What I did to solve MY "Your game files do not match the server ..." problem
alnair
Join Date: 2013-09-03 Member: 187762Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2013-09-03 Member: 187762Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Problem background
Since a few months back (even before 263) I have been experiencing in-game issues with NS2. The issues include random crashes resulting in a "blue screen", crashes back to Windows where I could submit an error-report to UWE. But the -by far- most frequent issue was the random disconnection from ALL servers at ANY time due to failed inconsistency checks. Though, being random disconnections during a game, I have observed that I was often disconnected at the time of a hive-takedown (but not always). No matter if I was the commander, the one taking down the hive, or not even in the same "room" as the hive, I was still disconnected. In short, the error message I received, which I will refer to as THE ERROR, was
THE ERROR
"Your game files do not match the server's. Try verifying your game cache in Steam, or maybe an update just came out."
This post is an attempt to share my experience dealing with the above error message. I will present what I have tried and what currently seems to be THE fix for it (at least on my system). If you do not want to read the full post, my operating system is Windows 8.1 and the current build is 264. The solution is Action 6, which in short states "Turn of any anti-virus program, run NS2 in administration and compatibility mode."
For reference, my rig (if important to someone):
SEAGATE DESKTOP HDD 1TB 7200RPM SATA/600 64MB
MICROSOFT WINDOWS 8 64-BIT SWE DVD#OEM (Updated to 8.1)
INTEL CORE I7 3770K 3.5GHZ 8MB S-1155 IVY
INTEL 330 SERIES 2.5" 180GB SSD SATA/600 MLC 25NM RESELLER
CORSAIR HX650 MODULAR GOLD 650W
CORSAIR 16GB DDR3 XMS3 INTEL I5/I7 PC12800 1600MHZ 2X(2X4GB)
ASUS P8Z77-V PRO Z77 S-1155 ATX IVY
ASUS GEFORCE GTX 670 2GB PCI-E DVI/HDMI/DP
Graphics drives are up to date.
What I have tried
I have browsed this and various forums, and was recommended and have tried the following actions
Action 1) Verify the game files by right-clicking on the game in Steam => Properties => Local Files => Verify integrity of game cache
Result 1) I can connect to game-servers but I am again disconnected by THE ERROR after some time.
Action 2) Check the console for any "failed consistency check", go to the NS2 installation folder, delete, do Action 1, and reconnect.
Result 2) No joy, see Result 1.
Action 3) I do not use any mods, other than the ones downloaded from the servers. Nevertheless, delete the content of the Workshop and cache folder in the "%AppData%\Roaming\Natural Selection 2" folder.
Result 3) Game is playable, but the final outcome is yet again Result 1.
Action 4) Error log often states something like:
....
Error: Attempted to load remote options from a file that does not exist.
Error: 1 memory leaks in 'D3D9Device' (84 bytes)
Error: 128 memory leaks in 'Sound' (4688 bytes)
Error: 129 memory leaks in 'Client' (4772 bytes)
Error: 129 memory leaks in 'Engine' (4772 bytes)"
In this case, my action was to reduce graphics, change the graphics-driver in the NS2 settings menu (tried all of them), set graphics to minimum-level (Welcome back to NS1 ...).
Result 4) NO JOY, see Result 1.
Action 5) Reinstall NS2 (full nuke), though you must remember to turn of Steam cloud sync under "Steam => Settings => Cloud", otherwise your NS2 files and your reinstallation is without any effect.
Result 5) See Result 1.
FINALLY, a solution!
Based on an unholy mix of forum posts (cannot remember exactly where) I came up with this approach which seems to work well for me:
Action 6a) Add Steam and SteamLibrary as exceptions in your anti-virus program (thanks DC_Darkling). (Alternatively disable your anti-virus program.)
Action 6b) Run NS2 in Administrator mode and enable compatibility mode for Windows 8.
From Action 6a, I have added the folders as exceptions in the free version of AVG2014.
From Action 6b, go to you "SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Natural Selection 2" find NS2.exe, right-click and select Properties => Compatibility and set your operating system, also thick the boxes corresponding to "Inactivate scaling at high DPI" and "Run this program as an administrator".
Result 6ab) I can now play the game on full graphics-settings without THE ERROR! (still working OK after about 20+ hours of game-play)
If you frequently experience THE ERROR, then I hope you may once again be able to enjoy the NS2 experience! If anyone has additional comments please post them here, and we may finally purge THE ERROR from NS2.
Since a few months back (even before 263) I have been experiencing in-game issues with NS2. The issues include random crashes resulting in a "blue screen", crashes back to Windows where I could submit an error-report to UWE. But the -by far- most frequent issue was the random disconnection from ALL servers at ANY time due to failed inconsistency checks. Though, being random disconnections during a game, I have observed that I was often disconnected at the time of a hive-takedown (but not always). No matter if I was the commander, the one taking down the hive, or not even in the same "room" as the hive, I was still disconnected. In short, the error message I received, which I will refer to as THE ERROR, was
THE ERROR
"Your game files do not match the server's. Try verifying your game cache in Steam, or maybe an update just came out."
