No Elevation Profile in BaseCamp

Route or track? What maps? Without (at least) those bits of data, it's hard to say.

A track (GPSr recording of where you've been) will have altitude data within it, so it should display an elevation profile.
A route (where you'd like to go) will only display an elevation profile if the underlying map data used by BaseCamp has elevation data. So, for example, City Navigator (I'm guessing) and the free vector maps out there won't be able to give you elevation data for a route, but a Topo 24K or (recent) Topo 100K map will.

If you've got a track or have the Garmin Topo 24K maps, then you're probably experiencing a bug...

(Oh, and on rereading the post: Do you get a window with no elevation profile, or does nothing happen at all? BaseCamp 3.1.2 disables elevation profile view when you've got a map without elevation data entirely, but I don't know about the older versions. And of course, 2.1.2 will probably not get any bugfixes going forward.)

Thanks for your info. I am using a downloaded 24K map of western North Carolina. It certainly has elevation data and I can see it if I move my cursor over an area.

I get no window at all when I try to display an elevation profile for a route. I can get the profiles with imported tracks. Also, if I load a route into the 450 and use the same map I can get an elevation profile on the gps. So...not sure what's going on. I can certainly work around this but, it seems strange.

I didn't think Garmin sold a map of just western NC. If it is not a Garmin map, I would not expect it to display elevation profiles. I think the track is showing elevation profile using topo data from the track.

If it is not a Garmin map, I would not expect it to display elevation profiles.

It doesn't necessarily need to be a Garmin map, but it does need to be an MPC map and must include DEM data.