Thank you,dear friends for your help;I downloaded DirectX 9 from the web but the problem persists;after clicking on the icon,a 747 screen appears with "MSFS Pro Edition" and then a message informing me "traffic.dll" might not be compatible with this version and asking whether it should be loaded;Ihave tried both 'yes' and 'no' but the system simply returns to the desktop without further hard disk activity;my computer is a Dell Inspiron(PIII 800Mhz-256MBRAM) with integrated graphics for which I have downloaded the latest version as well;as an additional piece of information,FS98 runs perfectly;what should I try,hardware and/or softwarewise?thank you sincerely for your time.