FSDreamTeam forum
Products Support => GSX Support FSX/P3D => Topic started by: AaronMyers on May 28, 2012, 08:35:12 am
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For some reason the afore mentioned exe is having some real problems. It does not load properly into FSX, although it really tries, over and over again. Looking at the processes I see it start up, then another one spawns, then goes away, then another spawns, and goes away again. Like some kind of loop.
I tried the standard suggestion of uninstalling GSX, having it remove the addon manager and coualt engine, then downloading and installing while no A/V running. Did not change the scenario. I tried just reinstalling the stand alone addon manager. No difference. Below are a few shots of the processes, again seems to be looping somehow with one spawning then another, then dieing, then spawning again. This is chewing up resources, and obviously preventing all addons that depend on it from running.
Any ideas?
http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl1.jpg (http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl1.jpg)
http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl2.jpg (http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl2.jpg)
http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl3.jpg (http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl3.jpg)
http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl4.jpg (http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl4.jpg)
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What you are describing doesn't happen, and nobody else ever reported this.
It's not Couatl that is "trying" to load itself. An executable can't load itself, it's Windows (under FSX control, since the module is on the EXE.XML list) that will load it and using ProcessExplorer, I can see only 1 Couatl.exe, correctly loading only once when FSX starts and correctly shutting down when it ends.
So, the problem clearly is something in your system and the most likely suspect that can alter the Windos loading strategy, it's an antivirus or a similar security program, like an anti-spyware.
We had reports of some antivirus that mistakenly continue blocking programs even when they are turned off, because their service is still running. And, if the problem is caused by another security program you have installed, you need to turn that off too, not jus the antivirus.
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My anti-virus is turned off just as it always is when I'm running FSX. I use AlacrityPC to stop the services entirely and I run no other security software at all.
In process monitor you can see endless processing by the couatl.exe executable which doesn't look normal to me at all, and in process explorer you can clearly see two instances running at the same time. Just as you can in the task manager shot. Then one of the two dies and a new one starts up with a new process ID. I understand that it SHOULD not happen, and it has not happened to me in the past, but it is happening on my system now. Consider me the first to report it.
This was found because the menu items for the couatl engine does not appear and none of the FSDT products are loading.
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In process monitor you can see endless processing by the couatl.exe executable
Well, I surely can't see it...
which doesn't look normal to me at all
No, it's not.
Then one of the two dies and a new one starts up with a new process ID. I understand that it SHOULD not happen, and it has not happened to me in the past, but it is happening on my system now. Consider me the first to report it.
Try to enable logging to see if at least it goes to print something meaninful, open the Notepad and type the following on a new blank file:
logFile=couatl.log
(please note logFile is written beginning with a lower case l and a capital F )
Save the file as couatl.ini in the FSX\fsdreamteam\couatl folder, so it stays at the same level of the couatl.exe
Launch FSX, go to any airport, when it finished loading, exit from FSX, check if you have a Couatl.log file in the fsdreamteam\Couatl folder, and post its content here. Be sure Couatl.exe process isn't already running. If it is, terminate it with the Task manager, and then start FSX.
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Ok, I've done that, and unfortunately it isn't telling us much:
couatl v2.0 (build 2309)
log started on Mon May 28 11:00:25 2012
connecting to SimConnect...
Then nothing after that even after loading a FSDT airport. In the FSX menu I see the addon manager, but no couatl. Really perplexing and I'm running short of ideas. I've removed any recently added stuff that I can think of, including the latest FSRecorder, but nothing so far is changing the behavior.
Also as a side anecdote, I can tell when I first load FSX when it is in the same apparent loop as the mouse cursor shows a "working in background" cursor. Then when I close FSX and the current couatl.exe process goes away, the cursor returns normal. I'm sure it's just symptomatic, but still interesting.
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Ok, I've done that, and unfortunately it isn't telling us much:
That's exactly what I've suspected, this means the problem is caused by something external to it. The message indicates it couldn't even find FSX to talk to, which seems to indicate a problem in FSX, either a Simconnect problem, a problem with runtime libraries or something like that.
Are you sure you are not running an antivirus or firewall ? I keep insisting about security software, because all users that were 100% sure they disabled them, eventually found out they weren't completely disabled, and the only solution was to uninstall them.
