As the subject line says, I am going straight into trial mode everytime I boot into P3DV5.
That's not Trial mode, Trial mode means everything is working normally and THEN it disappear after 5 minutes. If you don't seen buildings on start, it's not Trial mode, it's just wrong. Of course, I cannot replicate it. so, check all the following:
- be absolutely sure you added the Addon Manager folder to the antivirus Exclusions
- be absolutely sure you turn off every firewall or similar security software that might interfere with the download
- run the FSDT Live update after you are sure you checked the first two points.
- if that doesn't work, try after a Windows restart