalling. I re-examined the assumption that I had made a clean install of FU3 by rerunning the uninstall and reinstalling took around 2 hours last night. This time I used a third party uninstaller which uses FU3s uninstaller so I could watch what was coming off the system. The FU3 unistaller leaves some directories and hidden files. You can just delete these with windows explorer but the resgistry still contains fled entries. Even the third party uninstaller could remove everything (which is very uncommon...only MS products normally!!!)When you reinstall because there is a registry entry it obviously doesn't update/put in all files because it assumes certain files are already there. Hence it won't run.For the record, Fled does get patched on install and this probably updates the registry from the original entry.I have a good freeware registry scannr if anyone else runs into this.Never did find out about blackout.bin FLED seems to run happily with out without it. It runs happily when you replace it with another fleds blackout.bin It is not there on initial install. Hmmm.Back to Filton Mk2.Robs

Well done Rob. It is good to know that you have solved your FLED problems. Now I just need to solve the problems I am having trying to flatten a couple of airfields........Chris Low,ENGLAND.

It is one feastday Robs!:-beerchug I delighted by the end of your troubles. When so that we could bring to you, all the pleasure was for us. ;-) Friendships, C'est un jour de f

Big sighs of relief all round! Congratulations on solving a FLED problem - (if you shoot down 5 FLED problems you become an ace). You are now the expert - next time I have a problem I'll give you a call.RobD