[1.1.72] Steam edition crashing on start [Win7_64]

[Gnuthad]

Hi guys

Apologies if I have missed any information which could assist. Let me know what else I should supply and I will do so.

I haven't had a chance to play Factorio for a few months now. I attempted to run it today after updating to the most recent version and found that the game would not start. The popup error I received is:

Code: Select all

exists:
The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
: "\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume2\SteamApps\common\Factorio\data\core\graphics/shaders/sprite.vsh"
path1:
\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume2\SteamApps\common\Factorio\data\core\graphics/shaders/sprite.vsh

I have checked the file at the indicated path and it does exist and can be accessed. I have attempted to uninstall the program and re-install it with no change in behaviour. I attempted this a second time and deleted all Factorio folders in both the games directory and the user directory before re-installing the game to no avail. I have run a Windows chkdsk on the drive and no errors were found, even when doing a forced check (/F switch). The drive is only at 34% capacity and this is the only game that I cannot run to my knowledge.

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The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Steam.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
  898560 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  5 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.
  0 EA records processed.
  0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
  1003368 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
  0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
  898560 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  52404 data files processed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

1951334399 KB total disk space.
1296038792 KB in 839016 files.
    408704 KB in 52406 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
   1024175 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 653862728 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 487833599 total allocation units on disk.
 163465682 allocation units available on disk.

I have attached the log file which appears (to me) to show that the process is failing very early on. The only thing that I can see is that the error path includes both forward- and back-slashes where I would have expected them all to be the same. This is, however, from the default, vanilla Steam installation. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do to get this game running again?

[Gnuthad]

I have updated the game to version 1.1.74 and the error is still occurring in the same place. Here is the current log file:

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   0.000 2023-01-16 16:26:41; Factorio 1.1.74 (build 60256, win64, steam)
   0.000 Operating system: Windows 7 Service Pack 1
   0.001 Program arguments: "F:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Factorio\bin\x64\Factorio.exe" 
   0.001 Config path: C:/Users/Gnuthad/AppData/Roaming/Factorio/config/config.ini
   0.001 Read data path: //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolume2/SteamApps/common/Factorio/data
   0.001 Write data path: C:/Users/Gnuthad/AppData/Roaming/Factorio [86716/163903MB]
   0.001 Binaries path: //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolume2/SteamApps/common/Factorio/bin
   0.014 System info: [CPU:        Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz, 8 cores, RAM: 9868/32727 MB, page: 17015/36885 MB, virtual: 191/8388607 MB, extended virtual: 0 MB]
   0.014 Display options: [FullScreen: 1] [VSync: 1] [UIScale: automatic (100.0%)] [Native DPI: 1] [Screen: 255] [Special: lmw] [Lang: en]
   0.033 Available displays: 3
   0.034  [2]: \\.\DISPLAY3 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER {0x05, [0,0], 1920x1200, 32bit, 59Hz}
   0.034  [0]: \\.\DISPLAY1 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER {0x01, [1920,0], 1920x1200, 32bit, 59Hz}
   0.035  [1]: \\.\DISPLAY2 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER {0x01, [-1920,0], 1920x1200, 32bit, 59Hz}
   0.212 [Direct3D11] Display: 0, Output: 0, DisplayAdapter: 0, RenderingAdapter: 0; d3dcompiler_47.dll
   0.338 Initialised Direct3D[0]: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER; id: 10de-1e84; driver: nvd3dumx.dll 26.21.14.4187
   0.338   D3D Feature Level: 11.0, DXGI 1.2+, SwapChain: 1,discard,-,-,-,none
   0.338   BGR 565 Supported: No
   0.338   MaximumFrameLatency: 3, GPUThreadPriority: 0
   0.338 Graphics settings preset: very-high
   0.338   Dedicated video memory size 8020 MB
   0.408 Error Util.cpp:83: exists: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
: "\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume2\SteamApps\common\Factorio\data\core\graphics/shaders/sprite.vsh"
path1: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume2\SteamApps\common\Factorio\data\core\graphics/shaders/sprite.vsh
   4.365 Steam API shutdown.
   4.368 Goodbye

