I just upgraded to P3d 3.4 and after setting up the Prepar3d.cfg file from the P3d UI, I edited the cfg file just like I always do with Notepad++ (a great alternative text editor BTW) to make a few changes. Now I've done this many times before without a problem. This time, P3d started and never even got to the scenario window. After a few minutes, I just gave up and killed it.

 

Then I noticed that Notepad++ defaults to saving ANSI encoded files to UTF-8. Using plain old Windows Notepad works fine, so I'm assuming that V3.4 has a problem with other text encoding schemes. It's a minor point, but I'm curious to know if anyone else has any thoughts on this.

UTF-8 is a far more modern and capable format.  BUT, with that said, I just tested out an ANSI format version of my Prepar3d.cfg and P3D V3.4 loaded just fine ... note this is with NO add-ons.  

 

It sounds like you might have some add-ons that are trying to read the Prepar3D.cfg and those add-ons don't like the ANSI format.  But P3D V3.4 itself has no problem with reading an ANSI or UTF-8.

 

You can probably verify by disabling all entries in your DLL.XML and EXE.XML and use ANSI formatted Prepar3D.cfg and see if P3D still loads.

 

Cheers, Rob.

I'm using also Notepad++ since years and still with 3.4.9 without problem.

And I never changed its default encoding setting.

Same here, I exclusively use Notepad++ without issues.

Well it must be something else wrong, I guess

It sounds like you might have some add-ons that are trying to read the Prepar3D.cfg and those add-ons don't like the ANSI format.

 

 

The ANSI format reads fine. It's UTF-8 that causes the lockup when P3d starts. Here's the dlls that I have loaded (and they are all the most recent versions and the list addons is almost unchanged* since 3.3):

 

FSUIPC4

AS Connect

ORBX Objectflow

GSX Add on Manager

Super Traffic Board Server

 

and the two LM Fury 1500 dlls*. Why those were added, I have no idea.

 

Maybe the STB server doesn't exactly work correctly in V3.4. It adds this line to Prepar3d.cfg during the installation:

[SIM]
LoadAIVirtualCockpit=1
...

Maybe LM made some minor tweaks to this feature between 3.3 and 3.4. More testing needed.

Removing each dll one at a time made no difference. I reinstalled STB just to be safe, but this will continue to be one of those trivial mysteries of life in the flight sim world.

 

I do have my suspicions that directly editing Prepar3d.cfg very rarely gives the app fits and only deleting the cfg file and starting over, fixes whatever is wrong. There are threads both here and  scattered about the Internet of people reporting this issue. It's not worth worrying about, since the last time that this happened to me was probably two or three years ago.