Sure.

The current client version is 13424.
I normally use HM2, but have not had that open since after the first crash I experienced today, PokerStars has continued to crash.
I'll send my Log Files along with a description.

FWIW, I have stopped using PokerStars in the meanwhile, and I am now playing on the Full Tilt skin.
I haven't had any problems on FTP all night!!!

I'll try to play on FullTilt in the meantime. Can I use the same notes files and notes directory with both softwares?

Still get my Zoom tables freezing with build 13425, with PT4 running.
Just sent log files.

This has been going on for more than a week now. PS is raking me for hands I can't play, and I'm losing money because the game crashes on me mid-hand. Getting pretty annoyed about this.

Just got mail from ps they are looking into the problem and i am sure they will update again soon

How do you avoid getting auto-updated with the bad new version at startup?

Start from Pokerstars.exe in Program Files (x86) folder.

Ah. Neat, thanks.

i got told this by support, anyone tried this already ?

"We kindly ask you to open and edit the PokerStars user.ini file and add the following lines:

[Debug]
WriteCallStack=1
WriteMiniDump=1
"

Tested the FullTilt client for about 100-150 hands. Got very similar problems with the chat, notes and hand replayer, and then the client crashed. It seems the problems affect both skins in some ways.


Edit: When sending my log files (Pokerstars) I forgot to mention that there was another graphical glitch where I couldn't see the zoom player pool on the right hand side of the main lobby.

Sometimes in the course of investigating a problem we need more information than is normally produced in the log files, and we may ask players to add a debug section to their user.ini file to help with that (just a few lines).

Here are detailed instructions for Windows desktop users:

1. Go to Help > Open My Settings Folder.



2. In the Settings folder that pops up, locate your user.ini file



You may want to make a backup copy of the user.ini file in another folder, just for safety.

3. Open the user.ini file in your Settings folder with a text editor, and add the following lines:

[Debug]
WriteCallStack=1
WriteMiniDump=1

This can be inserted anywhere in the file, just not in the middle of another section. So look for a blank line, and insert there. If you put it at the end of the file, it will be easy to find and remove later.

4. Save the user.ini file and close it. Keep the Settings folder open, we'll come back to it later.

5. Return to our software application, and close it. (This is an important step!)

6. Restart our software, login and begin playing as usual.

7. When the problem occurs (crash, lag, freeze or whatever we're investigating), send us your log files, plus a new file created by the debug lines called pokerstars.dmp.

8. Go to Help > Log Files and click Zip & Save



9. If you accept the defaults, this will save your logs to a ZIP file in your Settings folder.



10. Open your email program and start an email to Support@pokerstars.com

11. Return to your Settings folder, and drag the ZIP file and the pokerstars.dmp file to your email program as attachments.

12. In the body of the email, add a description of the problem, the games you were playing, your system details, your 3rd-party software in use and any other pertinent information, as well as the following (to help us identify you):

• Your 2+2 username
• Your Stars ID
• Your Client Version (go to Help > About PokerStars, look for 5-digit build number in the upper right.

Send the email to Support@pokerstars.com.

===========

We thank you for taking the time to help our investigation. Sometimes we run into problems that are difficult or impossible to reproduce in our test labs, so getting this information from affected players is critical to our finding a resolution.

Afterward, you can remove the Debug section from your user.ini file and restart your client.

I just added detailed instructions in the preceding post, in case anyone needs them.

Yes, if you are one of the players affected by this bug, it will show up in either skin unfortunately. We are actively investigating, and urge anyone who experiences the freeze/crash to add the debug section to their user.ini file and send us their logs and the pokerstars.dmp file that is produced.

Detailed instructions are in this post:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ostcount=25210

Followed the instructions and I have sent the Log files and pokerstars.dmp file. Hope this helps

While following the instructions, I added the lines which you asked us to add to user.ini and when I tried to close Stars, I got this message box - this always confuses me



I clicked on - Keep External Changes. Did I pick the right option?

Hotkeys not working after recent software update. Fix it ASAP, please. Very hard to grind more tables, especially on Sunday.

Thanks.

Has anyone tried this? Seems ok Sessionlord, but not sure though.

Where was this posted? Didnt find anything in NVG.

PS again crashed and send you all the files and details

Can we get older version its becoming impossible to play with all these crashes daily ?

Why ps updated the client which gives so much problem when everything was working fine ?

Didnt they checked before updating because its almost 1 week and no solution

PS please downgrade if you cant make it work properly

It´s absurd, they should give the option to download an older version to the players who are affected.

Why cant you do this stars? Seems pretty easy.

I think you could have picked either option after inserting the Debug section in the .ini file.

I agree that this popup can be confusing, and I'll modify my instructions to include a reference to it.

