EUREKA!!

[nigelgrant]

I did not post this in my Lost Airport Buildings message string since I considered it too important to get buried in a long string.

After installing GSX, couatl.exe would not load and I lost all my airport buidlings.  Following a bit of selective program closures I have found that ATI TrayTools was not allowing couatl.exe to load.  I have uninstalled the ATI Tray Tools and all my buildings are back, as is the couatl menu.

Good news, I was getting quite frustrated!   I hope this may help others.
Nigel
Vancouver

[aircanadajet]

My buildings are disappearing too, but I noticed that there is a little menu once you enter download latest update, then it asked you if you want to re start couatl menu, so when you do, the building are gone for a sec and then they come back.... weird but they are back and forth.

[virtuali]

After installing GSX, couatl.exe would not load and I lost all my airport buidlings.  Following a bit of selective program closures I have found that ATI TrayTools was not allowing couatl.exe to load.  I have uninstalled the ATI Tray Tools and all my buildings are back, as is the couatl menu.

I'm very happy you finally found the problem. However I find this to be really strange: I can't possibly think why the AT Tray tools would prevent Couatl.exe to work, I too have an ATI card and I guess many other users have one, if it was really a common problem, we would have heard it by now.

The only possible explanation is that you have VC++ system libraries messed up in your system, and in a way that simply reinstalling them using the official MS installers will not fix them (our installers of course installs the needed version using the MS official installer), and the ATI tools are likely use them too, perhaps a different version, triggering a conflict of the dreaded side-by-side system those libraries use.

[hero93]

As you might know I have the same Problem...

@nigelgrant: You don't have to uninstall ATT, it is enough to close it before starting FSX, so you can still use ATT for other Programs and if you have selected your ATT FSX config it is applied to FSX even without ATT running.

@virtuali: It would be very nice to find a solution someday, because sometimes you need to make changes in ATT inflight. I tried by installing visual studio and older Redistributable-Packages, but that didn't work.

I really appreciate your products, but this is annoying...

[nigelgrant]

Umberto

Just to clarify - ATI Tray Tools is a 3rd party addon by a Ray Adams, it is not tools issued by ATI or Radeon; in a recent post elsewhere to hero93 you had mentioned you had ATI tray tools, and I wondered whether you may have been referring to those that came with your ATI video card?

Nigel

[virtuali]

Yes, you are right, I've must have confused it with the official Catalyst tool icon.

In fact, I've downloaded it and, guess what, Couatl crashes on my system too, if the ATI Tray Tools is loaded! We thought to have an easy reproducible case, so I forwarded this to Alberto ( our Couatl developer ) so he could debug it, and he has an ATI card too, although it's an older mobile version, but unfortunately, it works just fine on his system...which means we are still back at square one.

Maybe this tool creates this conflict only on specific ATI cards, I guess not the tweaks are the same for all models. And, while I'm running Windows 7 x64, Alberto still uses old trusty XP, so maybe it's only happening on 64 bit OS or only on Windows 7.

Until we find the cause, the only solution is to do all needed tweaks before launching FSX, then quit the ATI Tray tool.

[hero93]

HEUREKA

I found a solution:

You have to exclude the couatl.exe in ATT (via Hardware -> Auto Overclocking -> Exclude -> Add)

You will loose the Auto-overclocking and the OSD (On Screen Display) but everything else works fine now 

[nigelgrant]

Brilliant work, hero93!  That is a good solution and I am flying happy now. Interesting, on looking back, I have never been happy with the FSDream Team products since the airport building were never visible from any distance, particularly from the air.  Last night prior to landings, I flew over Geneva and Honolulu and all the airport buildings showed crisp as anything..  Whether couatl.exe was loading before I installed GSX I don't know, maybe the GSX tipped the balane with ATT running. Now everything is perfect.

Umberto, re your comments on WindowsXP and 7 this is my setup which may help in your deliberations:

INTEL I7 920 quad core o/c 4.1MHz
GigaByte EX58-UD3R mobo
HIS ATI Radeon HD5850 1Gb
6Gb RAM Patriot Viper II 1600mhZ DDR3
1X WD Black 500GB HDD SATA
2X WD Black 500GB HDD SATA RAID1
LG DVD±RW drive
LG LightScribe DVD±RW drive w/NERO
3 ½” floppy
Cooler Master Real Power 700w ps
Cooler Master V8 cooler
Cooler Master Centurion5 case

LG 24” LCD monitor

CHProducts Yoke
CHProducts Pro-Pedals

Windows7 64bit Home Premium

Nigel
Vancouver

[virtuali]

We might have found what the problem was with the Ati Tray Tool program, and a new Couatl.exe will be available very soon.