How do I stop the endless trial period has started

[jfwharton]

Hello.  I have been fighting with this issue over and over.  I fly P3D v5.4 and check the 12 FSDreamteam airports I have installed.  Sometimes everything is good, but often I get the message that the trial period has started again.  The addon manager entire folder and subfolders have been excluded from my Norton Antivirus scans.  I have made no changed to scenery that I know of yet the trial period message keeps coming back.  I Have redownloaded the installers for each, reinstalled each airport, reactivated each airport and still get the trial period messages.  I am at a loss as to how this can be fixed.  It's to the point that it is almost not worth having the FSDreamteam airports installed in P3D any more.  What triggers these trial period messages to appear?  Please help.  I am so frustrated with this constant reinstalling of these airports (KMEM, KDFW, KLAS, KLAX, KIAH, KSDF, KCLT, PHNL, PHLI, PHTO, PHKO, PHOG).

[jfwharton]

As an update.  I just finished uninstalling everything from FSDreamteam for my P3D and MSFS flight simulators.  In P3D I made sure there were no references to any of the airports listed above in the addons.cfg file or the scenery.cfg files.  I deleted the addon manager folder after everything was uninstalled.  I reinstalled all of the software which took hours and activated each and every one.  Started up P3D v5.4 and there it is again that the trial period has started.  What am I doing wrong?  What am I missing?  Why doesn't your software recognize that the airports have been activated?

[bcm652]

Can I make a suggestion. First of all, I'm using FSX as my sim. As you and I both know that scenery bought from FSDT comes with a trial period. I have seen the trial period restart in my sim also and after checking everything, nothing seems to be wrong, the scenery was still listed. So, I just ignored it, as long as my scenery was still working and it seemed to disappear on it's own after awhile. I just guessed that after an update or two, the restart message cleared itself. Not much of a technical explanation but the computer Gods can be fickle.

[jfwharton]

Thank you for your reply but this has not gone away.  Perhaps I will wait a while since I just reinstalled everything but this shouldn't be happening.  Right now I'm looking to email support to see if there is something wrong on the back end server keeping my installs in the trial period.  Right now I'm so frustrated I could scream.

[jfwharton]

I am beginning to think you are correct.  I contacted support and they implied that there is a permissions issue with my system.  That is most likely a correct assessment but so many others have this issue as well.  The airports from FSDreamteam are the only ones that have a trial period.  I do not have any issues with any of the airports I have purchased from other developers, only FSDreamteam.  So I guess I'll just tolerate the situation but I deeply regret purchasing the FSDreamteam airports I have and am considering just uninstalling them and not purchasing anything from FSDreamteam again.  I'll have to wait and see if I can tolerate this issue or not.

[bcm652]

Patience a virtue my friend, don't through the baby out with the bathwater.

[jfwharton]

Well I intended to throw the baby out with the bath water.  After uninstalling all of those airports I reconsidered and reinstalled them.  I still have the trial period message coming up for all but two of the airports and after checking (started a flight at each airport shutting down P3D between each test) I discovered that while the message comes up on 10 out of the 12 airports, none of the airports disappear after 5 minutes (waited 12 minutes at each airport).  So, while the popup comes up the airports are working and not disappearing.  I can live with this.  Just wish I could figure out a fix for the message popping up in the first place.

[virtuali]

I discovered that while the message comes up on 10 out of the 12 airports, none of the airports disappear after 5 minutes (waited 12 minutes at each airport).  So, while the popup comes up the airports are working and not disappearing.  I can live with this. 

Do you possibly have two copies of the Addon Manager in the Addons menu? This might happen if you installed over a very old version, without uninstalling first.

[paulthorn]

If you have more than one drive, try installing GSX in the other drive from where P3d is installed. If it won't let you change where you want to install it, you'll have to remove any remnents of GSX using search method in like drive C:\   D:\ etc. Reboot after doing this then GSX will let you change where to install it and you can install it in any other drive where P3d isn't located. It seemed to work for me, no guarentees though.

[virtuali]

If it won't let you change where you want to install it, you'll have to remove any remnents of GSX using search method in like drive C:\   D:\

This method won't work. Cleaning files doesn't have anything to do with the installer allowing to install somewhere else.

The one and only thing that matters is a registry key in the installer, which is cleared by the Uninstaller ( in P3D ) when you reply YES to the question "Do you want to remove the Addon Manager?". That will clear the fsdt registry root that stores the install location, so on the next install you'll be free to install everywhere.

In MSFS, with the FSDT Universal Installer, the registry key is always cleared, no questions asked, when you Uninstall the FSDT Universal Installer from the Windows Control Panel.