did anyone ever figure out how to fix the corrupted save game issue

marioh99 · 06-25-12, 10:46 PM

i'm running GWX3 and ran into the dreaded corrupted save game issue (on both my current patrol saves).
it happened because i think i was near a coastline. both were saved on the surface, no TC, and no nearby ships. i believe i was near the casablanca coastline.

anyone ever figure out how to fix the corrupted save file?
would rather not lose this patrol as i finally sank a major british warship (HMS Nelson) and have 115k worth of tonnage.

any possible way to find current uboat position in the save file and use a hex editor so i can change it?

i tried some of the possible fixes i found here, but none helped.
saves crash after a long delay on the "not so long ago..." screen.

TIA.

06-25-12, 11:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marioh99

anyone ever figure out how to fix the corrupted save file?

The short answer is no.
Many have looked at the files hard and long, but I've never seen anything close to a specification as to how to read the files involved in a successful save, let alone a corrupted save.

Captain Nemo · 06-26-12, 02:37 AM

Some have said that unchecking the "read only" status of the SH3 game and save game folders can cure save game loading problems, but I haven't tried this myself yet. If you try this, please post if it worked for you.

Nemo

marioh99 · 06-26-12, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Nemo

Some have said that unchecking the "read only" status of the SH3 game and save game folders can cure save game loading problems, but I haven't tried this myself yet. If you try this, please post if it worked for you.

Nemo

I saw that, but it didn't work for me.
Ran elevated CMD prompt, removed and verified that none of the files and folders in both locations had any read only flag.

sublynx · 06-27-12, 11:40 AM

Sorry to hear that it did not work for you

I went from crashing all the time to zero save game crashes after changing the read-only attributes (praying the SH3 save game Lord that it continues like this for me)

marioh99 · 07-02-12, 01:43 PM

i decided to try again, new patrol, same basic premise as the patrol that crashed (except i saved constantly this time).

i would goto my patrol area, complete the 24 hours in the area, and then make my way to the area to the west of the strait of gibralter, and sure enough, corrupt save issue again (load of save gets to "not so long ago" screen, and after an extended wait, CTD).

i backtracked and found a working save, right at the northern edge of CG89. my preplanned route was NNE from there, and my next save would've been in the next grid (CG86). since there was an extended time between the working save and the next save which was corrupted, that's usually indicative that i ran into, and sank an enemy merchant. there's something about that area which i believe has an issue with enemy ships being sunk as none of my subsequent saves in that area worked (over 20 saves). i had not exited the game during any of those subsequent saves, and had sunk multiple enemy ships in that time, so perhaps that may also be the issue.

i've not had any corrupted saves anywhere else, so i'm leaning towards an issue with that particular area. i guess i'll have to stay west of the CG86 grid area if i want to hunt ships coming and going thru the strait, or save, exit the game, and then verify that the save works every time i save when in that area.

Ramcourse · 07-02-12, 02:05 PM

I posted a way to deal with corrupted saves that works for me:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=196530

marioh99 · 07-02-12, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ramcourse

I posted a way to deal with corrupted saves that works for me:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=196530

i tried that with no success.

i think there's different types of corrupted saves. i remember having this same issue with the area west of the strait of gibralter when i first started playing this game years ago.

cheers.

Ramcourse · 07-02-12, 04:02 PM

Too bad, it's not a panacea then.

How much RAM do you have?

marioh99 · 07-02-12, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ramcourse

Too bad, it's not a panacea then.

How much RAM do you have?

8GB.

So far, I've been able to patrol/hunt in the strait of gibralter area by saving and exiting every in-game day (and then reloading the just saved game), and closing out the game completely every 2nd save. There must be something weird going on in that area that builds up over time that affects just saving and continuing the patrol.

I'll have to keep my fingers crossed and see what happens. Of course, this patrol has sucked with nothing but puny 2k and 4k ships and no convoys yet.

Ramcourse · 07-02-12, 06:27 PM

I've been hanging out about 65 km south of Cadiz, and my savegames have not been giving me any trouble. I get crashes when saving in AM1155 though. I suspect it has something to do with the sheer amount of things the savegame tries -and fails- to contain. For instantce, saving near a broken ship of which the front half refused to go down crashed my savegame every single time. Anomalies like that don't like being saved.

Captain Nemo · 07-03-12, 01:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marioh99

8GB.

Have you applied the 4GB patch that will allow SH3 to use 4GB instead of 2GB of virtual memory on x64 platforms? If not see http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php . I'm not saying this will cure the problem, but it might help.

Nemo

marioh99 · 07-03-12, 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Nemo

Have you applied the 4GB patch that will allow SH3 to use 4GB instead of 2GB of virtual memory on x64 platforms? If not see http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php . I'm not saying this will cure the problem, but it might help.

