No buildings......Again

[bkircher]

Hi there

Idk why this keeps happening, but from time and time again the buildings just dissappear and not load when I go to LAS. I havent made any changes to the scenery or the scenery library at all and yet they still dissappear. All I see are the jetways. The only way I can solve this problem is to either reinstall the airport or reactivate it in the scenery library. This is getting to be quite annoying because they should load everytime regardless. Any suggestions? This happenes when I am right above/near the buildings

[virtuali]

The only way I can solve this problem is to either reinstall the airport or reactivate it in the scenery library.

Sorry but, what do you mean by "reactivate it in the scenery library" ? Does this means the scenery disappear from the scenery library, so you need to add it again ?

This shouldn't simply happen and, the scenery library itself is nothing that we control, at all. Meaning, nothing from any of our software is writing anything in the scenery library, except the installer, of course, but nothing is touching the library after the installation.

Or, it might be the you don't really "fix" the problem by reactivating it in the scenery library, but is entirely coincidental, the only thing that really fixed it, is the fact that you simply exited from FSX and re-entered it again, which is what editing the scenery library is prompting you to do.

So, please, the next time it happens, could you simply not do anything, and exit FSX, wait 5-10 seconds, and then launch it again ? And, if it doesn't fix, again, don't do anything, but just reboot Windows and try again, without touching anything and without reinstalling and doing anything, except than launching FSX again ?

Again, don't do anything, and just report what's happening.

[bkircher]

Ok lemme see if I can explain this better.

It doesnt dissappear from the list. When I go to the scenery library, I just double click on it to basically make fs think that there have been changes made to the scenery.

Well none of this shouldnt happen to begin with, because I keep having to refresh the scenery so to speak, and then once the buildings come back, I fly there and then I am done with the scenery until the next time I want to fly there. Say for ex, the buildings are gone, I reload it in the scenery library, then go fly to vegas and the buildings will work. Not come back for a few days, and then the buildings are gone again. So I have to restart the whole procress again.

I have tried what you have said, and it does not fix the problem. I do not have this issue with any of your other scenerys, nor have I ever had this issue before with any of your other scenerys.

If I just open vegas in the sim, and there are no buildings and I exit and restart, there still wont be any buildings. To me once it is in the scenery cfg, everything with that scenery should work until changed.

The only addon that I have with the vegas area is the one dudes strip scenery.

[virtuali]

As I've said, nobody ever writes to the scenery.cfg files, except the installer so, if anything strange happens to the Scenery Library, it's nothing we do, but something that happens on your FSX install.

Note that, although you might not SEE any changes to the scenery.cfg, that file is not the only one that has an impact on the scenery library. There are also the scenery caches indexes, located at %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\FSX in the "SceneryCache" and the "SceneryIndex" folder, that control the scenery library, and are updated when you touch the scenery library menu.

We don't touch those files as well so, there's no reason why they would become corrupted, requiring a refresh to work again.

The next time it happens, as soon as you don't see the buildings anymore, DO NOT EXIT from FSX, and pay attention if you see the BOTH the Addon Manager and the "Couatl powered plugin menu" under the "Addons" menu, and report back.

And, as I've said, DO NOT try to fix the problem by refreshing the scenery library but, instead, exit from FSX, re-launch it again, and try again. If it doesn't work, DO NOT fix the problem by refreshing the scenery library but, instead, reboot Windows. Each time you do this, always check if you see BOTH the Addon Manager and "Couatl Powered pluings" menus under the "Addons" menu, and don't try just once and decide it doesn't work if you only tried once, but at least 2-3 times, and each time note if you see BOTH menus.

And no, I'm not saying you should do this normally, it's not normal at all, and it should't happen. But, you HAVE to do this for the time being, so we can understand WHY it's happening.

[bkircher]

Ok, so I loaded the scenery and there are buildings there. I looked at the menus and both the addon manager is there and the coutl is there. I think what it is that is causing this is that the coutl part is only functioning half the time. Last time it happened there was no coutl in the addon menu now that I think of it. So how could I get it to be there and stay there?

Thanks for the help as always.

[virtuali]

Well, it's clear that if you see both menus, the buildings will be there. I've asked you to check if any of the two menus is NOT there, when the scenery is NOT visible!

If you are sure that one of the menus was missing, or you just want to wait for the thing to be happening again to be sure, then it was exactly as I was saying from the start: touching the Scenery Library didn't do anything, it was exiting and relaunching from FSX that fixed the problem.

About why the menu disappear, that's an entirely different issue, that is diagnosed in an entirely different way but please, before starting with that one, be absolutely sure that each time you don't see the buildings, you are also not seeing one of those two menus and, of course, it would help knowing which one.

[bkircher]

Ok will do on that one virtuali. Im almost positive that its the menus, but I will wait till it happens again and post back.

[bkircher]

As I said I would report back when the problem reoccurs, and it just has.

I dont know why, but it seems the Coutl menu in fsx seems to only sometimes load and show up in fsx. I am not sure why it doesnt always load when I load fsx, but sometimes it loads and sometimes it doesnt.

As instructed, I have not touched the scenery library at all, but have exited the sim and restarted it to see if it would load, but it has not. This is very interesting.

[virtuali]

As instructed, I have not touched the scenery library at all, but have exited the sim and restarted it to see if it would load, but it has not. This is very interesting.

Please, be sure that you are using the most current version, which can be ensured by installing the scenery again, or installing the stand-alone Addon Manager.

And, please check the antivirus because, we got report that, starting from this week, a group of antivirus have decided to detect Couatl.exe as a virus so, there might be problems until they fix the error (which usually happens on the next updates, when they get enough complains by users about false positive reports).

The usual solution is to install with the antivirus disabled, configure the antivirus to exclude FSX\fsdreamteam\Couatl\Couatl.exe, then launch FSX.

[bkircher]

Ok Ill check on those and report back. FYI I have norton av idk if thats where the issue is from or not but Im just sayin.

[bkircher]

I updated the addon manager and it seems to be working for now. I also am looking to see how to check coutl.exe in my av and have it be ignored. I am not sure how to do that with norton antivirus tho.

[donja]

Like a number of other posters, I've just recently had a problem with buildings not appearing at the FSD airports.  After reading the other threads on this issue, I came to the conclusion on my own setup that the problem was due to my McAfee AV.  I reinstalled the AddOn Manager and as fast as couatl.exe was installed, McAfee would quarantine it.  I could do a restore, but then it would quarantine again when the file tried to run.  At least in my case, the AV just didn't like that file.  I couldn't find a way to tell McAfee to ignore it, so now McAfee is gone, replaced by AVG ...and all is well.

I have all but one of the airports and plan on buying the last one before the sale ends.  For anyone considering a purchase, these airports are well worth any time spent tweaking to get them to work (imo).  They're beautiful.  My only problem, if you can call it that, is that I'm spending way more time looking around airports now instead of flying.

Don

[virtuali]

At least in my case, the AV just didn't like that file.  I couldn't find a way to tell McAfee to ignore it, so now McAfee is gone, replaced by AVG ...and all is well.

Yes, the current McAfee version seems to be really a problem, and not just for our products, see this post on Flight1's support:

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=24061

The conclusions are the same: one shouldn't use an antivirus without the capability of manually excluding some files from scanning.

[KPryor]

I've had this problem with JFK, ORD and LAS while running Vipre antivirus.  I just shut off Vipre while doing the install and then go in the settings to exclude Couatl during scans. I also notified Sunbelt Software, which makes Vipre and asked them to deal with it as a false positive so perhaps it will eventually stop identifying it as a virus.
KP