Couatl disappears when restarting service **SOLVED**

[Chrjs]

Hi,
i've been using gsx (ver2, P3D5.2) for years now, but maybe for the last half year i have serious porblems with it. Whenever the couatl service is resetting within the sim (for example sometimes the automatic service with fslabs does not work after arrival), it just disappears from the menu (also no trace of it in the task manager). Of course any FSDT building and gsx services disapppear as well. The addon manager entry, however, stays in the menu.
 I have done quite a lot of troubleshooting including the following:

- multiple reinstalls /live updates of GSX
- complete resinstall of P3Dv5 and trying to install GSX as the only addon, so there cannot be a problem with other addons
- upgrading my win10 to win11
- turning off windows defender during install and while running P3D, making exclusions in defender for the addon manager folder and all virtuali files in C:...
- installing the addon manager in differnt locations and drives

the only odd thing that seem to happen during the troubleshooting process is that when i uninstall GSX through the control panel, everything runs through until the very end, then i get the following error message:
"Prepar3D.exe - System error; "The code execution cannot proceed beacuse api.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem"" The same message appears with uninstalling the addon manager. That message did never come up with any other p3d addon, and i have tons of them. After clicking ok, i get the message that gsx was uninstalled successfully.

I hope you can help me getting GSX running again as it should. Please tell me how i can help you to solve the problem here on my end.
thank you very much in advance
chris


edit: i attach two log files, one just before i press the rebuild couatl in P5d and one just after restarting and couatl has dissappeared

[virtuali]

when i uninstall GSX through the control panel, everything runs through until the very end, then i get the following error message:

"Prepar3D.exe - System error; "The code execution cannot proceed beacuse api.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem"" The same message appears with uninstalling the addon manager. That message did never come up with any other p3d addon, and i have tons of them. After clicking ok, i get the message that gsx was uninstalled successfully.

That seems to be a problem. Fact you don't see this error from other add-ons, doesn't mean much, because it depends if that add-on uses the standard P3D Install/Uninstall services, which calls P3D itself to disable/enable an add-on. At that stage, the uninstaller is callign Prepar3d.exe, asking it to remove the add-on you are uninstaling, which is the proper practice for a proper P3D-native add-on.

API.DLL is related to the sim itself so, it seems the GSX uninstaller just reported a problem reported by the sim *itself* when it tried to start it, like it was missing something it surely comes with it. In this case, it's API.DLL, which is the Simconnect API so, a normal installation will surely have it and it should be the correct version.

A problem with the Simconnect API might be caused by having updated P3D from a prevous version using just the Client. Try to install the P3D FULL installer, which might fix the problem.

[Chrjs]

hi, thanks for your quick response.
Unfortunately, this was my thought too, that's why i uninstalled P3D completely and started off with just a fresh, complete install of P3D5.2 and only GSX and nothing else, the problem still occurs.
Do you know where this "simmconenct API" is located so i can check if it is there?

kind regards
chris

[Alex871]

Im having this same problem. Since the recent update to new textures of gsx the program will carsh when restarted or at any add on airport

[virtuali]

Do you know where this "simmconenct API" is located so i can check if it is there?

It's installed automatically with the sim. Wha the message says, exactly ?

[virtuali]

Im having this same problem. Since the recent update to new textures of gsx the program will carsh when restarted or at any add on airport

I don't know what do you mean with "recent update".

We had an updates about month ago and the initial release caused the problem of not restarting for some users ( we suspect it was those that didn't had support for long filenames in Windows 10 ), but it has been fixed by subsequent updates later on.

As usual:

- Be sure you have the Addon Manager entire folder added to the antivirus Exclusions

- Be sure the firewall is not blocking the updater from downloading updates.

- Run the FSDT Live Update again after being sure of both the above.

[Alex871]

Ok ive tried all 3 steps you mentioned with no luck. So is it possible it could be a deeper probelm like corrupt windows files i just reinstalled simconnect with no luck aswell. This really only happens with certain airplanes as i stated in my own topic i created a couple weeks ago thanks for your support!

[Chrjs]

Do you know where this "simmconenct API" is located so i can check if it is there?

