solved - Corrupted ironman save file

[Haraton_II.]

Hi,

My save-files are corrupted, I can not resume playing.

What happened:
I just wanted to continue my Prussia-Run I paused yesterday evening.
I launched the game, clicked on continue. Some error-message appeared, game crached. Restarted my PC, restarted the game, couldn't start the save. The map is empty, the backup is completly terra incognita.

I de-ironmaned it with paperman, still not working.

Edit: I can press the continue button, but end up in an empty map, added picture below.
If I go via Singleplayer - load savegame, I cannot start the game 'cause I can't choose a country. Either terra incognita, or empty map...

I play in German, the special german letters, so called "Umlaute", are not portrayed correctly, "Ä,Ö,Ü,ß". Maybe thats an indicator?

TL;DR: Because I am not a programmer, I need help w/ finding & fixing the error.

For furhter information, pls feel free to ask

Really apreciate it, cause I would like to finish the run.

Thanks alot!

 

[AndrewT]

Uncorrupting any computer file is pretty much impossible, it is like unscrambling an egg! Probably the game crashed in the middle of writing out the save file, so it is half new and half old.

But we can try to fix the problem of the game not starting at all.
Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-EU4
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Europa Universalis IV AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add EU4.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam EU4 or Documents EU4 locations, before installing again.


Is that better, at least?

 

[grotaclas]

I had a look at your save. It seems that almost all information in it is lost, so there is no way to recover it. You see an empty map, because no provinces have an owner in the game and they are all 1/1/1 dev and have no history.

I play in German, the special german letters, so called "Umlaute", are not portrayed correctly, "Ä,Ö,Ü,ß". Maybe thats an indicator?

That's with the paperman save? That's a bug in paperman. Paperman has not been updated in several years. You can use https://pdx.tools/ instead (or the command line tool rakaly on which it is based). That's currently the best available melter for eu4 and several other pdx games. It will give you the correct umlaute in your save, but of course it can't recover any data which is lost.

For the future I would recommend that you regularly create additional backup copies and store them in a save place and never load them directly. Then you can copy them back into your save games folder to recover if your save gets broken again for whatever reason.

 

[Haraton_II.]

Thank you, you two. Sad to hear, but then I have to restart, nbd

Never had this issue in all these years, so I'll proceed like nothing happend^^
At least until the next crash.

The Save-Copy I prbly will do from this time onwards, thank you!