thank you for the information sir, i learn something every time. i am wondering why the anti virus programs are not showing that they blocked it, as with other threats at times, these blocks happen fsx is booting up, the error boxes displayed are within the fsx screen and say microsoft flight simulator-security warning and says unknown publisher and the invalid digital signature thing on the coutal.exe and the bglmanx.dll files. there is no "run anyway" choice, just an ok button, there is information given about unknown publisher by clicking on it, you can clic various tabs about publisher and get screens to import the certificate and such, but these blocks seem to be generated by fsx itself. yesterday i used nortons full system scan, running thru the fsx folder it caught 2 things both called heuristic virus and corrected them, the full system scan was still running when i went to sleep. this morning i saw that it was frooze up at almost 2 million files checked, i noticed it was running thru my WD external drives, my monitor went bonkers, a scary sight, the only thing i could do was hold the power button down till a shut down as cntrl-alt-delete had no function, i have a hopeful feeling the external drives are causing me grief. they are removed and i am doing a full system scan again sailing past 1.2 million items scan with no hits. can you answer is it better to use fsx without any anti virus running? only once or twice has a trojan horse attached itself to fsx thru an online addon as a weather engine. .. thanks for the reply