This post is an attempt to share my experience dealing with the above error message. I will present what I have tried and what currently seems to be THE fix for it (at least on my system). If you do not want to read the full post, my operating system is Windows 8.1 and the current build is 264. The solution is Action 6, which in short states "Turn of any anti-virus program, run NS2 in administration and compatibility mode."
For reference, my rig (if important to someone):
SEAGATE DESKTOP HDD 1TB 7200RPM SATA/600 64MB
MICROSOFT WINDOWS 8 64-BIT SWE DVD#OEM (Updated to 8.1)
INTEL CORE I7 3770K 3.5GHZ 8MB S-1155 IVY
INTEL 330 SERIES 2.5" 180GB SSD SATA/600 MLC 25NM RESELLER
CORSAIR HX650 MODULAR GOLD 650W
CORSAIR 16GB DDR3 XMS3 INTEL I5/I7 PC12800 1600MHZ 2X(2X4GB)
ASUS P8Z77-V PRO Z77 S-1155 ATX IVY
ASUS GEFORCE GTX 670 2GB PCI-E DVI/HDMI/DP
Graphics drives are up to date.
What I have tried
I have browsed this and various forums, and was recommended and have tried the following actions
Action 1) Verify the game files by right-clicking on the game in Steam => Properties => Local Files => Verify integrity of game cache
Result 1) I can connect to game-servers but I am again disconnected by THE ERROR after some time.
Action 2) Check the console for any "failed consistency check", go to the NS2 installation folder, delete, do Action 1, and reconnect.
Result 2) No joy, see Result 1.
Action 3) I do not use any mods, other than the ones downloaded from the servers. Nevertheless, delete the content of the Workshop and cache folder in the "%AppData%\Roaming\Natural Selection 2" folder.
Result 3) Game is playable, but the final outcome is yet again Result 1.
Action 4) Error log often states something like:
....
Error: Attempted to load remote options from a file that does not exist.
Error: 1 memory leaks in 'D3D9Device' (84 bytes)
Error: 128 memory leaks in 'Sound' (4688 bytes)
Error: 129 memory leaks in 'Client' (4772 bytes)
Error: 129 memory leaks in 'Engine' (4772 bytes)"
In this case, my action was to reduce graphics, change the graphics-driver in the NS2 settings menu (tried all of them), set graphics to minimum-level (Welcome back to NS1 ...).
Result 4) NO JOY, see Result 1.
Action 5) Reinstall NS2 (full nuke), though you must remember to turn of Steam cloud sync under "Steam => Settings => Cloud", otherwise your NS2 files and your reinstallation is without any effect.
Result 5) See Result 1.
FINALLY, a solution!
Based on an unholy mix of forum posts (cannot remember exactly where) I came up with this approach which seems to work well for me:
Action 6a) Add Steam and SteamLibrary as exceptions in your anti-virus program (thanks DC_Darkling). (Alternatively disable your anti-virus program.)
Action 6b) Run NS2 in Administrator mode and enable compatibility mode for Windows 8.
From Action 6a, I have added the folders as exceptions in the free version of AVG2014.
From Action 6b, go to you "SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Natural Selection 2" find NS2.exe, right-click and select Properties => Compatibility and set your operating system, also thick the boxes corresponding to "Inactivate scaling at high DPI" and "Run this program as an administrator".
Result 6ab) I can now play the game on full graphics-settings without THE ERROR! (still working OK after about 20+ hours of game-play)
If you frequently experience THE ERROR, then I hope you may once again be able to enjoy the NS2 experience! If anyone has additional comments please post them here, and we may finally purge THE ERROR from NS2.
Comments
Nice 1st post.
Doesnt your AV have a folder exclude option?
You are right, sometimes it could indeed be because that the server mod is out of date. BUT if that is the case then I would not have been able to join the server at all. My issue was that I was getting thrown out of server in mid-game.
Thanks for the suggestion DC_Darkling, I enabled the Steam and NS folders as exceptions and the game still runs as smooth as ever. I will update the post accordingly.
I begin to suspect the AV does something.
@IronHorse
Does it check files on disk or in memory? Because if they AV is messing with in memory files?
You can try few times , if after one server change map >> Precaching (15%) bal bla >>> Your game file not match
>> Then you know that server block all mods workshop ( stupid server owner
Then Add Favourite orther server like i said above and enjoy playing without
1..2..3 >> ERROR
of course!
EDIT: Never mind, using the powers of Youtube I am fine and caught up! Also I haven't tried it yet but Thank You in advanced!
EDIT: HAHA!!! NOW IT WORKS. All I had to do was verify the game cache again...
A AV should not change any actual file like a dll.
A exe could be seen as a container. So if additional dll hook onto it it does not need to be bad. I wonder if and how this is checked.
So I continued thinking about possible reasons for the consistency check to fail and as I understand at game start all files used to render scenes are cached in RAM, right? And since the consistency check always fails on different files, what if I have something wrong with my RAM? Based on that idea I tried memtest86+ and I found plenty of failing addresses. Then after days of checking individual RAM-sticks, in various configurations on the motherboard slots, I think (and hope) that I now have found two good sticks. Since running on these two sticks I have not gotten any error message.
I am not brave enough to yet claim that was the solution, but error free hardware is a good place to start at. So GalapagO if THE ERROR returns, perhaps check your RAM...