You should understand my frustration as I have bought and downloaded ALL your airports so far and I'm delighted by their making,( though I will definitely not buy new ones as long as they come with the same installation procedure). I think your customers deserve a REAL support by direct contact with you as they have paid for their product and they deserve a decent support and not by support forums were strangers have to your job for which you were paid for!!
I do not expect any reply from you and your help with the "Saitek issue" as I did not see any constructive advices to other users in the past. The missing building issue is going on forever!!
No. I don't understand your "frustration", at all. This is your first post here, yet you were able to say we don't give any support.
That we give plenty of support, is clearly proven by a very simply indication: look at my post count! I find it really unappropriate and quite offensive, being accused (by someone that never posted here before) of not expecting any reply, after more than 3800 posts I did to SUPPORT USERS.
Now, let's try to finally give you some support, without forgetting that, we would have appreciated at least an introduction of your problem, as your first post here.
About XML file corruption. Our installer doesn't do anything "strange".
BEFORE doing ANYTHING on your XML files, it calls the standard, official MS Internet Explorer validation routine because, there are lots of OTHER installers that simply corrupts it. Since trying to modify an already corrupted XML file would result messing it even worse, we have this measure in place so, before touching anything, the XML is checked (not by our installer, by IE itself) for syntax.
You said yourself that:
1) Before installing the Saitek instruments, Zurich was working fine
2) AFTER you installed the Saitek instruments, you had missing buildings.
3) As soon as you tried reinstalling Zurich, its installed said that the XML files were corrupted, and offered a chance to repair it, and this had Zurich working again.
Sorry, but if this is really what happened, it's quite clear that the XML WAS corrupted by the Saitek installation, and reinstalling the Addon Manager fixed it.
I repeat it again: the syntax check on the XML file is made BEFORE touching it! Only if an error is found, you are offered a chance to repair it. And only if NO ERROR is found, our lines are added.
So, it's quite clear that, the problem you had was caused by the Saitek installation. However, I have some Saitek instrument panels, and never noticed it, and of course nobody else reported so far.
Other issuesPlease, don't confuse this, with all the other messages about "missing buildings", because otherwise you are then confusing the cause with the effect.
ANYTHING that will stop our Addon Manager+Couatl programs to run will cause buildings to disappear. This might be both due because of a problem with the XML file, but also because other reasons, and the most common one, is usually the antivirus.
Both reasons do not have anything to do with our software being supposedly "bugged":
- The XML issue is always caused by other installers, which was quite apparent from your description of it. Which is why we added a lot of checks in the installer, in order to clearly NOTIFY the user when his XML has a problem, BEFORE trying any modification to it.
- The Antivirus issues are always an antivirus fault, which mistakenly identifies our software being a possible threat which, opposite to what you said about "no other FSX addon company with produces such an annoying installation procedures", it's a problem that affects many others as well, most notably all products using Flight1's wrapper, which are also sometimes mistakenly taken as virus, which is why they also suggest not to use certain antivirus product that don't allow to exclude files from scanning, since they have exactly the same issue as we have with antivirus.
- There's no "OOM problem" with Zurich. Of course, OOM it's always possible with any combination of product, but that doesn't mean Zurich is causing them. If it was, we should have many hundreds of users complaining about it. Instead, we only had 2-3 people and, they were all in some way related to the PMDG MD-11, which is surely a large addon that takes lots of memory. My reply to the post from Peterle you cited, still stands. We never heard back from him but, in any case, he HAD a reply (which he also thanked for). So much for your supposed "lack of support".
I'll try to verify further the Saitek installers, to see if there might be anything that could create a problem with our software but, if the issue is really the XML corruption, this should be very easy to fix (by them, because they are corrupting it) or, if you don't want to wait, by you, by simply adding the Saitek lines to the XML file yourself, and never run their installer again, if it's really creating this problem.
