FSX-SE FSDT products not working now and then

[Hoang 108]

Hi,
I have posted in their own forum for a while but he could not fix it and seems ignoring me, I am very frustrated and just does not want to come back there. I wonder if anybody has the same issue with me.
My FSX:SE has been very stable, whenever there is a problem I can spend days to solve it before having any flight. However, with FSDT products I am unable to solve it or have any control of its stability. Most of the time it works fine, but every now and then it suddenly stops working. If I start a flight and airport/GSX does not work, I have to restart the sim. I do not like it, . However there are times when at departure airport everything is fine, during approach the destination airport does not show up, or the GSX does not work after landing (disappear from FSX menu).

Their products are good enough for me to use and I buy one or two once in a while, but keep getting those problem pretty much let me down. Especially if they could not fix or find the probable cause of it then they should have tell me that they out of ideas, rather than ignoring me.

Hoang Le

Edited March 21, 2017 by Jim Young
Deleted offensive language

[Jim Young 2,356]

If the airport buildings disappear or GSX does not work, try clicking on Addon Menu>Couatl>Restart Couatl.  Of course, make sure the airport and GSX are enabled via the Addon Menu.

I do not know that much about FSX-SE.  I heard you do not have to start it up with Admin Privileges but it does sound like you are running into permission problems.  You can try to go to your fsx.exe, right click and select properties, then click on the compatibility tab, make sure nothing is check in the compatibility section.  Look down at the bottom of the form and make sure FSX-SE runs in Administrative Mode for ALL Users (not just you).

Best regards,

Jim

[Hoang 108]

12 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

If the airport buildings disappear or GSX does not work, try clicking on Addon Menu>Couatl>Restart Couatl.  Of course, make sure the airport and GSX are enabled via the Addon Menu.

I do not know that much about FSX-SE.  I heard you do not have to start it up with Admin Privileges but it does sound like you are running into permission problems.  You can try to go to your fsx.exe, right click and select properties, then click on the compatibility tab, make sure nothing is check in the compatibility section.  Look down at the bottom of the form and make sure FSX-SE runs in Administrative Mode for ALL Users (not just you).

Best regards,

Jim

Hi,

On the Menu it does not show up anything related to FSDT products, no Couatl. This is Houston KIAH after 16 hours from Doha. Restart the sim and it showed up again.

You point to a very good idea about the Administrator. FSX:SE desktop icon does not have the compatibility option but Steam icon does, I will try it and see how it goes.
Cheers,
Hoang Le

[pedrotrindade 335]

Sometimes I got a similar problem (P3D here). Uninstall and reinstall your addon manager might fix it. I recall a situation that i had to uninstall GSX and reinstall it again to get it working. Quite frustrating sometimes when you did nothing to generate this problem...

[Hoang 108]

22 minutes ago, pedrotrindade said:

Sometimes I got a similar problem (P3D here). Uninstall and reinstall your addon manager might fix it. I recall a situation that i had to uninstall GSX and reinstall it again to get it working. Quite frustrating sometimes when you did nothing to generate this problem...

Hi,
Yes I had to reinstall Addon Manager and also GSX before to make it works, but after that it still sometimes did not show up.

Very happy that Flightbeam will not using Couatl for their next airport and hopefully it will be more stable.

[honanhal 1,420]

In my experience this is just a fact of life using FSDT sceneries and their "unique" Addon Manager/Couatl system. Your either accept it as part and parcel of sceneries that range from good to excellent, or you don't. Raising these issues on their support forum won't get, and has never gotten, anything other than a defensive and often hostile response.

James

[bobterri 13]

I've had the same problem.  Buildings all disappear and Coautl missing from the FSX menu.  I tried downloading a new addon manager and for a while it solved it but the problem came back.  Now, the way I've gotten around it is to restart Coautl.exe within the FSX/fsdreamteam/coautl folder.

Bob Bressert

Edited March 21, 2017 by bobterri
forgot to sign the message

[Jim Young 2,356]

1 hour ago, Hoang Le said:

On the Menu it does not show up anything related to FSDT products, no Couatl.

This means your exe.xml and/or your dll.xml may be corrupted or missing components -

For the exe.xml, make sure you have the following entry:

<Launch.Addon>
        <Name>Couatl</Name>
        <Disabled>False</Disabled>
        <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
        <Path>fsdreamteam\couatl\couatl.exe</Path>
    </Launch.Addon>

For the dll.xml -

<Launch.Addon>
        <Name>Addon Manager</Name>
        <Disabled>False</Disabled>
        <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
        <Path>bglmanx.dll</Path>
    </Launch.Addon>

Downloading and running the Standalone Addon Manager with Admin Rights will normally make sure those entries are there and not corrupted.  The program will tell you too if any of the FSDT entries are corrupted.

Again, I think most of your issues are permissions.  You fly into an airport where you have no permissions may disable the airport and you'll only see the jetways.  Whenever I install a FSDT scenery, I'll right click the .exe and select Run as Administrator.  Microsoft put so much security into their Win 10 OS (I assume you are running Windows 10) you really have to watch permissions.

