I have been running into this problem off and on for about the last year. Until recently, the only way I could get FSX to load when it crashed on startup was to delete the fsx.cfg file and let it create a new one. That solution isn't ideal because when you do that you lose all of your settings. But reconfiguring was better than not flying.I was reading a post recently where someone said that he did a lot of research on the startup crash problem and found that it occured most frequently when changes had been made to the default flight. That fit the bill for me because I am always tweaking something. Anyway, what I found was that if I go into my fsx.cfg file and find the Situation= line and remove .FLT from the end then FSX will start normally.Might not work for you but it's worth a shot.Mike