Do you me loading FSX from the FSX Start Screen (as in after clicking on  FLY NOW)?

For me, after clicking on FLY NOW, it only takes about 1 to 2 minutes with the CS777 when using Real Weather AND having it pre-loading the location.

For me, the same as Gandy, about 40 seconds for any of my add-ons.

I do NOT use the "Fly Now" feature of FSX. I start with a saved situation that I point to in my "Fsx.cfg" file (which I change depending on what A/C I want to use or airport to start). Of course I have many addons that also starts like UTX, GEX, FEX, ORBX FTX, ASE or REX, My Traffic and perhaps couple more. I imagine that many don't have these many addons operating however, I want to see FSX with all its glory and satisfied with my FPS. My pc is running fast and my HD's performing great - just take a while (about 10min.) for everything to load.

My FSX sim loads in 15 seconds from selection to menu music.

Pressing fly now takes 45 seconds to load regardless of plane or airport.

I have an SSD and load in an ORBX airport and use Accu-Feel 2.

Even my old hard drive never took more than 70 seconds or so.

Lou

My loading time on a 3G CPU can be between 2 to 7 minutes from double click to the free flight menu appearing. I have found the more stuff you have, e.g., particularly aircraft and scenery the longer it takes but the sim models or aircraft really take a of time and particularly finding and ordering gauges from the gauge directory.

While I have most of the Capt Sim aircraft I have a lot of other stuff a mix of payware and freeware to cater for my interest in old piston powered aircraft. There is a lot of cross referencing between CAB groups as well. Once FSX has loaded and ready to fly then the load time from there on can be considerable again due to the way I have my scenery set up external to FSX but once it is up and running no further issues at all. I generally use REX and the FLYNOW feature but if I am playing around with textures etc I do not use REX.

There is a nifty little freeware program called FlusiFix06 that can clean up a lot of stuff for you. All in all however FSX is very CPU intensive and if you have other stuff running in the background then it will slow the whole load up right down. Check what background programs you have running and see if you can disable a lot of them first if you do not need them.

Still the load time does not bother me all that much either as when it is up and running it runs just fine.