Activated but no buildings.

[drpilot848]

I need some help here. As you can see in these screen shots my scenery is (paid in full) and activated and has been usable for many months but all of a sudden the buildings are gone as if the trial period is up. What gives?

[virtuali]

As explained, many times already, if you just don't see any buildings, it doesn't have anything to do with activation, or the loss of it.

If you lose your activation, the scenery will not just disappear: it will revert to Trial mode, which means it will run in full, just for 5 minutes at a time, then you'll restart FS9, and get another 5 minutes, and so on.

Also, since you are seeing the Addon Manager menu, which confirms your scenery is Active (and, as I've said, if it wasn't, you would see *all* buildings, for 5 minutes at time), this excludes the possible issue of not having the Addon Manager running, usually because the antivirus, which is the only thing that would give you no buildings, not even for 5 minutes.

Since you haven't revert into Trial mode, and you see the Addon Manager, this means everything is working, and the loss of the scenery is caused by something that doens't have anything to do with our software.

First, check you have the scenery visible in the Scenery Library.

Also, there was an issue with a freeware scenery.cfg editor, that changed the case of the [Area] commands in the scenery.cfg from the standard that FS9 uses (which is with Upper case A ), to [area]  (with lower case a), this confused the Addon Manager, that needs to scan the scenery.cfg, in order to disable Trial messages, if you fly in an area you don't have the scenery for.

This has been fixed in recent Addon Manager releases so, you can try to install the latest Stand-Alone Addon Manager for FS9, available on each product "Info" page.

[drpilot848]

Thanks for the reply. Now the buildings are showing up again. I have not made any significant changes to my system since purchase (of what really is a beautiful piece of work scenery) KLAS. I did notice that an external hard drive that is usually connected to my computer was unplugged from the usb port this time. When I installed the scenery I chose all of the default options during install offered to me so I don't know why a key would be sent to that drive. I can't think of anything else. At least it works for now with the drive back in.

Thanks again anyway.

--DR

[virtuali]

Thanks for the reply. Now the buildings are showing up again. I have not made any significant changes to my system since purchase

I'm sorry, but I think you haven't read my previous message carefully:

Your problem didn't had anything to do with activation or the loss of it.

If you lose your activation, for example because of an hardware change, the scenery will NOT just disappear: it will revert to Trial mode, which means it will run in full, just for 5 minutes at a time, then you'll restart FS9, and get another 5 minutes, and so on.

The Trial doesn't expires, ever. Even if you used it in Trial some time ago, it doesn't mean the next time the scenery will go in Trial mode for any reason, it will disappear right from the start, just because you already "used" the Trial. The ONLY limitation of the Trial mode, is that you can't use it for more than 5 minutes, then you have to restart Flight sim, but there's no limit how many 5 minutes periods you can have.

Also, if you lose the activation, because of an hardware change, a message will tell you that scenery is installed, but is not active, and will ask you to re-activate.

So, as I've said, your problem wasn't related in any way to activation or hardware changes.

[drpilot848]

I have read the message alright. As I said everything, and I mean EVERTHING is in order. There were no changes to the scenery library, all of the .cfg files are as they should be. .dll files, ini files and so on. I keep several comparison snap shot 'images' of my system to alert me to any unauthorized changes. It just appears that the scenery bugged out for that time and came back again. I really can't explain it. At least it is working now.
Thanks again.

[virtuali]

I have read the message alright.

Then why the note about hardware changes ?

As I've said, if there's anything in the hardware that will make you lose the activation, because the hardware ID has become temporarly invalid, you WILL be notified as soon as you launch Flight Sim, and prompted to reactivate. And the scenery will go in TRIAL MODE in the meantime, until you reactivate it, it will not just disappear.

It just appears that the scenery bugged out for that time and came back again. I really can't explain it.

There might have been something else that escaped you. Maybe an entirely different problem, like video card memory corruption and/or exhaustion, that killed the 3d objects, and this can't be monitored in any way, regardless of the fact you keep snapshots of the system, because it's a memory corruption, not something that changes files.

In any case, be sure it wasn't related in any way to the activation.