A different kind of server malfunction

[djheydt]

Note: I just read through the "Server Malfunction" thread to see if anyone else was having the same problem I was. Apparently not, so I'll describe it.

Terse version: the system keeps forgetting who I am, including my userid, and all my settings.

Verbose version:

I click on the icon and the launcher starts up.

The first thing I see is a box that says "Would you like to install DX11? Note that it will require 6 Gigabytes of free disk space." Since my C: drive is painfully full and doesn't have a spare 6 Gig hanging about, I click No.

The system downloads several multilingual screen files.

The login screen appears; it has forgotten my userid, so I type that into the blank.

I type my password and click Log In.

The system doesn't remember what server I'm on and offers me Crickhollow; I type A and get Arkenstone, and click Play.

I now get to scroll down and "Agree" to two EULAs.

The system asks (again) if I would like to install DX11. I tell it No.

Finally, I get the standard loading screen with the Three Hunters.

The SoA introduction plays. I know that if I hit ESC to stop it, I'll get a sort of grid, white lines on grey, for several seconds, so I watch the intro. It's a nice piece of animation, except for the close-up of the Orc's foot in the puddle. That Orc's toes are cramped, he's clearly been wearing tight boots all his life, so why is he barefoot now? If he'd grown up barefoot, his toes should be in a straight line, of about equal length. But that's past fixing now.

Now I get the character screen; the character looks strangely squashed (even for a Hobbit). I click Enter and the character loads. The system has forgotten my screen resolution and my windowed resolution, and I have to re-set them. Then I hit alt-enter to get the windowed version that I prefer.

Now I can start playing.

The whole process takes maybe five or ten minutes. This has been happening, not every time I log in, but at least once per day, since midweek.

Is anybody else getting this?

[Polymachos]

No, because it is not a server issue. All symptoms point towards a dysfunctional UserPreferences.ini

Try to rename/move it and let the game create a new version. This might fix the issue.


Greetings, Polymachos

[Cordovan]

I've seen this happen when the folder you have your userpreferences.ini file doesn't have write permissions, so it defaults to the default instead of saving to your preferences. Might be worth making sure you have admin permissions for that part of your computer, or running the game client as an administrator.

[Vicka]

I've been having that happen to me for several years. I copy Userpreferences to another folder I created in the main Lord of the Rings folder. Whenever my prefs get hosed I delete the active Userprefs and copy the one from the other folder I had created. Re-launch game and good to go, 30 seconds maybe. I didn't know about the read / write permissions and will check into that option.

[djheydt]

Okay; I have no idea how to do that, but I'll ask whh to look into it when he gets back from shopping. Thanks, all.

[RustyShadow]

if the game was working and now isnt, might check your antivirus log. a new av definition file might be blocking steam/game from read/write.

[Polymachos]

I would also check the hard disk for errors, not only because it is full (maybe some of it can be removed by using the cleaning function of Windos), but also because - if a file gets corrupted, this might be a warning that soon the disk itself might fail.


Greetings, Polymachos

[Everbrock]

I'm no expert but perhaps this...

my C: drive is painfully full and doesn't have a spare 6 Gig

...is causing this...?

the folder you have your userpreferences.ini file doesn't have write permissions

Your computer might need a bit more space to do things.

Just a thought ~ good luck with it!

[djheydt]

I'm no expert but perhaps this...

...is causing this...?

Your computer might need a bit more space to do things.

Just a thought ~ good luck with it!

I think that's entirely possible, even likely; I know I need a larger drive. But it's going to be at least a year (perhaps more) till I can afford one. Till then, I'm making do.

[Nymphonic]

I think that's entirely possible, even likely; I know I need a larger drive. But it's going to be at least a year (perhaps more) till I can afford one. Till then, I'm making do.

Man, I know that feeling when your PC struggles to play an older game and you cannot afford to upgrade. I feel your pain. That's one thing about our gaming hobby, it is not cheap.


Ugh, it's humid here in Southern California.

[djheydt]

Man, I know that feeling when your PC struggles to play an older game and you cannot afford to upgrade. I feel your pain. That's one thing about our gaming hobby, it is not cheap.

Ugh, it's humid here in Southern California.

It's been dry as dust up here in Northern California, but rain is (tentatively) predicted for next week. That would be nice, particularly since (after NINE YEARS) the landlord finally fixed our roof.

Nymph, is my memory failing me, or do you usually live in Florida? If so, welcome to the other coast.

[auximenes]

I think that's entirely possible, even likely; I know I need a larger drive. But it's going to be at least a year (perhaps more) till I can afford one. Till then, I'm making do.

Have you made an effort to go through everything on the drive to be sure it is all stuff you still need? Don't forget to empty your recycle bin. Also, game install files, LotRO's for example, eat up almost as much space as the main game install and related files take. USB flash drives have come way down in price. You can use those to offload some data that needs to be kept but is rarely accessed. You could also install LotRO onto a flash drive directly which frees that from your stuffed hard drive.

[Yarbro]

Ré full hard disk.

The built in Windoze tools arent very good, try "Wise Disk Cleaner". If you have an older version of Windoze, like XP or Win7, the built in cleaner doesnt remove old update install files; these can quickly balloon to 10GB or more.

Swap files: set a static swap file to 1x - 2x your amount of physical RAM, the OS uses a dynamic system that eats up HDD space and causes file fragmentation that can seriously slow down your system. use Piriform Defraggler for this (not for SSDs though, NEVER try to defrag a SSD). This is about a hundred BILLION times faster than the built in defragmentation tool.

Change the default size of the Recycle bin to a few GB, sometimes the system sets it to 10% of the drive size ie 100GB per TB. Right click the Bin icon and pick "Properties".

If HDD free space drops much below 10%, it can cause all sorts of system issues.

