Steam thinks Portal 2 is 127MB, crashes before title screen

[rotothirteen]

So I tried Portal 2 for the first time in a while. (It worked a few months ago or whenever I last played it was.) Did the whole converting to a more efficient format deal. Now when I launch it, it gets as far as the various logos and the load screen, but then it just crashes before the title screen.

Properties says it's only 127 MB. I checked the Common folder and it's the full 11 GB. Verifying the integrity of the Steam cache says one file fails to verify and redownloads, but that doesn't fix anything. When I verify again, the same thing happens.

Google tells me someone had this problem and fixed it by quitting Steam, deleting the appcache folder, and starting it up again, but that didn't help me. I also tried manually deleting the 11 GB game folder and that didn't help either. Uninstalling and reinstalling still gives me a 127 MB file to download. (I've since restored the appcache and game data folders.)

Does anyone have anything else I can try?

[Spitfire19]

Deleting the portal2 folder under steamapps folder may help. However I would double check that this doesn't lead to more problems than solutions.

Are you using Steam Cloud for Portal 2?

[Melonie Cardiff]

I have the same problem. I disabled Steam Clould and deleted the whole Portal 2 folder. Now it has started to download the whole game.

[rotothirteen]

I just tried that (disabling Steam Cloud, uninstalling Portal 2 from within Steam, and deleting the Portal 2 folder) and it downloaded the tiny file again and said the launcher was missing. Then I restored the Portal 2 folder and left Steam Cloud off and it's crashing again.

[rotothirteen]

I'm going to bump this just this one time because I really want to play some user created levels. :/

[Tachyon7]

Bump. Bother bought me the game and we were going to play co-op and now his Portal 2 is having the same issues. We tried all of the above and updated his graphics card. We even deleted P2 local content and refreshed his entire steam installation (deleting everything except steamapps and steam.exe) but no change. He has had the game for a while and has completed the game on the same computer. No idea whats going on. Please help.

[Aethlin]

Exactly the same problem. I bought the game for PS3 when it was released, but halfway through the single-player mode went on playing on this computer because I preferred my mouse over the controller. I finished it myself once, and my brother played the whole single-player (on this computer), I never had any issues back then.
Today I got talking to an internet buddy and she hadn't done co-op yet, so we decided to play together, however, after going through the convertion to a more efficient format I now have this issue. I tried all suggestions but it's not fixing the issue. Hope someone will figure this out soon.

[Sampo]

I got this 127mb portal 2 since Steam came with the "Steam needs to convert the game content for "Portal 2" to a new, more efficient format."
I've already tried a few things people say here and there to fix it.. but nothing seems to work..
When i look at my portal 2 folder in steamapps/common its still about 11gb. Even after deleting the game, that Portal 2 folder just won't go away. And Steamcloud on or off didn't help either.

[rotothirteen]

I'm still having this problem, too. I think it's about time I contact Steam support. :P

[Sampo]

FIXED IT!.. i'll try to help you guys aswell.
First uninstall Portal 2 And/or make sure the Portal 2 folder in steamapps/common is gone (or move it somewhere else)
Now go to steam library and look at your Tools instead of games.
There's a tool called Portal 2 Authorizing tools.
It's probably installed... uninstall that too
Now try to instal Portal 2 again..
I just did this and the download shows 11609mb again instead of 127 :P

[rotothirteen]

That worked! Thanks a lot, Sampo.

[[HFR] asufeld_ins]

Oh Thx Sampo !! That work !!