HELP! The program has disappeared from my FSX menu bar!!!?!

[crauds]

I purchased the program 2 days ago.  Had a chance to try it with a few add-on aircraft yesterday and looked forward to trying it with PMDG B744 this morning.  Problem is that when I access my add-on menu, it does not appear.  Yet taskmgr shows that it is running.  I closed FSX and re-booted with a generic aircraft but still not showing up in the add-on menu.  I can access the "add-on manager" and it shows that GSX is installed and active.   I have not changed or installed anything since my last flight (Level-D) yesterday.  I have VISTA 64 on quad core with 4G ram and no memory issues to date.  Can anyone from Dreamteam give me some direction on this short of reinstalling?


Craig

[Bruce Hamilton]

Why are you trying to access it through the menu bar, does Control F12 not work?

[crauds]

CTL-F12 did not activate the program so I then checked the menu and it wasn't there!  I have tried to activate directly from the GSX folder but nothing happens, and again my task manager shows that it is running.  How do I get it to show back up in FSX?


Craig

[virtuali]

Yet taskmgr shows that it is running.

What do you mean with this ? You see the Couatl.exe program running in the Task Manager, but don't have a Couatl menu in FSX ? Even after a reboot ? Try to simply terminate the process, and relaunch FSX

[crauds]

Thanks for your quick replies.  I rebooted computer again and now everything is showing up as it should.  One of those infamous VISTA gliches I guess.  Can't explain it but now it is working fine.  Thank you for the great program.  I am having fun with it. 

Three suggestions, however.

1.  I would wish that you would change the sound track for the boarding/unboarding since the two flight attendants keep saying the same thing over and over again =  too repetitious.   My suggestion is that you keep the backround and generic conversations as they are but without the two flight attendants speaking the same thing over and over again.  That way it will not be so noticeable that it is a repeating sound file. 

2.  The other suggestion is that you use the actual "people" count for timing of boarding/unboarding instead of factoring in the full payload weight since most carriers also carry mail and other freight in addition to normal passenger baggage to make flight profitable .  This could amount to several thousand pounds.  Including this with total weight and then dividing by 220 to determine the timing of boarding/unboarding is therefore incorrect in most cases.   In the case of add-ons that only use a weight for pasengers you could then divide that by 180 (some carriers now using 185) to give approximate average count of passengers.

3.  The third point has already been mentioned and it is to allow pushback with one engine started and without the APU restriction since it has become policy with most carriers to avoid use of APU whenever possible for economic reasons.

Thanks again.


Craig

[ceo1944]

This also happened to me, under XP so it's not just a Vista problem.   The addon manager was still on the menu but the Couatl menu had disappeared and CTRL-F12 did nothing.  A reboot solved it but of course had to start the flight over.

Dutch

[meadfoot]

Same here. Addon manager in FSX menu but Couatl menu gone and ctl+F12 did nothing. Couatl still appeared to be running when ctl-alt-del was pressed.

Rog

FSX+Accel
XP

[virtuali]

Couatl still appeared to be running when ctl-alt-del was pressed.

With FSX running, and no errors messages ?

[meadfoot]

Couatl still appeared to be running when ctl-alt-del was pressed.

With FSX running, and no errors messages ?

Affirm. Started FSX all appeared OK but menu option was not there, no error message and I could see Couatl in the process list. Restarted FSX and all was OK

Is there anything else I could check for before restarting FSX?

Rog

[virtuali]

Is there anything else I could check for before restarting FSX?

As explained in other threads too, before launching FSX check Couatl.exe is not still running from a previous session and if it does, terminate it manually with the Task manager, it might not be able to close properly, both if you launched a new FSX session too quickly, but also because other installed modules that interfere with Simconnect.