I am really at a loss as to why I was able to play the game for so long on this hardware but I am now unable to do so. There's nothing obvious that I can see. The detailed file (sprite.vsh) exists at the path indicated and is 1099 bytes in size. The file itself contains the following text:

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cbuffer _19
{
    row_major float4x4 _19_projection : packoffset(c0);
};

static float4 gl_Position;
static float3 position;
static float2 vUV;
static float2 uv;
static float4 vTint;
static float4 tint;
static uint vExtra;
static uint extra;

struct SPIRV_Cross_Input
{
    float3 position : TEXCOORD0;
    float2 uv : TEXCOORD1;
    float4 tint : TEXCOORD2;
    uint extra : TEXCOORD3;
};

struct SPIRV_Cross_Output
{
    float2 vUV : TEXCOORD0;
    float4 vTint : TEXCOORD1;
    nointerpolation uint vExtra : TEXCOORD2;
    float4 gl_Position : SV_Position;
};

void vert_main()
{
    gl_Position = mul(float4(position, 1.0f), _19_projection);
    vUV = uv;
    vTint = tint;
    vExtra = extra;
}

SPIRV_Cross_Output main(SPIRV_Cross_Input stage_input)
{
    position = stage_input.position;
    uv = stage_input.uv;
    tint = stage_input.tint;
    extra = stage_input.extra;
    vert_main();
    SPIRV_Cross_Output stage_output;
    stage_output.gl_Position = gl_Position;
    stage_output.vUV = vUV;
    stage_output.vTint = vTint;
    stage_output.vExtra = vExtra;
    return stage_output;
}

The game files have been verified again and all 10,970 files are successfully validated. My system is above the recommended requirements in all aspects.

Does anyone have any ideas at all?

[Loewchen]

Try if the the .zip install from factorio.com works. If it works but you still want to use steam, close steam completely, manually delete all factorio files in the steam directory and let steam rebuild the installation afterwards.

[Tertius]

0.001 Program arguments: "F:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Factorio\bin\x64\Factorio.exe"
0.001 Config path: C:/Users/Gnuthad/AppData/Roaming/Factorio/config/config.ini
0.001 Read data path: //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolume2/SteamApps/common/Factorio/data
0.001 Write data path: C:/Users/Gnuthad/AppData/Roaming/Factorio [86716/163903MB]
0.001 Binaries path: //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolume2/SteamApps/common/Factorio/bin

In my log, these //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/... entries show up as C:/... May be your Steam settings are somehow corrupted. I would expect drive letters. However, I don't know how it will show up if you use additional stream storage libraries - may be there is no issue at all.

[Gnuthad]

0.001 Program arguments: "F:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Factorio\bin\x64\Factorio.exe"
0.001 Config path: C:/Users/Gnuthad/AppData/Roaming/Factorio/config/config.ini
0.001 Read data path: //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolume2/SteamApps/common/Factorio/data
0.001 Write data path: C:/Users/Gnuthad/AppData/Roaming/Factorio [86716/163903MB]
0.001 Binaries path: //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolume2/SteamApps/common/Factorio/bin

In my log, these //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/... entries show up as C:/... May be your Steam settings are somehow corrupted. I would expect drive letters. However, I don't know how it will show up if you use additional stream storage libraries - may be there is no issue at all.

This does look unusual but is expected behaviour for my installation. The drive containing my Steam games is an SSD which is mounted as a folder called "Steam". It doesn't have a drive letter. The way Windows accesses the drive is as shown. I'm not sure if I can assign the drive a letter and have it mounted as a folder but I will give that a try just in case. That said, I have run this particular setup for a few years and not had a problem running Factorio until now.

close steam completely, manually delete all factorio files in the steam directory and let steam rebuild the installation afterwards.

I have tried this a couple of times and neither attempt has worked. I will see if the zip file you mentioned works instead.

[Gnuthad]

I have added a drive letter to my steam drive and suddenly I can run the game again. No other changes were required except adding the drive letter in Windows. I'm not sure what changed between the various versions but whatever it was prevented the game from accessing the drive through normal Windows hardware pointers and required actual drive letters.

Thank you for your assistance. I would never have considered it without your suggestion.