Also, check you haven't modified the "Compatibility" tab for both FSX.EXE AND Couatl.exe. Nothing should be checked in that page, which is the default setting.
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Perhaps it is something external, but darned if I can tell what. It's why I run AlacrityPC before fsx so that I can shut anything down that is not essential. I run Avast antivirus and AlacrityPC shuts the services off when it runs, I can see this in the services applet. Also, simconnect is working fine because I run Active Sky and Aivlasoft EFB from a remote laptop across the network that uses simconnect as well. They both are functioning normally.
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Also, simconnect is working fine because I run Active Sky and Aivlasoft EFB from a remote laptop across the network that uses simconnect as well. They both are functioning normally.
That doesn't tell much: there are 3 different versions of Simconnect installed (RTM, SP1 and SP2), and they can even run at the same time, if an addon requires the RTM or the SP1 and that is installed fine, it will run ok but, if another Addon (like our own) requires the SP2 version, and that is the only one that has a problem, only that addon will not run, so you will be mislead into thinking Simconnect is ok, just because other addons can use it.
However, do you see the Addon Manager menu, at least ? If yes, this indicates the problem is not Simconnect, because the Addon Manager also use it and requires the SP2 version so, that only leaves one possible explanation: something is blocking Couatl but not the Addon Manager, for some reason.
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Yes, I do see the add-on manager and can open it from within FSX just fine. Only couatl is an issue. Perhaps some program can be used to monitor file access... not sure how else I'm going to know what is blocking it when 80% of the processes and services have been shut off.
As a side note, not only are my Avast services stopped, but my entire FSX program folder is in the scan exclusion list.
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Here's a shot of procmon showing what appears to be the loop I've referred to:
http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl5.jpg (http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/couatl5.jpg)
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I'm sorry, but I can't replicate this in any way, nor anybody else reported it, so it's clearly something happening on your system, since you said yourself it used to work, and since we haven't updated the program since some weeks, the problem can't be related to couatl.exe, it's just being affected by it.
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Well, oddly it only seems to be only affecting your scripting engine. I'm not disputing that it could be an outside factor, but I go to more lengths than most to eliminate outside factors and it seems odd that I'm finding the needle in the haystack. Unfortunately since we've put all our proverbial eggs into one basket, I'm now without 13 add-ons that I've bought and paid for because this scripting engine refuses to run. That's not something that I am really inclined to give up on.
If you think of some additional suggestions I would love to hear them, as losing all those add-ons because they are tied to this one application isn't sitting very well.
EDIT: I also tried stripping out everything from dll.xml and exe.xml except for the core components such as fsuipc, addon manager, and couatl. Same issue so it does not appear to be related to a new addition there.
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Unfortunately since we've put all our proverbial eggs into one basket, I'm now without 13 add-ons that I've bought and paid for because this scripting engine refuses to run.
The engine is not refusing to run. Something else in your system is causing this.
Fact that all our addons needs a single executable, it's obviously made for efficiency reasons, imaging the waste of resources, if each single airport needed its own .DLL (yes, some developers do that, which is really un-efficent), and in any case, even if we had different modules, chances are they will all stopped working anyway in your case.
If you think of some additional suggestions I would love to hear them
I've already made some additional suggestions, but haven't heard back from you about them: be sure that neither FSX.EXE or Couatl.exe have anything checked in their "Compatibility" tab of their Properties. That page should be entirely blank with nothing enabled, which is the default setting.
You might *TRY* a System restore to a previous date when you didn't had the problem, no guaranteed it will work because system restore is quite tricky and potentially dangerous, but it's the last resort before reinstalling Windows.
Another thing worth trying, is to create a new user account, and try install under that one, hopefully what is causing the problem is not installed for all users, and might not appear under a new user account.
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I did check the compatibility page for both executables and neither of them have anything checked on that page.
System restore is an extreme measure that I'm not quite ready to risk, because as you said, it's potentially long reaching and can affect a lot more that flight sim add-ons. I would be nice to find the culprit that is causing the issue rather than a blanket attempt at a work-around. Did you yourself code this module? If not, can we take this issue to the developer and see if they may have some clues that could create this looping scenario?
In the meantime I will indeed create a new user account and try that. That will at least tell us if the conflict is with an application loaded specific to my normal Windows account.
