Issue with “Add-ons” Prepar3D V5

[juaness 9]

Hi,

Im having the folowing issue. Prepar3d V5.

When trying to add an addon form "Add-ons" menu, I tick on the box, I close Prepar, the I reopen again Prepar, but the addon still off.
It happens with lot of them.

Also sometimes I deactivete an addon, and Prepar deactivates other addons instead of the one Im looking for.

Any help?

Thanks

[Afterburner 374]

Do you run P3D as administrator?  If not, I would try it, because I had similar issues with editing the scenery library. When I didn't run as administrator, any changes in scenery library would not be taken over by P3D.

[juaness 9]

3 hours ago, Afterburner said:

Do you run P3D as administrator?  If not, I would try it, because I had similar issues with editing the scenery library. When I didn't run as administrator, any changes in scenery library would not be taken over by P3D.

Nothing.

 

already running as admin...unable to add area

[Bob Scott 7,721]

Could be an issue with an add-on that's part of a larger package.

I'd highly recommend the free P3D Addon Manager from Lorby-SI.  It gives you much better visibility on what's going on in your config, and has a lot of useful tools as well.

[Rogen 1,087]

I too had the same issue (with P3D v4.5), and from your report it seems the issue is unaddressed in the current release.

I do have a lot of addins though, and via a fairly complex structure, i.e. 190 addins and 26 auto discovery locations where I do not use the default "\Documents\Prepar3D vX Add-ons" path at all.

I'm leaning to the coding for the XML editor was not quite fully stress tested and looses track of the nodes, resulting in the sort of symptoms you're seeing.

The only fix I found was to use the free P3D Addon Manager from Lorby-SI "exclusively", just forget about the P3D Add-ons menu item tool and never use it again.

Note the P3D scenery.cfg editor is fine to use from P3D itself, just not the Add-ons xml based editor.

Cheers R

 

[sab12 6]

I am using version 5.0.31.35253. I had this problem after trying to figure out a CTD situation. Add-on I can't turn back on is FS Labs Products. Running as administrator didn't help. Lorby-SI add-ons manager says I have a bad add-on.xml. No idea what to do with that information. Has anyone solved this problem without re-installing the problem products?  Waiting for answer from LM P3D forum.

Thanks,

Stephen

[Bob Scott 7,721]

18 hours ago, sab12 said:

I am using version 5.0.31.35253. I had this problem after trying to figure out a CTD situation. Add-on I can't turn back on is FS Labs Products. Running as administrator didn't help. Lorby-SI add-ons manager says I have a bad add-on.xml. No idea what to do with that information. Has anyone solved this problem without re-installing the problem products?  Waiting for answer from LM P3D forum.

If there's a problem with the xml file, you won't be able to activate the affected addon, as the sim can't read/parse the xml properly.

xml can be finicky...could be the character set in the xml file was changed to something other than UTF-8-BOM, a typo, missing header or tag etc.

There are online xml checkers that might lend a clue as to what's wrong, at least if it's an xml syntax issue.

 

[sab12 6]

Bob,

Thanks for your suggestion.

Tried several xml checkers and my FSL add-on.xml passes their checks. Since I still have V4.5 HF2 installed with the identical FS Labs setup, I tried cycling the FS Labs entry in add-ons off and the on again and it worked. The add-on.xml for V4 and V5 is identical (size and hash count) so this still looks like a P3D V5 issue. After I do some more backing up, plan to try updating the V5 client to V5.2 HF1 and see if that makes any difference.

I have to reload my system anyway since I have the "This PC has an unsupported disk layout for UEFI firmware" issue that is keeping me from updating Windows 10 and hopefully when I get everything put back/updated (P3D v4.5 HF3 and P3D V5.2 HF1) I won't need to try turning off FS Labs Products in V5 again.

Will probably follow up with FSLabs although I don't think it's their problem.

Stephen

 

 

 

[coastaldriver 919]

I have had this problem from time to time. Good advice from w6kd. I cannot cure what causes this and is not infrequent because of my habit of moving addons in and out of the documents addons folder. 

If you think the xml is ok then try this - If you go to the user/user/appdata/roaming/lockheedmartin/p3dv5 folder, there there is an addon config file. Open it up and have a look and see if your addon is listed. Check the path and to see If it is check to see if is being given the following flags,  Active=true and Required=false. If it is listed and those flags are set it should appear if it does not then the xml parser obviously has some hyrogliphs in it (unwanted bits). If it is listed but shown as Active=false and Required=false then it will not appear. The fix is simple - Edit the entry to:  Active=true and Required=false, fire up P3D and see it now appears. Why these flags would not be set correctly from time to time - that I have no idea. 

The other cause can also be anti-piracy code embedded in the addon by the developer - particularly those who still install in main directories and do not use the xml method. The only fix for that is to delete it all, reinstall and leave it there. Some defy being moved to xml addons because of this. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by coastaldriver

[Ray Proudfoot 8,957]

On 4/25/2021 at 1:56 PM, juaness said:

When trying to add an addon form "Add-ons" menu, I tick on the box, I close Prepar, the I reopen again Prepar, but the addon still off.
It happens with lot of them.

Also sometimes I deactivete an addon, and Prepar deactivates other addons instead of the one Im looking for.

Any help?

Just to clarify you are trying to do this outside of P3D are you? There's no facility within P3D to add scenery via the addon method, only via scenery library.

Lorby's Addon Organizer is the ideal tool for controlling scenery - both addon and normal scenery library. But normally the installation program will do all the work for you and when you start P3D you'll see an option to enable any new addon scenery.

What exactly are you trying to do?

[sab12 6]

Thanks to those who replied. I have done my clean reinstall of Windows 10 to 21H1 and Prepar3D v5.2 HF1 and FSLabs and PMDG 777 seem to be running fine. Have another .xml problem which I will post about if I can't figure it out.

Stephen