I'm probably just being ignorant, but

[MD_Titus]

i went from 2.75gb ram and xp to 6gb ram and windows 7-64, result is i can watch the black death track to the end where previously it crashed as the bombs start going off, and the game no longer ends with a bluescreen.

[Tiger27]

I went from 3gb xp and lots of crashes to 3gb win7 x64 and no crashes, or at least very rare, I now have 9gb Ram, but the change alone seemed to solve a lot of my problems.

Well that pc is really really weak. You can be happy with the performance you are getting with it.

[Blackdog_kt]

As already mentioned, you can alt-click on any text/information window to bring it into focus (the reason for the alt-click is to make sure you don't accidentally click them during flight, normal clicking is reserved for operating the cockpit controls) and then you can right click on it and select customize or close.

A bit of advice though, if you disable the windows and decide you want them back at a later point you'll have to create and edit them in from scratch. I think the settings for the windows are kept in the ConfUser.ini file in your documents\1c Softclub\IL-2 Sturmovik Cliffs of Dover folder, so you could back this file up just in case you decide you want them back at some point.