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Seems to run ok with a new user profile. Guess I start killing processes one by one until I find the conflict...
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Ok, I could really use the help in tracking this down. I basically shutdown and killed any process that was not vital to keeping the OS running and this is still a problem. See the process tree below. It's basically down to just system processes. You'll note the AvastUI is still running (which it does not allow you to kill), but all of its services are stopped, and all scanning is disabled. This is confirmed by the OS alert message the minute it is stopped.
What other process could cause it? Also see the second process tree after launching couatl.exe. Doing its now usual looping in spawning unending new processes.
http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/process.jpg (http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/process.jpg)
http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/aftercouatl.jpg (http://www.digitalaviator.net/MiscPics/aftercouatl.jpg)
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You'll note the AvastUI is still running (which it does not allow you to kill), but all of its services are stopped, and all scanning is disabled. This is confirmed by the OS alert message the minute it is stopped.
That seems to indicate the antivirus is either bugged (not closing even with service stopped) or, maybe, it's suffering from the SAME problem that is affecting Couatl.exe
Does it happen even when the other user account ?
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It's by design to keep other viruses and trojan horses from being able to stop the UI. The running process is only the graphic interface; the scanning processes are stopped and disabled.
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I'm sorry but, since you verified that the problem doesn't happen in the new user account, I don't see any other solution that trying to understand the offending program in the normal user account, possibly by exclusion.
You can also try comparing both the running processes and the list of running services between the two user accounts, maybe you'll notice it.
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I will try that. It has to be something other than Avast though because that runs under the newly created user account as well.
When removing the addon manager and couatl engine are there any registry entries or files on disk that are left behind? Many apps do that and sometimes it's helpful to manually remove them before a re-install. Anything like that?
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When removing the addon manager and couatl engine are there any registry entries or files on disk that are left behind? Many apps do that and sometimes it's helpful to manually remove them before a re-install. Anything like that?
Only your Serial Number and its activation data, and for good reason, otherwise you would need to reactivate each time you uninstall the scenery. Of course, this can't have any effect on the problem your are having.
Really, don't waste your time trying to figure out that something might be "wrong" either in Couatl itself or its installer, there's nothing wrong with them, and it has been proved both by the fact that nobody else reported this and that creating a new user account fixed it.
There can't be any other explanation that the problem has been created by something installed in the normal user account. And it can't be anything from FSDT, since you installed our installed into the new user account too, and it worked.
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I'm at a loss. I don't see any processes running in my normal profile that aren't running in the newly created test profile. In fact the test profile has all the same running processes plus many more as I'm not bothering to stop anything on the test side. Including Avast antivirus. All running away and couatl seems to start normally. Doesn't make sense unless there is information in the normal profile that couatl is getting confused by. Would it make sense to remove couatl along with any specific registry and/or configuration information, reinstall, and just reactivate my purchases if that works? What else is there?
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As I've said, there's nothing wrong in the registry that might "confuse" Couatl, the problem is surely caused by some other addon. The only thing that are "left" in the registry, it's your Serial Number, but that can't possibly create that issue, since it's stored in each user profile just the same so, fact that is running in the other user account, clearly proves is not the registry the problem.
No other registry keys are used by Couatl, except that is reads the keys created by FSX, to know where it's located.
First, the list of process is not the only thing that is running, there's also the list of services. You should also check processess and services created by all users, not just yourself, there's an option in Task manager for that.
And, you can also use the msconfig program to enable/disable startup processes. Type "msconfig" at a command prompt.
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Process explorer shows all running processes regardless if it's specific to the user account, or a global one. It also shows running services as well. A service calls an executable which is assigned a process ID and added to the list. Process explorer should show all of those things. I guess a system restore is the next possible option, I just don't know how far back I'll need to go.
I understand that running everything through a centralized application is more efficient at getting them all to run, but clearly it is also quite efficient at killing everything if there is a problem.
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Process explorer shows all running processes regardless if it's specific to the user account, or a global one. It also shows running services as well.
That's not what I've meant: if you prefer to use Process explorer, that's fine, but you still need to make a comparison between what is running in the two user accounts.
This, assuming that what is causing the problem is an executable that is running at that moment, and not something that ran at Windows startup then quit when it was done.
