Strange problem....

[Glaudrung]

hello,

Yesterday I discovered a strange problem in FSX.
For all the major airports I checked the buildings were missing....
After a night of trial and error to find the reason for this, I decided to throw the towel.

I did a clean reinstall of Windows 7 and FSX. Windows 7 completely upgraded and a full install of FSX (including Acceleration)
All buildings were back...
I installed then 2 airports.
KLAX en KLAS, both from fsdreamteam, and when I restarted the sim, all buildings were gone again.... Ok... no sweat, I do an uninstall of both airports but those airportbuildings are gone....even after a reboot and restart of fsx.

I am using the latest driver for my GTX580 from nvidia, but further I had NOTHING installed whatsoever.
Can anybody shed a light on this?

Luc Brusselmans
Belgium

[virtuali]

For all the major airports I checked the buildings were missing....

This description is not very clear: what "major airports" you are referring to ? FSDT airports ? Default airports ?

I installed then 2 airports. KLAX en KLAS, both from fsdreamteam, and when I restarted the sim, all buildings were gone again...

Again, not very clear: are you saying that after installing KLAX and KLAS, you lost buildings in ALL airports ?

I do an uninstall of both airports but those airportbuildings are gone....even after a reboot and restart of fsx.

If you are now referring to KLAX and KLAS, missing their buildings, no wonder there aren't any buildings, after you *Uninstalled* them. Or, what you really meant was "I do uninstall and then *reinstall*", maybe ?

Can anybody shed a light on this?

First usual and obvious question is: are you reinstalling using the current version of the scenery installer, or an old installer you downloaded in the past ? If not sure, download and install with the current installers that are on the web site now.

If you still have the problem, the second usual question is: Do you have BOTH the "Addon Manager" AND the "Couatl powered products" menus under the FSX main menu ?

[Glaudrung]

Sorry umberto for being not clear,

what I did try to say is this...
After a complete new install I had airport buildings on every major default airport.
With a clean install I really mean vanilla clean. Both win7 and FSX were installed from scratch, all updates in place. After that reinstall I ran FSX a couple of times (starting in KSEA, KORD, KJFK, EBBR, KLAS,KLAX...) and all airport buildings were present.
I then installed both KLAS and KLAX and activated them. When I checked the aforementionned airports again,those airport building were gone at the default airports (jetways were visible but not the buildings). On the other hand the scenery of both KLAS and KLAX was working fine.
When I tried to uninstall both sceneries, including turning back the exe.xml and the dll.xml, the buildings at the default airports did not show as I was expecting....

I was using the latest installers of both the scenerypackages (with latest, I mean I did a new download from the website this morning).
And yes, both the addon-manager and the couatlengine were present in the menu.

Any suggestions?

Luc Brusselmans
Belgium

[virtuali]

I then installed both KLAS and KLAX and activated them. When I checked the aforementioned airports again,those airport building were gone at the default airports (jetways were visible but not the buildings). On the other hand the scenery of both KLAS and KLAX was working fine.

I'm sorry, but this explanation is even less clear than the previous one. If, with "I checked the aforementioned airports again" do you mean the FSDT KLAS and KLAX you just installed ?

If yes, the rest of the sentence "those airport building were gone at the *default* airports" doesn't make much sense: it's normal that, after installing an FSDT scenery, every building from the *default* scenery would disappear, but they would be replaced by FSDT buildings. This is so obvious that I'm sure it's not what you really meant so, I'm afraid I still don't understand you. Please, clarify better.

[Glaudrung]

hello...

next attemp to make myself clear....

Before the installation of the airports KLAS & KLAX of fsdreamteam I have airport buildings in KSEA, KORD, EBBR,KIAD,KJFK...
After the installation of KLAS & KLAX the airport buildings at those airports(KSEA,KORD,EBBR,KIAD,KJKF,... are gone (and no, I am NOT talking about the scenery of KLAS or KLAX but about all the other default airports).
The installation starts from a complete clean win7 and FSX, both fully updated. No other addon's (no aircraft and no other scenery) were installed.
No virusscanner installed and all installations were done as administrator.

Luc Brusselmans
Belgium

[virtuali]

Before the installation of the airports KLAS & KLAX of fsdreamteam I have airport buildings in KSEA, KORD, EBBR,KIAD,KJFK...After the installation of KLAS & KLAX the airport buildings at those airports(KSEA,KORD,EBBR,KIAD,KJKF,... are gone (and no, I am NOT talking about the scenery of KLAS or KLAX but about all the other default airports).

The precise reason why I asked you to be more clear, is that what you are describing, simply can't happen, doesn't happen and nobody ever reported it before. Nobody could report it, because it simply can't happen.

If there are problems with the FSDT sceneries install, ONLY the FSDT sceneries will be affected, and you wouldn't see buildings ONLY at our airports. Our software doesn't have even the theoretical chance to affect the appearance of buildings at default airports.

So, the only possible explanation, is that the disappearance of buildings has been caused by something else, and since (by pure coincidence) happened after installing the sceneries, you linked the two issues, which doesn't have anything in common.

