Hey Folks! I've had a very steady particular problem with FSX since it came out. It seems that anywhere between 20-50 "flight" hours the screen begins to flash to black whenever I change a radio freq, turn lights on/off, zoom in/out, when the green ATIS line begins & ends scrolling across the top of the screen - basically any function I need to do during any part of the "flight".

   The black screen usually last from 1-3 seconds. It sometimes occurs after I install a new payware aircraft or perform a regular maintenance defrag (O&O v8, v10 and now v12), but most of the time it happens after a seemingly normal computer boot up.

   Sometimes I try to repair FSX using the discs, which causes a great deal of confusion trying to figure out which modifications that were overwritten that I made with free/payware items. So, most of the time it ends up, just as well, to uninstall/reinstall FSX. The pain of doing either of these choices, is that I end up reloading ALL of the free and payware programs, which usually takes about two days of work for me.

   Does/has anybody else experience this? And, is there a better solution to correcting this seemingly sudden and random malfunction?

Thanks,

Dave

   I will check for any cooling problems, but this does occur if I boot up and begin a flight immmediately many times. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes just to go through the pre-flight and start up operations because of the looking around, zooming in/out, clicking avionics, lights, radio freqs, setting barometers, compass, HSI, heading bug, etc... After all that annoying flashing, I just don't feel like "flying" anymore.

WoooHoooo!!! Switching to DX10 and back, cleared the malfunction! THANK YOU both for the fine suggestions. I lost count of how many work hours and "flight" hours I've lost because of this. I know I have collected more than 50 "First Flight" badges LOL. THANKS AGAIN!