Which is why, I've told you to use MSCONFIG, to see what is being started, make a comparison between the two accounts, and disable items of needed.
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Well, the problem is now resolved, and sadly it was indeed with the couatl application itself. Or more specifically with a configuration item in couatl.
It took searching for all files on my system that had the name couatl in it to find it, but in my user profile couatl has a couple ini files for specific configurations, but more importantly it also creates an error log. The error log was over 100MB in size (all plain text) with thousands of entries all pointing to the same problem in one of the configuration files.
Ultimately I had made an entry in the config file long ago when testing the "disable_on_airports" setting for using GSX and AES together. This setting worked, but recently I removed the entry I had made for KBOS, and having an empty list for that setting apparently really makes couatl upset. I removed the disable_on_airports statement from the CouatlAddons.ini file entirely and couatl is now happy.
Unfortunately if I had known there was another log file I could look at, or that there were profile specific ini files that could be deleted/looked at (and I did specifically ask that question), the problem could have been resolved long ago. Hopefully if someone else has this issue it will keep them from chasing the same wild goose I did.
At any rate, it's fixed, and I have my add-ons back.
EDIT: For future reference the couatladdons.ini file was in my C:\Users\Aaron\AppData\Roaming\Virtuali folder along with the associated error log named couatl.err. It contain thousands of references to the following error:
couatl v2.0 (build 2309)
panic log started on Mon May 14 14:39:33 2012
error in config file C:/Users/Aaron/AppData/Roaming/Virtuali/CouatlAddOns.ini: no value given in 'disable_on_airports ='
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That's very strange because, the problem with an empty disable_on_airports list was discussed already here:
http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=5649.msg51662#msg51662
And I was fairly sure some code was added to prevent this illegal command in the .INI file, that's why I haven't thought about it, it was supposed to be fixed long ago, I'll make sure it is.
Sorry for not having mentioned your user profile, you were always asking for registry keys left over by the uninstaller, and there are none, except for your Serial Number.
The existence of several .INI files in your user profile is in any case documented in the manual, since they are used for the GSX preferences, all your customized airports, all your customized airplanes, sorry for not having thought about this.
In any case, if you are not diagnosing a problem, it's best if you turn off logging, since even if there are no errors, your log file will grow, because it's not overwritten, but appended, in order to get an historical log.
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As of today I'm experiencing the same problem as the original poster.
I don't really have the energy or time to filter info through these threads, so a quick solution would be appreciated.
Thanx in advance,
Ken
p.s. Im curious as to why this happened.
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As of today I'm experiencing the same problem as the original poster. I don't really have the energy or time to filter info through these threads, so a quick solution would be appreciated.
How can be so sure you are having the same problem, if you don't want to read all the thread, considering the cause of the problem was found only in the last message ?
In this case, it would have been enough reading the last message, which was caused by hand-editing the Couatladdons.ini to disable an airport, and if the disable_on_airports line contains an empty list, this being an illegal command for a .INI file, crashes Couatl.
This can't happen by using the product normally, since our installer puts "disable_on_airports = NONE" when installing, so the list is not empty, it can only happen by hand-editing the file, and then removing all the airports AND the default "NONE" item.
If you haven't done anything like that, and you disable_on_airports line in the Couatl.ini file doesn't contain an empty string after the "=" sign or there's no disable_on_airports command at all, then no, your problem is NOT the same as discussed here, so you should really open a new thread, describing your problem, otherwise it will become very confusing to keep two threads opened discussing entirely different issues at the same time.
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I'm in for the same problem. Occurred after installing Aerosoft's Toulouse. Like FunknNasty, I don't have the energy to chase this around. FSDT stuff is great when Couatl works well.
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I'm in for the same problem. Occurred after installing Aerosoft's Toulouse.
The original problem was caused by an empty line in the "disable_airports" line of the couatladdons.ini, while if your problem is caused by the installation of the Aerosoft's Toulouse, it's fairly obvious you are NOT having the same problem. And besides, we already fixe the problem in the most current version of Couatl.exe which is online since a week already so, the problem reported here can't happen anymore, if using the most current version.
Since your problem is not the same as discussed here, so you should really open a new thread, describing your problem, otherwise it will become very confusing to keep two threads opened discussing entirely different issues at the same time.
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Thanks for addressing that issue so quickly Umberto.