Livery and Livery Manager issues - how to resolve

[Tabs 2,790]

This post describes how to fix any issues you may be having with the liveries and the Livery Manager: The initial release of the plane on Thursday 8/4 went out with a mistake in the aircraft.cfg files that set them to read-only during the install. This can cause issues where the files get corrupted after the Livery Manager tries to write to them and fails. The installer was corrected late on Friday 8/5 - if you purchased after this date or if you've installed the new hotfix from 8/11 you likely do not have any read-only issues. aircraft.cfg corruption is the source of numerous problems with the livery manager including liveries not installing correctly, the livery manager crashing, etc. Here's how to start over completely clean with your livery situation: 1. Go to your FSX\SimObjects\Airplanes folder - you'll see the four NGX folders there: PMDG 737-800NGXPMDG 737-800NGX WLPMDG 737-900NGXPMDG 737-900NGX WL 2. Open the folders in sequence and do the following: a. Delete every texture.xxx folder *except for texture.pmdg, texture.common, texture.vc and texture.900*. DO NOT delete those folders or you're going to need to reinstall the airplane. b. Delete the aircraft.cfg file and any aircraft.cfg_old file that might be there in the folder. It's important to delete both. 3. Download this zip file and copy the clean aircraft.cfg for each variant into its appropriate folder within SimObjects\Airplanes:http://downloads.pre...rcraft_cfgs.zip 4. You're now back to a completely clean configuration as if the product was just installed, now sans any read-only files. To install liveries: 1. Create a folder somewhere, such as your desktop or inside the FSX\PMDG folder and call it "Liveries." 2. Download any liveries you want from the PMDG site to the folder location from step 1:http://www.precision...s/liveries.html 3. Unzip the .ptp file that's inside each .zip file. (We wanted to do just the ptp files by themselves, but Internet Explorer doesn't play well with files that it doesn't have a definition for - all the more reason to use Chrome or Firefox folks!) I recommend that you redownload any livery zips/ptps that you might already have. Many of them have been updated over the last couple days as issues were found. The latest batch just went up minutes before this post and all known issues are now corrected. 4. Run the Livery Manager with the Right Click\Run as Administrator command. 5. Click the aircraft type on the left that you're trying to install. 6. Press the "Select Livery to Install" button. This will pop open a standard Windows file management dialog. Navigate to the folder from step 1 that has your ptp files in it. 7. Choose the livery ptp files you want to install - you can use shift and control click to select multiple files and install them all at once. 8. Press OK and the liveries should install. Let us know if there's still any issues after going through those steps. EDIT - the original version of this post had a mistake - if you deleted texture.common and texture.vc please uninstall the NGX from control panel and then reinstall it from the installer (download a new copy if you like from your purchase email, it has the read-only CFGs fixed already). Really sorry about that if you were affected.

[Thunderbird8 1]

Just done this exactly as you describe and have got three fatal errors in a row on starting FSX. EDIT: restarted system and FSX did start but behaving very sluggishly on both loading initially using the 737 as the default (which the Introduction says you can do) and the flight itself with several 'not responding' messages. Hope this helps.

[jmrey09 1]

In response to your suggestion, I did not delete the CFG with the old extension at the end, I simply renamed it without the extension and deleted the new CFG and that worked fine.

[RogerD 1]

I just made a file called liveries then clicked the livery I wanted copy paste to the new file I made. Then went to the installer and picked the new folder high lite and then installed it . no problem.

[Scott434 12]

if using ezdok, remember to run to run ezcaConfig after this process.

[Brenchen 51]

Ryan, three questions:

1. Is the download link that comes with the purchase active for 7-days?
2. If so, would it be worth while (as in a new installer) using that same link as the one that came with the email?
3. If not, any chance of adding this to the patch (or update) whenever it comes out (if you haven't thought of that already)?

I will try and report back the methods you mentioned. Cheers

[DWH CFI 2]

When I entered my 800WL folder to do the fix, both the common and the vc folders are missing. I am assuming this is not normal, but I want to make sure before I reload the plane. Thanks for the help.Marshall Motley

[Thunderbird8 1]

OK - since following the above advice above to the letter I have now had SIX fatal crashes with FSX (I have a dedicated FS system with nothing else running except this browser) and FSX is taking an age to load. I never get CTDs or anything like that normally and the system works flawlessly. This is becoming very annoying.

[Graubart 3]

When I entered my 800WL folder to do the fix, both the common and the vc folders are missing. I am assuming this is not normal, but I want to make sure before I reload the plane. Thanks for the help. Marshall Motley

Same here, the mentioned folders only exist within the PMDG 737-800NGX. in the other aircraft folders .common and .vc are missing. The PMDG 737-900NGX holds one named texture.900.

[DennisMD-11 0]

Can´t find any liveries to download for the NGX. Just for the FS2004 version.

[Thunderbird8 1]

I've done what they said and deleted ALL texture folders EXCEPT the three he mentions. I do hope that advise was correct!!!!

[vonmar 122]

This procedure killed FSX to a black screen.I noticed the Repaint Mgr was not used to automatically remove the previous paints. Is there some kind of PMDG "pirate" protection embedded in the repaint manager or what else is causing a PC system shutdown? At this point I do not want to use FSX.

[IFR7700 228]

@DennisMD-11 Refresh your page, you are probably looking at the cached version.

[roger_j 0]

I obviously had the 'read only' problem but I got an 'error' message when I tried to load the liveries asking whether I wanted to change the file attributes to allow changes. I clicked 'Yes' and they loaded perfectly. Win7X64.Roger.

[Thunderbird8 1]

OK, update here. I carried out the above procedure in conjunction with visiting that site (Venetubo) that offers to reconfigure your fsx.cfg file. Doing this is encouraged in the NGX 'Intro' manual. This is what killed my FSX, not doing the above. I strongly advise people to tread carefully with that site. I could not even START FSX after I used their recommendations. I know it's free and you are warned to make a back-up (which I am back now using) but still, it's a bit rubbish. I still can't work out why I had to throw away the 'texture.900' but nothing seems to have happened as a result.