P3D v5 starts as background process

[FredricG 3]

Hello,

I had just recently purchased the Carenado Embraer B120 and installed it. It loaded and ran well the first time or two I loaded the plane into the sim. However, I am now encountering a strange problem that it seems isn't unique to only me - When I double-click to open P3D v5, it hangs on the splash screen as usual, and then a brief "loading scenery" message appears. The splash screen vanishes and no trace of the menu or anything on the desktop is to be found.

As it turns out, I open up Task Manager, and I found out that P3D is still running, albeit as a background process. The only way to stop it is to kill the task through the Task Manager. Every time I try to open P3D, it does this. 

I seem to have located the problem - the dll.xml file located in the Lockheed Martin folder under programdata. If I delete the dll.xml and let the sim rebuild with a fresh one, it will not disappear and then continue running as a background process and the menu screen will load normally.

I believe the culprit itself are the lines in the dll.xml file that were placed during the installation of the B120. Here is my dll.xml for reference:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<SimBase.Document Type="AceXML" version="3,0" id="dll">
    <Descr>AceXML Document</Descr>
    <Filename>dll.xml</Filename>
<Launch.Addon>
<Name>Carenavigraph</Name>
<Disabled>False</Disabled>
<Path>.\Carenavigraph.dll</Path>
</Launch.Addon>
  <Launch.Addon>
    <Name>PMDG_Interface</Name>
    <Disabled>False</Disabled>
    <Path>PMDG\DLLs\PMDG_Interface.dll</Path>
    <DllStartName>module_init</DllStartName>
    <DllStopName>module_deinit</DllStopName>
  </Launch.Addon>
  <Launch.Addon>
    <Name>RAASPRO</Name>
    <Disabled>False</Disabled>
    <Path>.\RAASPRO\RAASPRO.dll</Path>
    <DllStartName>module_init</DllStartName>
    <DllStopName>module_deinit</DllStopName>
  </Launch.Addon>
  <Launch.Addon>
    <Name>CMeteoXml</Name>
    <Disabled>False</Disabled>
    <Path>.\CMeteoXml.dll</Path>
  </Launch.Addon>
</SimBase.Document>
 

[Biggles2010 343]

The very old FS9/FSX trick to avoid this issue was to always start the sim with the default scenario, and from there load the addon aircraft and location of choice.

From habit I still always start P3D this way, then load one of a number of saved scenarios with addon aircraft and locations.

The problem was said to be dealt with in later versions of P3D, but I have found it to still occur on occasions when I have tried going directly from splash screen to an addon aircraft, resulting in P3D running, but with a black screen. It's quite possible that this is particular to certain addons and others will load without issue..

[FredricG 3]

5 hours ago, Biggles2010 said:

The very old FS9/FSX trick to avoid this issue was to always start the sim with the default scenario, and from there load the addon aircraft and location of choice.

From habit I still always start P3D this way, then load one of a number of saved scenarios with addon aircraft and locations.

The problem was said to be dealt with in later versions of P3D, but I have found it to still occur on occasions when I have tried going directly from splash screen to an addon aircraft, resulting in P3D running, but with a black screen. It's quite possible that this is particular to certain addons and others will load without issue..

I don't think that was the issue, as the default scenario that showed up on the menu screen was the P3D v5 default (F35, 12:00 PM, etc). 

In addition, I have seemingly found the exact cause. It was related to something regarding how my locked copy of RAAS Pro (for my PMDG aircraft) wasn't communicating correctly with an installation of my Office 365 64bits access database engine that blocked access for the RAAS database. I uninstalled the Office database, restarted the computer, and installed it again. Problem oddly solved, for now...

Edited March 2, 2021 by FredricG