Corrupt local config bug

[jerith]

A few days ago, Steam lost my config settings and started ignoring any changes I made. In particular, it reset "Automatically sign into Friends when I start Steam" to the default value (true) and changes I made in the preferences dialog stopped being persisted.

Eventually I had a look at my system logs and noticed a whole lot of entries like the following:

2013-03-24 24 Mar 20:08:35 	Notice	[0x0-0x782782].com.valvesoftware.steam[40021]	KeyValues Error: LoadFromBuffer: missing {   (current key: '�T��d�އ�YI�3�΃j�ǫ���'�f') in file UserLocalConfigStore [offset: 28]
2013-03-24 24 Mar 20:08:35 	Notice	[0x0-0x782782].com.valvesoftware.steam[40021]	/Users/buildbot/buildslave_steam/steam_rel_client_osx/build/src/tier1/KeyValues.cpp (2388) : Assertion Failed: Error while parsing text KeyValues for resource UserLocalConfigStore
2013-03-24 24 Mar 20:08:35 	Notice	[0x0-0x782782].com.valvesoftware.steam[40021]	KeyValues Error: LoadFromBuffer: missing {   (current key: '�T��d�އ�YI�3�΃j�ǫ���'�f') in file UserLocalConfigStore [offset: 28]
2013-03-24 24 Mar 20:08:35 	Notice	[0x0-0x782782].com.valvesoftware.steam[40021]	/Users/buildbot/buildslave_steam/steam_rel_client_osx/build/src/tier1/KeyValues.cpp (2388) : Assertion Failed: Error while parsing text KeyValues for resource UserLocalConfigStore

After digging around in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/ for a while I eventually found a localconfig.vdf file containing apparently random garbage. When I removed it and restarted Steam, it was rebuilt and I was able to set configuration again.

There are at least two issues here. Firstly, my config data somehow got corrupted at some point in the past. I don't have any information about when or how this may have happened, unfortunately.

The second and more serious issue is that once a config file is corrupted, the only indication of this in the UI is that preferences are reset to defaults and any attempts to make changes are silently ignored. At minimum, I'd expect some kind of notification that my config is broken and some hint about how to fix it. Even if I know how to find the relevant entries in my system logs (which most people probably don't), they contain no information about which file is corrupt.

[7byte]

I couldn't even log into my account anymore because of this file, steam would just crash after I entered my password. It was 778MB big, filled with seemingly everything from the namehistory of all my friends over copys of copys of copys of settings to random Numbers. Also launch options of games are saved there
I recently had problems in cs go, just competitive mode, aswell, had freezes for about 2-3 sec like every 45 sec or so. I'm just testing if those are gone too, they should because I just had those freezes on the account with that localconfig.vdf being corrupted.

[out4space]

Fellas: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/1354868867724337382/

Why open a second one, when this one just went out of sight?

[7byte]

that one is way older and the first search result, so I thought I might help somebody posting my knowlendge about the matter here

[out4space]

"Way older"? The last comment is from tonight...

[7byte]

Yea from me, omg
Would you be so kind to mind your own business now?

[TheOddsBodkins]

Originally posted by 7byte:

Yea from me, omg
Would you be so kind to mind your own business now?

Just FYI.

This topic was started on 24 Mar, 2013 and it's about config corruption where the localconfig.vdf is filled with random garbage, and it looks like the person was using a Mac version of the client.

The topic out4space suggested was started on 11 Jun, 2017 and it is about config corruption where all the sections in localconfig.vdf are duplicated every time the client is started (You know, the same bug you descried on your own post on this topic.)


Also I would like to point that the search result on Steam discussions are sorted by "relevance" by default, and more often than not I find those results to be very old posts that may or may not be relevant to my search terms.