FC hanging at main menu

[snomhf]

I have been off playing (a-hem, another jet sim) and haven't started up FC in a while. This weekend I started up the game and flew a quick A-10 flight. No problem so far. Back at the main menu (where the clock ticks the time away), I decided to look at my hardware setup and clicked "Options." The entire computer froze except the mouse cursor still was active. The clock was stopped and would not respond to any input at all. I ended up having to hard boot and went back into FC. This time I immediately clicked on "Options" and it hung the same way. After reboot, I tried going into the "Encylopedia." Same result. I then realized I had made some changes to my software firewall and it was running. I completely stopped the firewall. Same result.

 

I then gave up with thoughts of completely reinstalling FC except that I became afraid (a good fighter should not be afraid I know but...) because of the "you know what..."

 

Any ideas on this?

 

Thanks

-mark