Nemo

yes i have, the last thing i did after i installed and patched sh3.
thanks for the suggestion though !

Dave Kay · 09-30-16, 02:18 PM

As I see this is an older thread, I hope to shed a little lite on my recent save/corrupt/career problems in SH3.

WinXP machine w/2G RAM Pentium 4 CPU w/Nvidia 6800 GPU + SH3 from original disk patched + SH3 Commander + GWX and a few simple realism mods. Playing at 74% realism.

Having learned more, here on SUBSIM, about why crash/saves happen it lead me to a fix of sorts in which a certain problematic commander's career experienced ongoing crashes and recovery, e.g., the save would load and play just fine but crash when loading other times.

In either case, SH3 Commander would load SH3 all the way to the selected commander's saved career list just fine. The game would crash where the selected saved game loaded itself all the way to the "Long ago" screen then goes black then dumps you to Microsoft error reporting - cannot load, etc,.

The culprit, if it can be called that, was at this commander's saved games list screen; I scrolled up the list to inspect saved games dates and sure enough, there was a date out of sequence with the rest of the list. EXAMPLE: real-time game save dates Oct 2 2015 thru to the present date of last game save Sept 21 2916 ---- in that list a single date was out of sequence with the dates BEFORE and AFTER it. Why is unknown.

Naturally, if you delete that errant out-of-sequence entry everything after it is gone too. But what else to do if you wish to save that career at least up to that point in time?

Depending on how far back in the saved games history the out-of-sequence date is, you may not lose much of that commander's career however, in my case I had to delete nearly half a year of real-time game saves, what a shame.

Now, whenever I reach the page to load this commander's saved games, I scroll up the list to verify that date sequence is in order. Thus far I have not experienced any out of sequence game saves and things are going along swimmingly.

Hope this may help someone else navigating similar shoals.

Dave Kay · 11-30-16, 12:30 AM

Sorry to report that my previously posted info no longer holds water: now I have a second commander's career crashing the same way:

"Windows has encountered a problem with SH3.." at the "Long time ago..." loading screen.

My SH3 installation on this PC (see previous post) has 4 different commanders on roster. Two have now become corrupt and unplayable resulting in wiping all saves and starting those careers over.

As my other two uncorrupted commanders seem to be working fine, so far, I fear their demise and conclude that this problem appears to be an SH3/WinXP error. All 4 of these commanders were in their career stages of early-to-middle 1942; the Beginning of The Hot Times. What to do?

My working solution at this point is to do a total reinstall of everything on this PC. Please pardon my ignorance and impatience but I DO KNOW how to do a total WINXP reinstall, been there done that 100 times over. But HOW do I specifically keep my as YET uncorrupted--- and very successful commanders career files intact--- to reinstall w/SH3 again?

Have searched "reinstall SH3" on the forum and everything looks good in that respect BUT--- maybe I'm missing the part where I may possibly reinstall my commander's SAVED CAREERS.

Any help?

06-25-12, 10:46 PM	#1
marioh99 Watch Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: NYC Posts: 21 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	did anyone ever figure out how to fix the corrupted save game issue i'm running GWX3 and ran into the dreaded corrupted save game issue (on both my current patrol saves). it happened because i think i was near a coastline. both were saved on the surface, no TC, and no nearby ships. i believe i was near the casablanca coastline. anyone ever figure out how to fix the corrupted save file? would rather not lose this patrol as i finally sank a major british warship (HMS Nelson) and have 115k worth of tonnage. any possible way to find current uboat position in the save file and use a hex editor so i can change it? i tried some of the possible fixes i found here, but none helped. saves crash after a long delay on the "not so long ago..." screen. TIA.

06-26-12, 02:37 AM	#3
Captain Nemo Ace of the Deep Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: London, England Posts: 1,144 Downloads: 54 Uploads: 0	Some have said that unchecking the "read only" status of the SH3 game and save game folders can cure save game loading problems, but I haven't tried this myself yet. If you try this, please post if it worked for you. Nemo __________________ "I'm afraid there is no disguising the fact that King's obsession with the Pacific and the Battle of Washington cost us dear in the Battle of the Atlantic". Sir John Slessor GCB, DSO, MC, DL AOC-in-C Coastal Command RAF ___________________________________________

06-27-12, 11:40 AM	#5
sublynx Sea Lord Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: In the conning tower of my VIIC scanning the sea through the periscope Posts: 1,698 Downloads: 173 Uploads: 7	Sorry to hear that it did not work for you I went from crashing all the time to zero save game crashes after changing the read-only attributes (praying the SH3 save game Lord that it continues like this for me) __________________ [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] NYGM+H.sie v16+Stiebler 4C+MaGui WS

