???
For some unknown reason, FS2002 was running at 3 or 4 fps.  It had been running fine at near 30 with details at medium.  I tried a fix someone suggested, which was to reset the config file by holding down "ctrl and shift" during startup.  It worked.

I left it, turned off the PC, and when I started it up again, it was back to 3 or 4 fps.  This time the "ctrl-shift" fix didn't do a thing.

Any suggestions?

I have an AMD 1600+, Geforce3 Ti200, 512 megs. ram, Soundblaster Audigy.

Other games like IL2 and Grand Prix Legends still run fine, so it seems to be a FS2002-specific problem.

Try disabling you're sound. I know it's far fetched, but every great once in a while the same thing will happen with me and I have to re-install my sound drivers

Herein lies the answer LOL.

Ok - first, does he log off or switch user? If he switches user, all the stuff running in the other user account is still running.

That obviously means you're running out of RAM and CPU cycles fast.

The other thing is that WinXP shares the same problem of all other windows operating systems: poor memory management.

If you're going to run FS2002 having run another large application (even, in your case, FS2002 itself as Windows will treat it separately as it's on a separate account) you'll run out of RAM. When you close a program, you may think it's gone, but a significant portion of it will still be sitting in memory. A re-boot is the only safe way of clearing it out.

Oh, didn't see your post tipster. That makes sense

The strange thing is, however. that if my son logs on first and tries to run FS, it bogs at 3 or 4 fps, even if no one else has logged on.  More fiddling required, I guess.