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Beware rF2 may bomb on you

Ricknau

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Some users globally, myself and DJ included, have had their virus protection detect a potential virus.

See: https://forum.studio-397.com/index....canner-notification.71825/page-3#post-1096571

Most think it is a false positive. My virus protection, Avira, quarantined 2 files. The game freezes without these files present. But after restoring the questionable files from quarantine I still can't get the game to run. After trying a few shortcuts to restore functionality I have resorted to a reinstall.

Just a word to let you know. I suggest not waiting until race day to start rF2 if you haven't run it in a while.
 
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deecee52

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yep happened to me too , unloaded Avira and revalidated RF2 which replaced files reqd
 

Ricknau

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unloaded Avira and revalidated RF2
Wish I had thought of that in the first place.

Man this is becoming a saga for me. 2nd reintall started having continuous disk write errors. Fearing bad hard drive I retried using new SSD for 3rd attempt. Download took half the time! And the game plays... woohoo! But now there are tons of updates downloading. But as long as it all works I'm OK. Of course with all this lost practice time I feel sure you and DJ will beat me tomorrow! :p
 

deecee52

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This has probably done you a favour Rick , your HD must have been dying , you would have felt sick if it had failed just as you overtook us :eek:
 

Ricknau

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This has probably done you a favour Rick , your HD must have been dying , you would have felt sick if it had failed just as you overtook us :eek:
Roger that! Though I haven't transitioned the OS to the new drive yet. This will be a big redo and architecture revamping. I want a bigger SSD for that. This one is no bigger than my current partition which is too full. (That might be the problem) Will order a bigger one tonight. So fingers crossed I can hold out a bit longer with the current.

But... I need ideas for a remaining post-reinstall problem. That is, I cannot join the SR4L main race server. Zolder 79 with Beagle runs fine in single player but when I try to join the server it never progresses past the "Joining Server..." screen. Before I click join server I see it display a normal-for-me ping time so I think it has made some basic kind of connection.

I tested connecting to a random public server running a car and track that I have and there was no problem. Joined and did a race start with no prob.
 
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Ricknau

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I hope others don't get caught out tomorrow. I'll not be racing. Game is hosed up again. Unbeknownst to me Avira quietly reactivated itself. Loading a track (or some action I took) quarantined the same stupid file and locked the game. I tried carefully to do all the steps I read from others but at some point when I ran file validation it locked into a loop I cannot escape from.

I'll be reinstalling again but not until the Devs make fix.

I don't much like this track anyway!
 

Dan Bayford

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I hope others don't get caught out tomorrow. I'll not be racing. Game is hosed up again. Unbeknownst to me Avira quietly reactivated itself. Loading a track (or some action I took) quarantined the same stupid file and locked the game. I tried carefully to do all the steps I read from others but at some point when I ran file validation it locked into a loop I cannot escape from.

I'll be reinstalling again but not until the Devs make fix.

I don't much like this track anyway!
You will be missed man
 

Ricknau

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I'd like to say would have been fun battling you but you'll be way up with the leaders! Good luck. Keep it on the track man!
 

DJCruicky

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So far mine is still working, Touch wood :D
2nd reintall started having continuous disk write errors. Fearing bad hard drive I retried using new SSD for 3rd attempt.
What were the messages telling you you had hard disk errors? Was it from Windows or Steam?
You might not even have HD problem. If it was like mine, see my 2nd screenshots over at S397, for me was not hard drive fault, but simply because the virus checker blocking files from Steam.

but at some point when I ran file validation it locked into a loop I cannot escape from.
When Steam downloads files for rf2, they first get downloaded to a Download folder found at \SteamLibrary\steamapps\downloading\365960\.....
Try deleting files and folders inside that. If the files are Locked from getting deleted (as I found), try rebooting PC and try deleting them again.

If you need to know where Avira keeps it's Exceptions list, I've made a video to show you where to find it.
When you Restore files from Quarantine they get added to this list.

But... I need ideas for a remaining post-reinstall problem. That is, I cannot join the SR4L main race server. Zolder 79 with Beagle runs fine in single player but when I try to join the server it never progresses past the "Joining Server..." screen. Before I click join server I see it display a normal-for-me ping time so I think it has made some basic kind of connection.

I tested connecting to a random public server running a car and track that I have and there was no problem. Joined and did a race start with no prob.
Can you manually install Zolder from the download link at the top of this page, We are running the updated version, maybe you still have old version. Also, having an old version in your package folder stops the track automatically installing from server (rF2 bug). You should not need to do this now as you said you have reinstalled rFactor2 to a different harddrive but is good information for others..

See you on the grid :D
 

Ricknau

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DJ, thanks for sticking with me on this. I doubt I'll be ready for race but will continue to take advise.

Yes "disk write error" like in your second pic. But every ten seconds or so. Hadn't seen that on other attempts. Really thought true HD problem was remote but easy enough to switch drives and the problem went away.

Will pursue your suggestions but in mean time here's some detail as to what Ive seen.

When I did file validation it said something similar to "files missing- will be downloaded" with only a "finish" or "close" button available. I clicked that button. Then on the main screen, the rFactor 2 library-listing at the left says "rFactor 2 - Update Paused". And what is normally the PLAY button says RESUME. Clicking RESUME shows the progress bar flash a quick download (and shows advancement of bytes amount downloaded) the returns to RESUME. With about 3 RESUME clicks it shows100% data downloaded but still only offers the RESUME button, not PLAY. So there I'm stuck. Trying to do file validation again does exactly the same thing... progress bar next to RESUME button flashs a quick download but button still only shows RESUME.
 

DJCruicky

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I had the RESUME loop too, no Play button. Did the deleting of the download folder, as said above, allowed Steam to download the missing files. I wasted an hour trying to work out how to delete them as Windows was saying they were locked even though I'm the Admin of my PC. Oddly rebooting PC let me do it.
 

Ricknau

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Yeah have that same strange issue of not allowing deletion even though I am admin
 

Ricknau

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Holy cow DJ I'm almost there. Except all I see for servers is FlareTest and Wed race, not todays. Have track version 86 installed.

Edit - never mind I'm in. Thanks a ton guy!! (had it filtered out with "public")

Edit 2 - Well... not quite. I got to all but the last click - Join Server - but it failed to join, and preventrd me from escaping just as before. Required me to log out via Task Manager. I checked to make sure I had only the 86 version of track in packages and installed which was the case.

But still, thanks a lot for just getting it up and running. I REALLY didn't want to go thru another reinstall. That took hours. Hope your race went well.
 
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