Author Topic: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update  (Read 2905 times)

bhorv67

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Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« on: November 20, 2021, 03:21:27 am »
Apologies if this has been reported already.

Using P3d v5.2 HF1 - after running Live update 4-5 times today, each time starting p3d, Couatl is not running, hence all addons are not registered or starting.
confirmed Addon folder is excluded in AV

Ran Live update again 2-3 more times, still no joy.

I see some other reports of this and confirming the above, those fixes of running live update again does not help.

Appreciate any assistance. Thanks

bhorv67

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2021, 07:23:45 pm »
After several runs of Live Update and restarts of Windows, the issue is resolved.

Ray Proudfoot

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2021, 06:47:01 pm »
I had the same experience this morning after running Live Update once. The critical file couatl64.exe (from memory) failed for some unknown reason meaning not just GSX was unavailable but all the GSX airports.

I tried running it manually but although it showed up in Details in Task Manager the FSDT executables still didn’t work. It is frustrating when this happens because it requires P3D to be terminated and restarted. Is there another way of getting FSDT products working?
Cheers,
Ray.

P3Dv5.3HF2, i9-13900K @ 5.5Ghz, RTX4090, 32Gb RAM, 4Tb Crucial T700 NVMe SSD, BenQ 32” 30Hz monitor at 3840*2160 with VSync.

virtuali

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2021, 10:48:01 am »
After several runs of Live Update and restarts of Windows, the issue is resolved.

None of the multiple runs of Live Update were useful. It was likely the Windows restart that fixed it because, the updater will download some of the VC++ redistributables libraries that are required by GSX to run and, depending on what version you had before, these MIGHT requrie a restart or not. They usually don't and that's why we don't want to force a restart automatically, but sometimes is needed.

AUA9085

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2021, 05:11:13 pm »
Add me to the list :(
Sometimes it starts, sometimes it needs 2-3-4 P3D restarts until it loads :(


Just found out its my Antivirus which is scanning everytime files if GSX is rebuilding stuff.
Need to check why, I've excluded every GSX folder I know -.-
« Last Edit: December 02, 2021, 08:02:48 pm by AUA9085 »

virtuali

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #5 on: December 02, 2021, 08:29:13 pm »
Just found out its my Antivirus which is scanning everytime files if GSX is rebuilding stuff.

People don't realize how invasive antivirus can be. They slow down your system, because they scan each and every file that is being read by everything.

Quote
Need to check why, I've excluded every GSX folder I know

In addition to the Addon Manager folder, if you add to the Exclusions the simulator own folder and all folders that contains sceneries, it will work much better and faster, and not just because of GSX.

AUA9085

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2021, 06:30:43 am »
True, but  my exclusion list is long :D and I can definitly say that the Antivirus starts scanning only if coutl64_p3d.exe is starting recreating the cache but I already excluded C:\ProgramData\Virtuali.
Is there another folder (exepct the Addon Manager folder) which needs to be excluded where files get written?

virtuali

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2021, 12:15:10 pm »
I can definitly say that the Antivirus starts scanning only if coutl64_p3d.exe is starting recreating the cache but I already excluded C:\ProgramData\Virtuali.

Excluding %PROGRAMDATA%\Virtuali folder should be useful to prevent the antivirus mistakenly blocking Couatl exe to write ITS OWN private data there, but it shouldn't speed up the process because what is being written in %PROGRAMDATA% is fairly small and, more importantly, files are being created during the process so, it wouldn't be possible for the antivirus to scan *while* they are created. At best, it would have to wait until they are closed.

Of course, you would have realized that checking with the performance monitor: the files being scanned are the ones in your scenery folders so, these are the ones that need to be excluded. Lots of them are in the simulator own folder, but many might be elsewhere, in folders pointed by the various add-on.xml files but, in some cases, you might have sceneries that are not in the sim own folder and don't use an add-on.xml so, you can find them in external folders in the scenery.cfg.

So, basically, each and every folder that contains sceneries must be excluded and this (TOGETHER with having excluded the WHOLE Addon Manager folder) will surely prevent the antivirus from needlessly scanning .BGL files at each start.

I checked it right now and, I think it MIGHT be related to FsLabs warnings about the sim not being started with admin permission so, it will restart it automatically with changed permissions. It's possible this might trigger an antivirus response because, the automatic restart is run with different credentials than the ones you start the program with, so the antivirus is freaking out, because it assumed somebody (possibly a virus) started the program instead of you.

I changed the Compatibility options for Prepar3d.exe to always run with Admin settings, so FsLabs won't issue its warning anymore, and now I can confirm Windows Defender is NOT scanning scenery files anymore. The cache regeneration takes exactly 1 second on my system, most of the time is completed before I can even read the message.

While doing this test, I found MsMpEng.EXE was even scanning the P3D Shaders folder!! So, a new suggestion to speed it up and make it even more reliable is to add this folder to the exclusions too:

%LOCALAPPDA%\Lockheed Martin

This doesn't obviously have anything to do with GSX, it's just further evidence the antivirus doesn't really know what it's doing, other than doing its best to cause issues and slow your system down, and I wonder what will happen if the antivirus decided to *block* a shader...
« Last Edit: December 03, 2021, 12:59:25 pm by virtuali »

Ray Proudfoot

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #8 on: December 03, 2021, 12:32:36 pm »
More very useful info. Thanks Umberto.  ;D
Cheers,
Ray.

P3Dv5.3HF2, i9-13900K @ 5.5Ghz, RTX4090, 32Gb RAM, 4Tb Crucial T700 NVMe SSD, BenQ 32” 30Hz monitor at 3840*2160 with VSync.

AUA9085

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Re: Couatl Not Starting after latest Update
« Reply #9 on: December 04, 2021, 11:32:09 am »
Yeah, since the last Update of Bitdefender it looks like the exclusion list will not be read and everything will be scanned.
I already aske them to fix this but I dont expect much.

Their custerom support dont listen what you are telling them.
I've told them 3 times now, that I am not talking about the manual scan, and they are still telling me, I should try to disable some options for the manual scan.....

I do really like bitdefender in the past but with the latest updates, they fucked the program up.