What's going on is this: Typically, during a normal gaming session, if you make changes to any of the options in Settings, they are enacted in the client when you click OK or Apply Changes, and you continue with your session using the new settings. Then, when you end your session by closing the client, the client writes your new settings to the user.ini file.

In this case, we have externally made changes to .ini file (i.e. outside of the client, through a text editor). The client shutdown process recognizes this but doesn't know exactly what was modified (as far as the client knows, you might have edited some of your settings in the .ini directly). Because the client would normally write all session-changes for Settings to the .ini, it pauses to ask you whether you want to save session-changes (which could overwrite any settings you modified externally) or discard the typical .ini file update which would keep the external changes intact.

If you choose to keep the external changes, then any modifications you may have made to the Settings app during this session would be lost. It's no problem if you hadn't gone into Settings.

I think that, because the Debug section isn't normally in the .ini file, the client wouldn't overwrite it with anything, which is why I think you could have chosen either option.

In any case, if I change my instructions to move "Close the client" to before Step 3 (editing .ini file), it will avoid having this popup show at all.

Hi Keith. Instead of asking users to edit their users.ini file...
[1] issue a 'fix it' type script to do this job automatically
OR
[2] include this option in the client s/fare under the "tools" menu or the "Help" menu [or possibly "settings" menu - the PS menus are a little irrational in their categories frankly!]

Furthermore why not have BUTTONS named "backup" & "restore" on one of the menus that launches a dialog box so that users can backup/restore various things: preferences, notes, colours, custom table backgrounds & so on?

Nearly every technical interaction I've had with PokerStars support [excellent though it is!] usually starts with them asking me to DELETE my user.ini - this has never, ever led to a solution in my case. Never.

I then waste my time manually re-entering all my preferences which eats into my playing time which eats into your rake [very small loss to you in my case ] & then there's your extra unnecessary support interactions = your bottom line effected

So a simple backup/restore function in the client would make everyone that little bit happier

+1, great idea

I've been grinding mtts 5 days/week for a long time. Was playing today and experienced 3 big disconnection problems where I wasn't able to click my actions and had to restart the software to be able to go back playing regularly.
After playing for 1h30m it started to happen more frequently to the point I could barely play a hand. People started to bet blind vs me post flop to exploit the fact there I might not be able to act in time. It kept getting worse and worse and now its not even connecting to the servers anymore. I'm able to connect to starts 1 each 10 minutes. Play a hand and get disconnected again.

Notice that for the entire time I was playing on Party Poker without any connection problems and internet was perfectly fine apart from stars.

I'm obviously emailing support to try to get a refund but what can I do to try to solve the issue and be able to play again?

Even tried my backup connection and the problem continued.

I'm unable to reproduce this. If you don't mind, please provide more details:

What is you client version? Go to Help > About PokerStars and look for the 5-digit build number in the upper right.

Which hotkeys are not working? All of them, just the hard-coded hotkeys, just the custom hotkeys?

Which hotkeys, specifically, are you trying to use (which hotkey-sequence for what action)?

Which 3rd-party apps are you using? Have you tried disabling them, restarting the poker client and testing hotkeys again?

==========

Are any other players having problems with hotkeys after recent client update?

Thank you for this, it will be helpful for our investigation.

Yes, we checked before updating, but the problem only affects a small number of players and we are unable to reproduce the effects in our test labs.

When we can reproduce a problem, we can typically find a solution for it quickly and we can easily verify that the solution does resolve the problem.

When we can't reproduce a problem, especially when the effects are not widespread, it becomes difficult to know if a change in the code is effective until those changes are deployed in production for the affected players to use.

We usually don't rollback or downgrade a version when a problem only affects a small number of players and is not reproducible by us. First, doing so would be disruptive to the vast majority of players who are unaffected by the bug. Second, if we can't reproduce it in our test labs, then we need to get log files and debug data from affected players in order to investigate and find a solution. If we rollback, then no players will be able to help us and the problem will still probably be in the client when we try to update again.

We understand that this is frustrating for affected players, and we are working as hard as we can to resolve it.

Thanks for the suggestions and comments - I will share them with the team.

Regarding the menus, there are many ways we could have organized them, and to some extent we are dealing with legacy issues for a software product that stretches back 15 years. But there was some reasoning involved in our current setup. In general:

The Account app mostly has information that you manage but, yes, a few things that could be considered options, like the security items (PIN, RSA, SQA) and choice of avatar - though these things are so closely tied to your account access & identity they feel natural here.
The Settings app has software options, things that let you customize the software and are typically set one way and then left alone.
The Tools app has utilities & functions that get used repeatedly. Finding a player or getting stats is not customizing the software.
The Help app has functions that are typically associated with answering questions and solving problems (info, FAQs, rules, contact support, etc.).

This scheme came about through the PS7 project, where we took a stab at reorganizing the categories of 100+ menu items along those 4 lines. It's not perfect - but better, we think, than just throwing everything into one large list.