Same Problem here.
FMS 2 A8.5 will not run at all on any of my 3 machines (all with different hardware but all running XP Pro Sp2
Tried the trick using the d3drm.dll but no joy with that either.
*edit* I should say I'm not getting the "flat thunks" error because I am not trying to run in compatability mode. Rather, I get the message that FMS has encountered an error and needs to close.
*edit2* some more searching suggest that it may be that my mainboard has no com ports enabled. A quick examination reveals that my mainboard has no com ports At All
so it could be that.