im running fsx steam edition.
i downloaded gfx...made all the right selections etc now when i start the software...when i go to choose my aircraft the game crashes on me 
You mean GSX ? It's difficult to help you with a so sparse description of the problem, which nobody ever reported it before in this way.
Do you see some error ? If yes, which one ? Or, it just crash on start with no errors ?
The most common cause of issues like this, are interference by defective antivirus programs, that corrupts the software trying to "heal" it from an non-existing threat.
Try this first:
- Reinstall with the antivirus disabled.
- Configure the antivirus to ignore the whole FSX folder before starting up
