Try installing the drivers for the DVD drive. Your 7200rpm hard drive will not make installations slow. FSX is large but it definitely doesn't take more than 15-20 minutes to install.
The scratched area on the windows sticker is supposed to be there. It's the same on my 600m and on every other Dell laptop i've seen. So, essentially you got a perfect notebook for a scratch and dent price. Congrats!!
I had the monitor frame on my 600m replaced. They sent the tech guy and it took him about 10 miuntes tops to do. Dell should still have parts for the 8600 too.
Yea the machine that can run FSX perfectly doesn't exist yet. Same thing happened when FS2004 came out. No one could run it on full perfectly but now a couple years later it runs smooth with full settings on just about any new machine.
No idea what's wrong but you can try a windows repair. I had a similar issue on my 600m a couple weeks ago and the repair didn't fix it and I had to reformat and reinstall windows.
