1. About 50% of the time, couatl won't show up under the add on menu in p3d. The add on manager will, but not couatl. Thst being said, my airports don't work.
You don't say if you are using the latest version, which is now no longer Beta.
have noticed that this happens usually ever other time I start p3d. In some cases I'll start p3d twice, and no couatl. Then on the third time, everything works. Then on the fourth time, no couatl. The pattern continues.
When you close the simulator, check if maybe Couatl.exe is still running from the previous run. It takes a bit for the sim to close all open files and the executables it has launched so, if you restart the sim too quickly without allowing enough time for the executable from the previous session, it won't run on the next start, because it started a communication with the *previous* session of the sim, which is not there anymore.
To check this, look in the Task Manager after you exit the sim, and see if there's still a Couatl.exe running there, if it closes correctly after a while (shouldn't be more than 5-10 seconds) and if it doesn't, terminate manually before restarting the sim again.
2. This error happened twice. Now I honestly don't know if this error is a couatl error, a p3d error or an aerosoft airbus a320/321 error. I'm doing my due research with all three variables with this one.
I was rolling on 15L at kiah with the airbus and I got a CTD from p3d. The dialogue window said p3d suddenly stopped working.
The second time I got this error, it happened randomly in cruise so I believe it may have nothing to do with couatl. However, it's worth my due research to figure this out.
NONE of these crashes can have anything to do with Couatl because, as a separate .EXE, it CANNOT crash the sim. That's the main advantage of being a separate .EXE because:
1) I CANNOT access the sim memory, thus it cannot crash it. If Couatl.exe would crash, it will crash just for itself, but it cannot bring down the sim with it.
2) It will not take away from the sim memory, because (as an external .EXE) it has its own separate VAS address space.
During download and install, I had Norton 360 smart firewall and autoprotect turned off completely for 1 hr.
I then ran p3d and couatl still wouldn't start.
I then went into my settings in Norton 360 and excluded the entire drive p3d is on, the entire p3d folder, the fsdreamteam folder in p3d and the individual couatl.exe program and the bglmanx.dll file from autoprotect and auto scanning like you have said to do in other posts.
I'm sorry, but after the latest reports (Norton being so bugged, that even blocked the couatl *updater*), we cannot really trust anything from Norton. I personally witnessed during a Teamviewer connection with an user, Norton STILL blocking the file, WITHOUT TELLING, and even when the user had CORRECTLY configured it all the right exclusions, both for realtime protection and for manual scan. We had to go into the Norton LOG to see it was STILL blocking our files.
So, I cannot offer you any other antivirus suggestions, other than switching to a more reliable one, that doesn't mistakenly flag legit files from scanning.
But see the other advice about checking if there's still a Couatl.exe running from a previous session.