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07-02-12, 01:43 PM	#6
marioh99 Watch Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: NYC Posts: 21 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	i decided to try again, new patrol, same basic premise as the patrol that crashed (except i saved constantly this time). i would goto my patrol area, complete the 24 hours in the area, and then make my way to the area to the west of the strait of gibralter, and sure enough, corrupt save issue again (load of save gets to "not so long ago" screen, and after an extended wait, CTD). i backtracked and found a working save, right at the northern edge of CG89. my preplanned route was NNE from there, and my next save would've been in the next grid (CG86). since there was an extended time between the working save and the next save which was corrupted, that's usually indicative that i ran into, and sank an enemy merchant. there's something about that area which i believe has an issue with enemy ships being sunk as none of my subsequent saves in that area worked (over 20 saves). i had not exited the game during any of those subsequent saves, and had sunk multiple enemy ships in that time, so perhaps that may also be the issue. i've not had any corrupted saves anywhere else, so i'm leaning towards an issue with that particular area. i guess i'll have to stay west of the CG86 grid area if i want to hunt ships coming and going thru the strait, or save, exit the game, and then verify that the save works every time i save when in that area.

07-02-12, 02:05 PM	#7
Ramcourse Watch Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Netherlands Posts: 17 Downloads: 4 Uploads: 0	I posted a way to deal with corrupted saves that works for me: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=196530

07-02-12, 04:02 PM	#9
Ramcourse Watch Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Netherlands Posts: 17 Downloads: 4 Uploads: 0	Too bad, it's not a panacea then. How much RAM do you have?

07-02-12, 06:27 PM	#11
Ramcourse Watch Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Netherlands Posts: 17 Downloads: 4 Uploads: 0	I've been hanging out about 65 km south of Cadiz, and my savegames have not been giving me any trouble. I get crashes when saving in AM1155 though. I suspect it has something to do with the sheer amount of things the savegame tries -and fails- to contain. For instantce, saving near a broken ship of which the front half refused to go down crashed my savegame every single time. Anomalies like that don't like being saved.

09-30-16, 02:18 PM	#14
Dave Kay Gunner Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: AZ Posts: 93 Downloads: 25 Uploads: 0	As I see this is an older thread, I hope to shed a little lite on my recent save/corrupt/career problems in SH3. WinXP machine w/2G RAM Pentium 4 CPU w/Nvidia 6800 GPU + SH3 from original disk patched + SH3 Commander + GWX and a few simple realism mods. Playing at 74% realism. Having learned more, here on SUBSIM, about why crash/saves happen it lead me to a fix of sorts in which a certain problematic commander's career experienced ongoing crashes and recovery, e.g., the save would load and play just fine but crash when loading other times. In either case, SH3 Commander would load SH3 all the way to the selected commander's saved career list just fine. The game would crash where the selected saved game loaded itself all the way to the "Long ago" screen then goes black then dumps you to Microsoft error reporting - cannot load, etc,. The culprit, if it can be called that, was at this commander's saved games list screen; I scrolled up the list to inspect saved games dates and sure enough, there was a date out of sequence with the rest of the list. EXAMPLE: real-time game save dates Oct 2 2015 thru to the present date of last game save Sept 21 2916 ---- in that list a single date was out of sequence with the dates BEFORE and AFTER it. Why is unknown. Naturally, if you delete that errant out-of-sequence entry everything after it is gone too. But what else to do if you wish to save that career at least up to that point in time? Depending on how far back in the saved games history the out-of-sequence date is, you may not lose much of that commander's career however, in my case I had to delete nearly half a year of real-time game saves, what a shame. Now, whenever I reach the page to load this commander's saved games, I scroll up the list to verify that date sequence is in order. Thus far I have not experienced any out of sequence game saves and things are going along swimmingly. Hope this may help someone else navigating similar shoals.

11-30-16, 12:30 AM	#15
Dave Kay Gunner Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: AZ Posts: 93 Downloads: 25 Uploads: 0	Sorry to report that my previously posted info no longer holds water: now I have a second commander's career crashing the same way: "Windows has encountered a problem with SH3.." at the "Long time ago..." loading screen. My SH3 installation on this PC (see previous post) has 4 different commanders on roster. Two have now become corrupt and unplayable resulting in wiping all saves and starting those careers over. As my other two uncorrupted commanders seem to be working fine, so far, I fear their demise and conclude that this problem appears to be an SH3/WinXP error. All 4 of these commanders were in their career stages of early-to-middle 1942; the Beginning of The Hot Times. What to do? My working solution at this point is to do a total reinstall of everything on this PC. Please pardon my ignorance and impatience but I DO KNOW how to do a total WINXP reinstall, been there done that 100 times over. But HOW do I specifically keep my as YET uncorrupted--- and very successful commanders career files intact--- to reinstall w/SH3 again? Have searched "reinstall SH3" on the forum and everything looks good in that respect BUT--- maybe I'm missing the part where I may possibly reinstall my commander's SAVED CAREERS. Any help?