Endless updating loop after cache verification

[redwhiteandblack]

Hello all,

Went ahead and purchased the "San Diego Commuter Rail F59PHi + Los Angeles Commuter Rail" package deal from Steam last night, but noticed after completing the purchase and loading up the game that neither was appearing as selectable through the in-game menus (which threw red flags since each should include multiple scenarios). In the all-too-familiar tradition, I closed out of TS2015, opened up Steam, and began a "Verify local game content" to see if the verification would spur along the complete installation of the new pack. After the process concluded, a message appeared indicating roughly 300 or so files were not found and would proceed to be automatically installed. At completion of the updating, however, a "Connection Timeout" message appeared, after which the verification process started anew, followed by another unsuccessful attempt at updating. I am now caught in this loop and cannot open the game until the process completes successfully. It is worth noting that this issue follows the successful purchase and installation of multiple other downloads from the 50% off sale this weekend, so I don't believe the problem is rooted in a procedural error on my part, but I'm looking for any advice on how to end this unsuccessful validate/update cycle that I'm currently stuck in.

Best,

Ryan

[buzz456]

Have you tried to start it off line?

[FourEightFour]

You are not the only one stuck in this loop. Myself and quite a few others are stuck in this loop. Steam has not helped anyone it seems as a few have sent in support tickets, yet no responses. This is getting on my nerves as I am supposed to be beta testing some stuff out...

[wackyhuman]

Try this (at your own risk!!):

Shut down the steam client.
Look in your steam log files, find content_log.txt and review it. See if you find one or two specific depot id's that report something along the lines of not being able to get a validation on.

For example, a line like this:
[2014-09-17 01:48:31] HTTP (CS,100) - valve18.cs.steampowered.com (valve18.cs.steampowered.com): AuthenticateDepotID (24021) - ERROR: Failed to get AppOwnershipTicket from Steam
Means that it's failing to validate 24022

Once you've worked out what the failing depot id's are you can tell Steam not to bother with them.
In your SteamApp folder, you'll find "appmanifest_24010.acf" - open this in notepad and be careful what you do in this file just to make sure it stays "good".
You're looking for a line similar to this: "24021" "6558406753873641691" (where in my example "24021" is replaced with the depot id you're searching for - ignore the big number on the right.)
When you find that line, REMOVE IT entirely (including the big number) so that the list has no gaps or formatting differences etc.
Save the file, restart Steam.
On my text machine, doing the above steps cured it and my software finished downloading nearly instantly.

[stresstool]

Try this (at your own risk!!):

Thank you very much for the tip. It worked perfectly for me! I gave Steam 48+ hours to finish its download and it didn't look hopeful it was going to finish and I guess, now, it never would have. I wonder what package that was that I excluded?

[redwhiteandblack]

^^ With some additional finagling, this approach finally got my game running. In my case it took multiple attempts, with each attempt throwing a new number in the log file and requiring its removal from the app manifest. After the second attempt, Steam went through the update process for a final time, and then started up the game successfully. Huge thanks to wackyhuman for this explanation; after the better part of nine hours spent troubleshooting on and off, I have no idea where else I possibly could have found a solution like this.

[RSMattP]

Sorry for the inconvenience this problem is causing folks, the techies at Steam are looking in to it but thus far they're as puzzled as we are.

We have also found that simply deleting the acf file entirely (while steam is shut down) and then starting steam again also cures it and might be more straight forward.

Thanks for your patience and once again, apologies.

Matt Peddlesden
Dovetail Games

[wackyhuman]

> We have also found that simply deleting the acf file entirely (while steam is shut down) and then starting steam again also cures it and might be more straight forward.

Yep, sure more straight forward, Matt. Thanks for that update.

[wackyhuman]

> Huge thanks to wackyhuman for this explanation; after the better part of nine hours spent troubleshooting on and off,
> I have no idea where else I possibly could have found a solution like this.

You have to thank Matt (RSMattP), he came up with the solution, I just reposted it.

[FourEightFour]

A big fat thank you to you both. It (so far) is working. I was going to do it Frank's method, but there was multiple problems. Did it Matt's way, because lazy, and it worked.

I can get back to the game. One good thing came of this: Gave me time to paint/decal/DCC/Lighting on my HOn3 brass 2-6-0...

[dr1980]

Thanks!!

This thread just preserved my sanity for the evening

As a side note, when i tried just deleting the acf file, my 'play button inside steam for ts2015 turned into an 'install button.