Since you said yourself this happened on a clean Windows + FSX install, this also exclude the chance your scenery.cfg was corrupted by ANOTHER product installing into it (or an hand-editing of that file) which COULD probably create issue to our installers that, in any case, CHECK and ALERT you if your scenery.cfg was already corrupted BEFORE making changes to it and it will ABORT the install without changing it.

Since you don't say anything about having noticed errors during the installation, this explanation can be probably excluded.

Other than that, it's just to possible that installing FSDT airports will make the default scenery to disappear.

[Glaudrung]

Umberto,

I have take some time for a bit more testing and guess what...
The problem is consistant over 4 clean installs here at my side.
On the other hand, there is, for me at least, a very simpe solution.
When I install KLAS BEFORE KLAX (with other words the oldest scenery first) the problem does not occur.
Installing KLAS AFTER KLAX removes building from the other default airport as described earlier.

For me this toppic is closed. I know what I have to do to prevent it. Even if you state that it isn't possible, it is happening here on my side
but now that I can prevent it, I shouldn't worry about it. (by the way, has anybody tried it on a clean install.....?)

Luc Brusselmans
Belgium

[virtuali]

The problem is consistant over 4 clean installs here at my side.

Again, you aren't very clear: what do you mean with "clean install" ? Clean install of the sceneries after a removal, clean install of FSX or clean install of Windows ?

- If you just "clean install" our sceneries, since the problem IS caused by something else, uninstalling/reinstalling the sceneries won't make any difference, since they are not the problem.

- If you meant "clean install FSX", even uninstalling it and removing its entire folder, it's not a "clean install". If you don't remove also the user and config files at %APPDATA%\Microsoft\FSX and C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX

- The only real "clean install" is reinstalling Windows but, since I doubt you did that "4 times", the only possible conclusion is that you haven't made any clean install so, the source of the problem is still there, and I can only repeat and confirm it wasn't anything related to the sceneries.

My guess is that your problem lies in one of the FSX user and config files, most likely the scenery.cfg, but it was already there before reinstalling any of our sceneries. An already existing problem with the scenery.cfg is the only thing that might remove buildings in default sceneries in areas not related to our airports.

[Glaudrung]

Umberto,

Clean...
a NEW install of Windows7 ultimate on a completely reformatted harddrive
including all subsequent updates
a NEW install of FSX with acceleration pack and NO fsx.cfg tweaks
a NEW install of KLAX of FSdreamteam and a NEW installation of KLAS of FSdreamteam
NO other addons, neither airports nor aircraft installed.

When order of install = first KLAX and then KLAS -> default scenery at default airports (other then KLAS or KLAX) is gone
When order of install = first KLAS and then KLAX -> no problem with default scenery.

This I have repeated on my system 3 times and I got the problem 3 times.
Of course this can be a system dependent problem but it is NO coincidence if I can repeat it three times.
The fourth install cycle I did, and God knows why, reverse the order of installation and the problem didn't occur.

Luc Brusselmans
Belgium

Luc B

[virtuali]

This I have repeated on my system 3 times and I got the problem 3 times.
Of course this can be a system dependent problem but it is NO coincidence if I can repeat it three times. The fourth install cycle I did, and God knows why, reverse the order of installation and the problem didn't occur.

I'm sorry, but I find difficult to believe you have "completely reformatted harddrive" 3 times in a row, just to test this.

So, I'm still fairly sure the problem is created by something else which has been left over from a previous installation. As I've said, several times already, the only thing that have the theoretical ability to make default scenery disappear after installing one of our airports, is an already corrupted scenery.cfg, that confused our installer in some way. But this shouldn't make ANY difference in the order of installation, since all our installers use exactly the SAME code, when dealing with the scenery.cfg.

[Glaudrung]

ok then,

You can call me a liar if that make sit easier for you...

Have a nice weekend

Luc Brusselmans
Belgium

[virtuali]

You can call me a liar if that make sit easier for you...

Nobody called you "a liar", of course.

Since all your previous descriptions of the problems were very vague,when you said you reinstalled Windows 3 times completely formatting your hard drive, I can only assume you meant something else, perhaps a single Windows reformat, and other "clean installs" (which weren't really "clean" for reasons I've already explained), like reinstalling FSX or something else.

Since the ONLY thing that can cause a loss of buildings in *default* sceneries it's the FSDT INSTALLER that was in some way tricked by an already-corrupted scenery.cfg in your system, this clearly proves it wasn't a reformatting, because you still had your old scenery.cfg.

So no, I'm NOT called you a liar, and you are very wrong believing so, but you simply meant something else when you said you reformatted 3 times (and besides, how about the Windows activation ? It surely doesn't allow 3 complete reformat in a short time), because the very fact the problem exists, clearly proves you still have leftover files from a previous installation that are causing the problem.

Of course, if the problem was caused by any of our products, you would imagine that at least SOMEONE else would have noticed it by now, considering KLAS has been released more than 2 years ago and KLAX about 1 year ago, and there are many thousands of users using them, most of them together, and NOBODY ever reported losing *default* buildings in any case.

Still not convinced ? Install Teamviewer

http://www.teamviewer.com

Send me your session ID and password using Private Message, and I'll have a look at your system.