Splash Screen Hang! HELP!

It doesn't exist after you take the first flight or I would send it.
All I have is the last flight I took and you don't have that aircraft.
All I can tell you is to uninstall and reinstall until you find that folder.

While we are all doing this do you still have disk #4 in the CD caddy?

There is never a message a window of any kind?
Humor me, reinstall DirectX 9.0c, reboot, put the #4 disk in and try it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/

Seeing that fs9 is not building the Flight Simulator Files folder and not finding it if you make one yourself,could mean that one of the cds is faulty(They are clean and scratch free?)or the cd drive is skipping (try a cd cleaner disk in the cd drive if you have one)...or if you have two cd drives ie a cd player/burner and a dvd drive try loading the sim from the other drive

I realy did have a good feeling for tonight

Scottish_sim. I feel for you..
I found this on the net. This person seems to be having the same problem..

"Just installed FS2004 on a maiden WXP SP2 (b 2180 - DX9.c), but FS does not
show up except the splash screen and then quitting - goes also for safe mode.
config: CPU P4ht 3 GhZ, 2 GB DDRAM, 80 GB sata hd, NVIDIA GeForce 5600-TD256
- driver v 61.21

What the heck is wrong?"

"Hi km,

Update your Video drivers using the instructions at:
http://mvps.org/nibblesnbits/Video.html#drivers
even if you've updated them before, and if the problem
is not solved, please try the troubleshooting steps on
that page, they seem endless, but they usually work.