Hello and welcome to the V! Don't worry about asking any kind of question here, someone always has the answer or can at least point you in the right direction. That's why we're all here, to help each other out.

First, the easy answer, for texture editing the two best ones are Photo shop and Paint Shop Pro, both are payware, but for obvious reasons.
Gimp and Paint.net are two of the better freeware editors.
And regardless of which of those you settle upon, you will need a tool called DXTBMP. It is free and an essential program for dealing with all of the MSFS texture files.
Here is the link for this program: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/DXTBmp.shtml

As for the texture issue you are having, that could be several things, my first impression is that it's missing a texture file. I can see this happening on one download, but it seems as though you're implying that it happens with several. Someone else might pop in here with the solution first, but if you could tell me what and where the textures are I will grab them and check them out and see if I can figure it out.
For a quick check yourself, you could try comparing the default texture files to the one you have downloaded and see if anything appears to be missing.

Hope this helps you out a little, and once again, welcome to Simviation!

hi again guys... thank you for your answers so far... they was kind of light to me...

so here comes my first repaint of the defualt 737-400 with my fictional air company...












the first three pictures are chromed version, the last is half chrome body. i used freeware type for the logo, Adobe PS CS3 and saved the texture in DXT3 32bit bitmap. tell me what you think about my work. and.. what is the best format that FS2004 supports? at the end... where can i upload my textures for free download by the FS heads?

thanx again. go fly!