It's installed automatically with the sim. Wha the message says, exactly ?

Hi,
i will try to reinstall P3D completely and report again.
Attached you find the error message,
Kind regards
chris

[Chrjs]

OK, so i reinstalled P3Dv5 from scratch (win defender turned off), installed GSX but still no luck. I cannot restart couatl. Uninstalling GSX again results in the same error mentioned above.
Is there anything else I can do?
Kind regards
chris

[virtuali]

OK, so i reinstalled P3Dv5 from scratch (win defender turned off), installed GSX but still no luck

Please clarify if with "no luck", you mean you still get the error about API.DLL, or you don't get it, but you cannot restart Couatl, or both.

I cannot restart couatl. Uninstalling GSX again results in the same error mentioned above.

Please clarify if you get this error on uninstalling, installing, or both.

[Chrjs]

Sorry if have have been not clear enough.
Even after a complete and fresh resinstall of both P3D (complete package) and GSX the situation and problem is the same as it was in my initial post:

- COUATL disappears in the flightsim as soon as i restart it, no error message at all
- when uninstalling GSX i get the "api"-error (see the attachment in my last post), the installation of gsx shows no error at all

[virtuali]

when uninstalling GSX i get the "api"-error (see the attachment in my last post), the installation of gsx shows no error at all

As you can see from the screenshot you posted, the error comes from Prepar3d.exe itself so, it doesn't have anything to do with our installer, which is only CALLING Prepar3d.exe to ASK to remove the add-on, and Prepar3d.exe *ITSELF* it's telling you it has an install problem, which seems to be a serious one, since API.DLL it's Simconnect itself so, if that doesn't work correctly, no add-on will work.

As I've said, if other add-ons are working, that doesn't mean P3D it's ok. Some add-ons might use the legacy Simconnect for FSX, which can still be used to connect to P3D, and that's a completely different kind of library that is installed in a different way, with its own installer. But the native P3D Simconnect, which is required by GSX, which is a native P3D 64 bit client, should always work on a proper P3D install.

Maybe something *else* in your PC is missing, something required by the P3D Simconnect (but not by other legacy clients), like the VC++ runtime redistributables.

Which, again, are normally installed with P3D but, the issue with these libraries is that if they are corrupted or conflicting with each other, the normal install might not always be able to fix them.

Again, your problem seems to be with Prepar3D.exe *itself*, that's where your error message is coming from.

[Chrjs]

Hi,
just to let you know that there is some progress. After reinstalling everything from scratch with the new P3D5.3 hf2 I don't get the API.DLL error described above anymore. I can install and uninstall GSX/addonmanager without any problem. However, and this is still very sad, couatl still disappears whenever I restart the service, just as stated above. I don't really know what to do anymore. I would love to use the new featuresand your program.
Kind regards
chris

[Raphael]

It is happening to me that i can configure everything, but after selecting the service, PUMP:  Coualt dissapears from P3D menues.  Cant restart it anyway.   Simmilar to you captains i think.    But i can still use GSX without the new walk-in gates feature, works normally that way.   Win10-P3D5.3HF2.

Following. 

[Chrjs]

Hi,
i'm still working on this showstopper-issue which prevents me from using your product.
I have done more things.
- un-/reinstall the vc++ files
- disable any antivirus-progamm/firewall
still no luck.
To sort out that there is a problem with P3D itself, i bought and installed the Steam version of fsx and installed GSX there and it has the same problem. As soon as i hit restart couatl it just disappears from the menu, only the addon manager remains. In the log the only lines are:

"Python 2.7.13 Stackless 3.1b3 060516 (default, May 22 2017, 13:45:26) [MSC v.1900 32 bit (Intel)] wxPython 3.0.2.0
couatl v3.2 (build 4641)
log started on Sat Feb 26 13:40:09 2022

connecting to SimConnect...
connected to SimConnect
connected to bglmanx
disconnected from SimConnect."
So no problem with the P3D simmoconect whatsoever.
What else can I do to make it work? Could you please help me again?
Is there any way to restart couatl manually? I know other programs/preocesses like EZDok can be started even with P3D running.
Thank you very much in advance.
Kind regards
chris