What is "couatl.exe" and is there a reason why it's running?
It's the engine that provides interactive features for JFK, like ParkMe and YouControl.
I have a concern about freezing & BSOD when setting up a flight out of KORD.
BSOD can't be caused by a scenery, and not even be an executable, like Couatl (which is not doing basically anything at KORD, btw...) only something with a lower level access permission, like a video driver or an storage driver could do that. Usually, when you see the BSOD, there's a reference to the file that caused the issue: I'm sure it will not Couatl.exe, but more likely something with a .SYS extension, which is a driver.
If you are not sure, you can simply kill the Couatl.exe process in the Task manager after FSX has started, and if you still see a BSOD, at least you would know it's not that.
The mem usage for "couatl.exe" is 26,464k where as FSX is only 25,800k.
That number is JUST the memory allocated by FSX.EXE *itself*, but the total allocated by FSX is not just that number, but the sum all all memory allocated by all its modules (all FSX dlls) PLUS the sum of all memory allocated by all airplane gauges (which are DLL as well), and the total might easily surpass 1GB, and usually much more if you use complex 3rd party airplanes, up to a point that 2GB usually are not enough, that's why many people enable the /3GB switch.
If would be nice if FSX really took *just* 25MB, which is nothing. To give you an idea, just the ground photoreal terrain for JFK takes more than 100MB all by itelf, so you should't be worried much about Couatl.exe taking only 26MB.
I'm hoping this has something to do with the trial period that will evetually go away???
The Trial is exactly the same as the full version. If you are having BSOD, they will not go away if you purchase the scenery, because are not caused by the scenery to begin with. Most lkely common cause for a BSOD is the video driver (my nVidia card used to BSOD EVERYTIME it returned from standby, up to a point that I simply disabled it)
