I just noticed that the Layers Primary Database menu on google earth on my PC has come up empty apart from Terrain so unable to select, roads, political borders, places, etc.. I also notice that the orange man that you drag/drop to switch to street view has also disappeared completely. Finally, after loading, it doesn't zoom-in to the final best resolution any more. Not sure how/when this happened but I recall it was all there maybe two weeks ago. It's W10 64-bit so maybe an OTA update knocked this into a hat?

 

I have done an uninstall and reinstall and the problem still there. I noticed that it had also restored my My Places so after backing them up, I uninstalled and then ran regedit to purge all "googleearth" related items includes My Places. On reinstall, my My Places are automatically restored but Layers remains empty. From that I suspect that maybe the google earth uninstaller isn't doing a total purge even after regediting? I have used the most recent full standalone downloaded version, the faster/smaller setup.exe that downloads the latest from google and also an older version, all with regediting in between and all to no avail and still no Layers.

 

The following is how it google earth looks when launched from the installed app.

 

 

If I close that and launch google earth as a portable app from my portable apps dongle on the same computer, it all displays OK. See below.

 

 

Here's the opening screen from the installed version, note the street view man is missing.

 

 

And here's the best resolution it stops at. Scrolling and zooming doesn't force it nearer and/or any clearer.

 

 

Google Earth online help is more idiot stuff like inadvertently dragging the Layers bar too far down and/or minimizing it. I haven't been able to find this particular problem mentioned.

 

I can still use the portable apps version but wonder if anyone else has had or is seeing similar issues with Layers?

A guess as I have not used it for some time.

 

The Google earth data is stored under users in a appdata folder if you want to wipe out anything not removed during uninstall.

 

Google earth has a repair tool somewhere in its menus.

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by maxpower

I read there was a global outage of some Google Earth features recently and this kind of error happened. I wasn't using GE at time so did not notice. There is a repair_tool.exe file in the GEPro folder that brings up a menu and clear cache may help.

Uninstalled and regedited as much as it would allow. That was using "googleearth" but then did it again using "google earth" which unearthed a key labeled GECommonSettings. Inside that is a LayersVisibility key so I compared those with the working version and found the dud one had about 5 sub-keys which didn't match anything in in the single sub-key working version. Deleted that lot. Rebooted, reinstalled and... Voila!

 

Sorted!

Just tried my Google Earth the little man is not shown when you see the globe, it shows only when you do a search but only if you put your courser under the compass ( right hand side top)