This game is driving me nuts! I've been reinstalling it over and over, trying to get it to work again. Read my post "Well I screwed up again" for details. It seems every time I reinstall it will work a little better, but it still sucks!  It's just really slow, chugging away like I'm running it on 98MB RAM, I HAVE 512!!! It was working great before I uninstalled. I must have done something last time to get it to work.  I tried defraging, reintalling new video drivers, reinstalling over and over! NOTHING!.
This has to have happened to someone else.
Please Help Me!!!
Darcy

I went back 3 pages to find your earlier post "Well I screwed up again" and I ain't going back any further. I'm on 56K dialup and this forum is slow anyway.

EDIT:  I found your "Well I screwed up again" thread. I must be going blind. If ya try everything that was recommended in that thread, and what I recommend below and it doesn't help.... you may want to really consider formatting and clean installing XP. But if everything else in your computer is working 100%, I guess it's possible that your CFS3 disk is bad. But try to install it on a friends computer and see how it goes. All CDs get a little warm in the CD drive. It's hot laser light reading the disk.

You need to post your system specs.

My specs are:

Alienware Intel D850GB mobo w/P4_1.3GHz 400MHz FSB CPU upgraded to a P4_2.0(A) with the PowerLeap PL-P4/N adapter and then finally to the P4_2.6GHz. I'm tired of smearing thermal grease!
Sony 21" Multiscan E540/B
WinXP Pro_SP-1
512MBs PC-800 RDRAM
Radeon 9700 Pro w/Catalyst 3.4 Driver Suite
DirectX_9.0
40GB 7200RPM IBM Deskstar
Creative Soundblaster Live! Value (yeah, I know!)
Klipsch ProMedia 4.1 speakers
U.S. Robotics 56K Fax PCI (ain't offered broadband here yet)
HOTAS Cougar joystick/throttle
Latest 3DMark2001 SE = 14,230

If your specs are anywhere near mine or better you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever simming CFS3.

If you're running an older video card like anything slower than an nVidia Ti4200 or some MMX version or an ATI 9500 or slower with a CPU (processor) less than a P4_2.0 or there abouts you're gonna have stuttering in your game. But depending on what you have under the hood will let us know if your computer is running up to par.  But......

FIRST, you need to uninstall your older video card drivers completely from the Control Panel or in the Device Manager/Hardware then restart your computer. Either place will do. Also remove your video card's "Control Panel" from XP's or 98's "Control Panel" Add or Remove Programs feature.

Then restart your computer again. When it restarts it will know that you uninstalled your video card drivers and ask you if you want to install them again. Then hit CANCEL, then hit CANCEL again on the next window until you get to your desktop which now should look big (large, low resolution icons) and like crap ... because you are now using the default Windows VGA drivers at a very low resolution.

Then search for the new driver EXE file (hopefully the latest version ... ATI's latest are the Catalyst 3.5s) that you downloaded, 2 click on the file and follow the directions to install them. Make sure you turn off your Anti-virus software .... and anything else that you have running in the System Tray first. It's in the lower right hand corner of your desktop area. Right click on everything there one at a time and choose "Exit" or "Close" or whatever that particular program uses to shut itself off with.

This should get you up and running okay. Then if you want to, download and install the "Control Panel" for your video card. Then restart again, 2 click on the video card EXE file for the video card "Control Panel" which will enable you to can adjust your video card.

Then restart again for good measure.

If that doesn't get you going right then you have some other problem with your computer.

Download and install Microsoft's DirectX 9a. It's a little tricky to install this properly but you can do it. Read the installation instructions carefully at the MS DirestX website. Check to make sure you are now running DirectX_9a.

Another thing, after you properly uninstall CFS3, restart your computer again and go into C:\ Program Files\Microsoft Games and DELETE the Combat Flight Simulator 3 FOLDER. Then restart again and then reinstall CFS3.

If you have Reg_Clean or RegCleaner you can run that once for the hell of it after you DELETE the Combat Flight Simulator 3 FOLDER.

Not knowing what your system specs are it's really hard to diagnose your problems.

But it's always a good idea to format and clean install your Operating System every six months to a year and clear all that old crap off your hard drive and start fresh. It's a pain to do it, but you'll be starting afresh and everything will work better and faster. Just make sure that you back up everything that you want to save because once you format everything that's on your hard drive will be wiped clean / deleted.

Check out this website if you need help with formatting and clean installing Windows XP.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

Good luck Darcy.