You could also download something like CrystalDiskInfo to check on the state of your HDD; it gives a traffic light warning system for the basic SMART diagnostics built into modern HDD, and also a set of tools to test the HDD. The most important ones are the bad sector errors and throughput speeds; least important are the time on and start counters.

Warnings on those first two and the drive is toast, and needs replacing ASAP.

[djheydt]

Have you made an effort to go through everything on the drive to be sure it is all stuff you still need? Don't forget to empty your recycle bin. Also, game install files, LotRO's for example, eat up almost as much space as the main game install and related files take. USB flash drives have come way down in price. You can use those to offload some data that needs to be kept but is rarely accessed. You could also install LotRO onto a flash drive directly which frees that from your stuffed hard drive.

I do keep the recycle bin empty. (My text files are all on a different drive anyway.) But I have no way of looking at the game (or any other) files and recognizing what I'm looking at. What little I know about computers is UNIX-related. I'll ask whh to take a look. But he's already looked at my C: drive and acknowledged that it's just bloody full.

But strangely enough, I haven't had this problem since I posted about it. Perhaps all the good advices have frightened the bug into hiding out?

[Gandolf_TheOld]

If the computers BIOS can handle it a WD Blue, 1 Terabyte, 7200 rpm, 6GB SATA HDD costs $44.00 at www.newegg.com. Also, if the BIOS can handle it, an SSD as a boot drive will speed things up considerably also available from Newegg, I would recommend a Samsung 850 EVO, 500GB, SATA III, for $87.

Have you cleared your internet browser cache, that can eat up great gobs of disk space, and it is on C: drive.

[Polymachos]

There are a lot of free programs that offer a disk analysis, like SpeedFan of Almico.com, originally created to check the temperature of several parts of your PC, but you can also open some more tabs to see the S.M.A.R.T. statistics of your hard disk.

For the disk usage, there is a free program that is a bit aged, but it did still work on my machines, so I believe it will do on your own, too. It visualizes which directories are how much in size, in a creative way (rectangles instead of spikes or thin tart slices). The program is called SequoiaView, and is published by the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (Netherlands). Maybe you have to run it in admin mode, from a low populated directory, to get a result.


Greetings, Polymachos

[djheydt]

There are a lot of free programs that offer a disk analysis, like SpeedFan of Almico.com, originally created to check the temperature of several parts of your PC, but you can also open some more tabs to see the S.M.A.R.T. statistics of your hard disk.

For the disk usage, there is a free program that is a bit aged, but it did still work on my machines, so I believe it will do on your own, too. It visualizes which directories are how much in size, in a creative way (rectangles instead of spikes or thin tart slices). The program is called SequoiaView, and is published by the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (Netherlands). Maybe you have to run it in admin mode, from a low populated directory, to get a result.


Greetings, Polymachos

Thanks, Polymachos; but if any of this gets done, it will get done by my husband, not me. I am older than computers; I was already reading when Grace Hopper pulled the moth out of the relay. I date from a time when if some machine doesn't work, you don't mess with it, for fear you'd ruin it altogether; still less would you play the game of "Let's see what happens when I do THIS!" I would not only not know how to run these programs, I wouldn't dare to.

[Flaxie]

Thanks, Polymachos; but if any of this gets done, it will get done by my husband, not me. I am older than computers; I was already reading when Grace Hopper pulled the moth out of the relay. I date from a time when if some machine doesn't work, you don't mess with it, for fear you'd ruin it altogether; still less would you play the game of "Let's see what happens when I do THIS!" I would not only not know how to run these programs, I wouldn't dare to.

rofl -- you sound a lot like me. I remember back when my boys were still home, and their dad sent Dave a new hard drive to upgrade my pc so he could play a game he wanted. I literally had to leave the house while he switched it out to keep from having an anxiety attack when he opened it up! (ok, I've gotten better over the years, but it is still actually easier to stay awake and watch minor surgery on myself, than to have my pc worked on)

[feebat]

Windows 10 has built-in disk compression, but it's off by default. If you are running low on disk space and don't want to delete anything, you can let Windows compress your disk drive. Go to "This PC" and then right-click your C: drive, choose Properties. Then at the bottom of the properties window, there's a checkbox for "Compress this drive to save disk space." The compression process can take several hours. Your computer will also run slower after compression. That's because extra work needs to be done to decompress any data that is read from your disk drive.
I wouldn't recommend it, but it seems like you don't have any other options.

[Yarbro]

Windows 10 has built-in disk compression, but it's off by default. If you are running low on disk space and don't want to delete anything, you can let Windows compress your disk drive. Go to "This PC" and then right-click your C: drive, choose Properties. Then at the bottom of the properties window, there's a checkbox for "Compress this drive to save disk space." The compression process can take several hours. Your computer will also run slower after compression. That's because extra work needs to be done to decompress any data that is read from your disk drive.
I wouldn't recommend it, but it seems like you don't have any other options.

Windoze has had this option for years, and many versions; but it is a very bad idea to run it on your OS drive - and besides, M$ wrote it, it will probably cause the cpu to explode or something.

[djheydt]

rofl -- you sound a lot like me. I remember back when my boys were still home, and their dad sent Dave a new hard drive to upgrade my pc so he could play a game he wanted. I literally had to leave the house while he switched it out to keep from having an anxiety attack when he opened it up! (ok, I've gotten better over the years, but it is still actually easier to stay awake and watch minor surgery on myself, than to have my pc worked on)

Well, I do trust whh to know enough about the inside of the computer to deal with it. He worked as a programmer for forty years, and used to build our PCs from the ground up with selected components.

The problem is getting him to get around to doing it; he's got nineteen or so alts to level.

[dmark101]

Ugh, it's humid here in Southern California.

since when? :P

welcome to SoCal.