Yesterday, I launched the PS shortcut to register for the $300 Weekend tournament. The process always died during the Open Gl support detection:
Very strange.
Since I was in a hurry (there were less than 10 min before the start, and in fact I missed the first 90 minutes due to real life), my
1st quick solution was to bypass the update process by launching the "PokerStars.exe" directly. (The shortcut starts "PokerStarsUpdate.exe" instead.) In my case, the EXE is located here:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\PokerStars.BG\PokerStars.exe"
This
worked. Kinda... All my settings were reset to default. A problem with the "user.ini" file? I went for a quick look in the PS's AppData.
%localappdata%\PokerStars.BG
(Tip: You can navigate to the folder by the hotkey WinKey+R; then start entering the chars above until a single folder is left in the suggestions. My folder ends in ".BG" because I have the Bulgarian PS client.)
I saw the fresh "user.ini" file there. To my pleasant surprise, I also found my old problematic settings renamed to "
user.ini.bak". This was very nice, because I could try to recover and analyze them later, which I eventually did.
[SIZE=+1]The process[/SIZE]
I opened the %localappdata% of PS again to look for log files that may contain some useful error messages. There were a bunch of log files, indeed. One of them was created near the first crash:
PokerStarsUpdate.log.0
(Tip: The Log files are plain text files, so they can be opened with any text editor, like Notepad.)
The last lines of the file were:
All files are up-to-date - check took 1828 ticks
Error caught in storeStatistics: 'EncIniFile: Error in line #495'
Starting glDetectionProcess ...
Gl Detection skipped: '100'
... catch in glDetection
Apparently, some error was encountered at line 495 in my "user.ini" file (the one renamed to "user.ini.bak" after the update bypass above). This line was located near the end, under the [FAVORITES] section. Here are lines 491–497 (line
495 is in
red):
G20=#CAAAAAAAAAtj/s/AwLCNlYmJmYGBg4EhNNiFgYERKDSHgWH9CQYISILSPCCCkQENMB5AFvPNTC7K983MycnMzytWMDQwU4j2TczMU3AtS80riVXwTU1PVAhOLLFSUDHUMzRQ8PPxcFWIttD1TayI1VEwNDVQCE5NLClWcC9JYfD11QXq1wWq0/V1dUfnwpwCABkLFg7BAAAA
G21=#CAAAAAAAAAtj/s/AwDCPlYmJmYGBg4EhNNiFAQxYGRj+voAw2S9AaIYTIIKRAQ0wOUBoBTDpm5lclO+bmZOTmZ9XrGBoYGaloGJkpODn4+GqEG2h65tYoaPgm5iZp+BalppXEqujoGLoq+BekqKgq2Ck65JYCREHmuNraKkL1A63EgDjPH/yqQAAAA==
G22=#CAAAAAAAAAtj/s/AwNDBysTEzMDAycAQGuzCAAZyDAx/X0CYDElQmgdEMDIyoAKmAwwMD+A838zkonzfzJyczPy8YgVDAwsrBRVDPUMD7SAFPx8PV4XoqP
gdBRVjU28F95IUoA5fQ0tdoEKw4SACANQY/SiTAAAA
G23=#CAAAAAAAAAtj/s/AwNDOysTEzMDAwcAQGuzCAAasDAyHAyBMRjUIzaAC5jGgAaYDDAwL4DzfzOSifN/MnJzM/LxiBUNDAysFFWM9YwMFPx8PV4VoC13fxIpYHaCYqbeCe0kKUIOvoaUuUB3cbAAYb8PRkgAAAA==
G24=#CAAAAAAAAAtj/s/AwNDDysTOyMjAxsAQGuzCAAasDAxLBCBMhiQozQMiGBnQANMBBgYFOM83M7ko3zczJyczP69YwdDQ0EpBxVDP0EAhuKQ0RcEjU98nXyHaTNc3sSJWR0HFwlvBvSQFqMvX0FIXqBhuAQCCkVuXlwAAAA==
I don't know how it ended up that way, but it definitely looks wrong. Entry G22 at line 493 appears incomplete, and there is some garbage on the next non-empty line (495). That line isn't even a valid one, because most INI file formats permit only lines containing either:
- [Section] headers
- key=value pairs
- #ignored comment lines that begin with a special symbol (usually #).
- empty lines (white space)
Is it safe to delete the entries there in order to attempt a fix? Well, they are under the [FAVORITES] section, so I assumed that these are just my favorite tournaments in the lobby. The keys look like a counter prepended by a letter ("R" or "G"), while the values resemble something like binary data encoded in base64. I have 10 unknown entries starting with keys R0–R9. The rest of my entries are in the range G0–G29. I am pretty sure the G's are the 30 tournaments that I had in my favorites.
[SIZE=+1]The solution[/SIZE]
I ended up deleting line 495 (gdBRVjU2...) in the crashing "user.ini" ("user.ini.bak" in this case). Then I saved it as "user.ini" and launched PokerStars. Everything was back to normal, if we don't count the problematic entry (G22), which was deleted [not a big miss]. Entry G23 became G22; G24 became G23; etc..
This is the new list:
I confirmed that the first one is G0, then G1, G2... up to G28. The broken favorite must be between G21 (MicroMillions 106: $22) and G22 (MicroMillions 110). I don't know what it was [big chance for yet another MicroMillions].
Here are some suboptimal, alternative solutions that aren't worth doing:
- If I concatenate line 495 to the end of the broken G22, this not only didn't recover G22, but it also caused the deletion of G23–G29 [WTF?].
- If I delete the faulty entry G22, along with line 495, this leaves a gap in the counter of the entries (from G21 skips to G23), so G23–G29 end up being deleted... They can be saved if I manually decrease their numbers by 1.
BTW, I made a test to see how the cash, zoom and SnG favorites appear under [FAVORITES]. All of them were prepended by the letter "G" too, and they shared the same counter as my tournament favorites. It's difficult to distinguish them.
[SIZE=+1]TL;DR[/SIZE]
I didn't intend to type such a big post, but I was trying to be elaborate about my process. Perhaps this can help other people having related INI problems to avoid reinstall. In the worst case, the deletion of the "user.ini" should be enough. It's worth trying to keep the settings, though.
I wouldn't be surprised if the favorites are a common culprit. In the past, my favorites were gone after many of the updates.... They must be troublesome.