Best regards,

Jim

[markmasterson 63]

I also use P3D V3.4.  I have the same problem.  It has happened on FSDT and Flightbeam products.   I have taken off from an FSDream Team Airport worked perfectly and then landed at a Flightbeam Airport (PHX), and I have the same problem as above.  In an earlier session (Same day) I took off from PHX and it worked correctly.   If I restart the SIM it will work....Of course this is frustrating.

[Jim Young 2,356]

Again, you should have the option to restart Couatl in the Addon Manager in the P3D Menu.

Best regards,

Jim

[softreset 33]

1 hour ago, honanhal said:

In my experience this is just a fact of life using FSDT sceneries and their "unique" Addon Manager/Couatl system. Your either accept it as part and parcel of sceneries that range from good to excellent, or you don't. Raising these issues on their support forum won't get, and has never gotten, anything other than a defensive and often hostile response.

James

My experience as well (on both fronts). There are certain times, using plain jane default FSX scenery that Couatl will just not be detected by the sim. Restarting the sim is the only fix.

There's no corruption, that would imply that it would never work or rarely work, it works 80% of the time.

FSX:SE also is automatically defaulted to run as an admin by Steam preferences but again it works 80% of the time, so that too would imply that if it was an admin rights issue that it would never work.

[Jim Young 2,356]

5 minutes ago, softreset said:

There's no corruption, that would imply that it would never work or rarely work, it works 80% of the time.

A good point but not really.  If you do not have the option for Couatl Settings in the Add-on Menu, then something is amiss.  If you restart Couatl, 99% of the time the scene will refresh and Couatl will cause the buildings to appear.  Of course you have to be connected to the Internet and you are if using FSX-SE.  It has always worked for me if I arrived at an airport and I just saw jetways (BTW, I own all of the FSDT/Flightbeam airports).  I just recently built a new computer and had to reinstall everything and the FSDT/FlightBeam stuff was first on the agenda.  The installs were successful and the registrations in the Add-on Manager were all successful but I had periodic issues where only the jetways were showing at some of the airports.  Sometimes, after landing and hitting Ctrl+F12 to bring up GSX, it did not appear.  I went on-site, found the Standalone Manager and installed it and have had no problems since then.  I have no doubt there are issues but they are not happening to everyone and I always wonder, why am I having the issue and no one else is having the issue?  What did I do wrong?  Every computer system is set up differently.  Some have a lot of security running in the background, some, like me have anti-virus programs left uninstalled or not running (I'm forced to have one now with Windows Defender and Windows 10), some have UAC disabled, some do not, some have FSX-SE installed in the default folder and some do not, some have their addons located on other disk drives and some have them installed on the same drive as their FSX-SE installation, etc.  Sometimes, if installed on a HDD or SSD on another drive, the permission settings for the drive might be set to just read only when the user should have full control of the drive. 

In any case, I have mine successfully running after some initial issues but that's using P3Dv3 and FSX.  I do not own FSX-SE and DTG has their own setup for that program.

Best regards,

Jim

[softreset 33]

32 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

(I'm forced to have one now with Windows Defender and Windows 10)

You're definitely not forced to run Windows Defender on Windows 10.

http://www.windowscentral.com/how-permanently-disable-windows-defender-windows-10

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/10/25/how-to-disable-windows-defender-in-windows-10-permanently/

I've never had a building display/availability issue. What I'm referring to is the lack of Couatl even being available to restart it. It's as though the program isn't even installed. To me that's an add-on/sim conflict, not corruption. Through troubleshooting with FSDT I've configured a test environment to where only the sim and GSX is installed (including the stand-alone manager), so it's very possible that it's just a FSX:SE issue.

[Jim Young 2,356]

Thanks for that.  I will take a look.  I did disable it once but that was only until I restarted Windows. 

[Hoang 108]

6 hours ago, Jim Young said:

This means your exe.xml and/or your dll.xml may be corrupted or missing components -

For the exe.xml, make sure you have the following entry:

<Launch.Addon>
        <Name>Couatl</Name>
        <Disabled>False</Disabled>
        <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
        <Path>fsdreamteam\couatl\couatl.exe</Path>
    </Launch.Addon>

For the dll.xml -

<Launch.Addon>
        <Name>Addon Manager</Name>
        <Disabled>False</Disabled>
        <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
        <Path>bglmanx.dll</Path>
    </Launch.Addon>

Downloading and running the Standalone Addon Manager with Admin Rights will normally make sure those entries are there and not corrupted.  The program will tell you too if any of the FSDT entries are corrupted.

Again, I think most of your issues are permissions.  You fly into an airport where you have no permissions may disable the airport and you'll only see the jetways.  Whenever I install a FSDT scenery, I'll right click the .exe and select Run as Administrator.  Microsoft put so much security into their Win 10 OS (I assume you are running Windows 10) you really have to watch permissions.

Best regards,

Jim

Thank you Jim, I will uninstall all FSDT products and reinstall again with "Run as Administrator" to see if it helps.