[bohr-r]

Hello,

Thanks everyone for your helpful comments. I did not reply to your comments immediately, because I wanted to implement the solutions you suggested and then play the game over a period of several days to see if things remained stable.
Those of you who suggested a temperature issue were probably right. After reading your posts, I promptly opened the cover of my PC and removed an entire colony of dust bunnies. There were a lot of them. Well, you know what they say about rabbits and breeding. But seriously, since I bought this computer, I had never cleaned it on the inside, which I will probably do more frequently from now on.
So far (knock on wood) the game runs fine again. No more modern art displays while flying.
Thanks, Boris the Spider for providing the download links for the drivers for my graphics card. Just as you suggested, I, too have been thinking about getting a better graphics card. However, I was a bit concerned that my computer could not handle it, especially in regard to processor speed. Please have a look at my system specs below.

AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor 3200+, 2.01 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM.

Based on these specifications, which graphics card would you suggest to replace my ATI X550/600?

Thanks again for all your help.

Regards,

RB