Non Appearance of FSDT Scenery Trial Versions after Downlading

[grasshopper]

Hello Umberto, I have meen a loyal FSDT customer since 2008, and my collection includes O'Hare, JFK, Zurich and Geneva airports, Honolulu, both Hawaiian Airport volumes, Las Vegas Maccarran, Dallas Fort Worth, LAX and Fort Lauderdale airports.  FSDT products have stood the test of time by rolling out scenery of stunning beauty, making FSDT the gold standard by which all FS9 and FSX scenery must be judged and compared.

With hopes of getting some better system performance, I installed a new graphics board and switched from Windows Vista to Windows7.  To get my FSDT products up and running after this hardware change, I disabled my Symantec Anti-Virus and downloaded from the FSDT Products page the latest FS9 installers for all of the above products, such that they now appear in the FS9 Addon menu. I do intend to download the FSX versions of my FSDT scenery collection, but will wait till I get the FS9 ones working.

Following your advice given here some years back, I used an IP-hide program to change my apparent location in order to prevent a system lockout during the scenery activation and registration phases. I then attempted to activate each scenery in turn, by clicking for that action in the drop-down menu, and pasting in my registration number when prompted.   So far I have not been able to get the trial versions of any of these scenery products to start up at all.  The FS9 default scenery remains visible in all my FSDT airports, and has not been replaced with the FSDT scenery trial version as I expected.

Any help you can offer would be much appreciated, and yes, I did read the stickies in this forum, but did not spot a reference to this exact issue, and so decided to seek some further clarification to help me get my 9 FSDT products working again.

Regards

[virtuali]

The FS9 default scenery remains visible in all my FSDT airports, and has not been replaced with the FSDT scenery trial version as I expected.

This problem doesn't have anything to do with activation or anything like that. If there's a problem with the activation, the scenery will work normally, just in Trial version, for 5 minutes at time.

It seems you either have installed the sceneries, or there's a pre-existing problem with your scenery.cfg, so the installer couldn't update it to add the sceneries to the Scenery Library. You should have seen some kind of error message during the installation.

[grasshopper]

Thank you for the reply Umberto.  I must confess that I do not have any idea where to begin looking for the cause of this inability of all my FSDT scenery products to appear in the Trial Mode, at least.

When I first downloaded the installers, I did so with my IP address changed, just in case of a lockout, but I then saw multiple error messages indicating that the downloads were "corrupted".  I restored my real IP address and was then able to download the ten scenery files with no error messages.   Despite that apparently error-free download of the sceneries, I still have not seen any of them show up as a Trial Version yet, though they all appear in the FS9 Addon Menu.

Please advise on what you think I need to do here.  My FS9 environment is so barren without FSDT products to bring airports to life.

[grasshopper]

Looking closer I can see that all the FSDT installers are ready to be copied into FS9 while it is running, from my computer's Microsoft Games/Flight Simulator9 folders into which the FSDT installers were initially downloaded, but for some reason when I click to add those sceneries to the active FS9 scenery library, from within FS9, those folders do not get not added to the FS9 Scenery Library.

I can't remember every experiencing any problems simply copying downloaded FSDT folders into FS9, so I am sure that I must be making a very basic mistake here.  If anyone can help with ideas of where I went wrong with this very simple step, I'll buy you a beer ha ha.

[grasshopper]

Oddly enough, all of the FSDT airports I downloaded do appear in the Addon Manager drop-down menu within FS9, but when I go to the Settings page of FS9 and click on the Scenery Library button, none of the FSDT airports names appear, despite several attempts to copy them into the Scenery Library list, using the "Add Area" button.

I get an error message saying "Path already Exists" when I repeat my attempts to add the FSDT sceneries into the Scenery Library within FS9s Settings page, as though the "path" to those files is known by FS9, but as before all I see on my screen is the default scenery, with no appearance of the FSDT "Trial Version" scenery so far.

I am certain that one simple change in my approach will solve this riddle in seconds, but I can't see the forest for the trees here.

[virtuali]

Oddly enough, all of the FSDT airports I downloaded do appear in the Addon Manager drop-down menu within FS9

That's not "odd", the Addon Manager knows about the sceneries even if you don't install them or they are installed but not present in the Scenery Library for any reason.

but when I go to the Settings page of FS9 and click on the Scenery Library button, none of the FSDT airports names appear, despite several attempts to copy them into the Scenery Library list, using the "Add Area" button.

So, it seems not even the standard "Add Area" can't add an area to the Scenery Library, no wonder our installer couldn't do it.

That seems to confirm your scenery.cfg has a problem OR there must be some other problem that prevents even FS9 itself to add new areas. Do you run FS9 in any of the "Compatibility" settings in Windows 7 ? If yes, turn them all off and, eventually, use only the "Run As Administrator" option.

[grasshopper]

Ah,  I clean forgot to run FS9 in Administrator Mode.  That was the magic bullet, Umberto, and for reminding me of that fact, my hat is off to you.

I now have ALL my FSDT sceneries working beautifully, with the exception of the Hawaiian Airports Volume2, whose purchase confirmation email I haven't found yet.

I can definitely confirm now that the planets are once again in perfect alignment, and all is well in the universe on this fine day.

Umberto is da MAN, without a doubt.

[virtuali]

I now have ALL my FSDT sceneries working beautifully, with the exception of the Hawaiian Airports Volume2, whose purchase confirmation email I haven't found yet.

We can sort this if you contact us using the support email address (it's on the "Contact Us" page of the site), the most likely issue is, you used a different email address that doesn't work anymore, but we can update your order.

[grasshopper]

Much thanks for this kind offer, Umberto.   I will take this step you recommend, so as to locate that last registration key for the Hawaiian Airports Volume2.

Regards.