Addon Manager deletes other addons

[strykerpsg]

I know this seems to generate much debate on your forum, but want to know how do I fix the add-ons (Ariane Designs 737, Heli Traffic 2009, and others) that were present before I re-installed your latest add on manager? I have had problems in the past with the Add on manager, which is why I did not re-install my four airports from FSDT until now. After re-installing, all of my add ons, except FSDT, are now gone. I was able to save Heli Traffic, but cannot find the fix for Ariane and the others. Suggestions?

Matt

[virtuali]

The Addon Manager installation does not "remove" anything.

As explained in many other threads, the installer FIRST checks if your DLL.XML files and your EXE.XML are correct BEFORE touching them.

The check is made using the standard MS XML parser and, if your XML files were ALREADY corrupted BEFORE launching the Addon Manager installer, a MESSAGE will tell you this, giving you the OPTION to start with a new XML file.

This new XML file will only contain the Addon Manager entries so, if your XML file was ALREADY corrupted BEFORE launching the Addon Manager installer and you (after seeing the warning about the file being corrupted) chose to start with a new correct XML file, you might have the wrong impression the Addon Manager installer "removes" other addons, when it doesn't, it's just that, it can't obviously try to "fix" an already corrupted file, because it would only create even more mess so, the only way is to give you the OPTION to start with a new file.

Of course, the Addon Manager installer will ALSO create a BACKUP of your XML files before its installation, with easy to identify "before_addonmanager" names, that are located in the same folder of the standard ones, so you can either use this backup to go as you were before, and maybe checking why they were corrupted in the first place.

NOTE: this safety check has been added to later versions of the Addon Manager installers AND the sceneries installers. Before, there wasn't such check so, if your XML files were already corrupted, it could result in a failed installation. This means, if you used an old installer for a scenery, regardless of the fact you used the very latest Addon Manager, this might have caused the creation from scratch of a new XML file, without asking you the question. Again, this happens ONLY if your XML files already had a problem, it's just that before, there was no question asked.

So, you might have not seen the question, if one of your scenery installers wasn't updated, but that doesn't change the fact that, the issue was caused by XML files which already had some errors before installing anything from FSDT.