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).

This post presents detailed instructions for Windows desktop users. It looks complicated but will take less than 5 minutes (we're just adding 3 lines to your .ini file and restarting the client - the depth is for those who have never edited their .ini file, to walk you through each step). You may want to do this before you start a multi-tabling session, because you’ll be closing and restarting the client at least once, which means any open tables will close.

1. In the client, go to Help > Open My Settings Folder.



2. In the Settings folder that pops up, locate your user.ini file (leave the folder open, we’ll come back to it in a moment).



3. Return to the poker client and close it (i.e. exit the software). This is an important step! Closing the client does two things: it saves any settings changes you may have made during the current session to your user.ini file, and it allows the changes you will make to the user.ini file in Step 4 to be available when you restart the client (so that the client performs the extra data logging during the next session).

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

Open the user.ini file in your Settings folder with a text editor (Notepad will do), 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 between sections and insert there. If you put it at the end of the file, it will be easy to find and remove later.

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

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. Please do this as soon after the problem occurs as you reasonably can (finish open games or tournaments if you can, and then when it’s convenient continue on with the following steps).

8. If the client is still running or if you can restart the client, 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.



If the client won’t open so you can't click Zip & Save, go back to the Settings folder and put all the log files you see there into a zip file.

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 as quickly as possible.

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

=============

Troubleshooting:

a) If you don't see pokerstars.dmp file in Settings folder:

• You might not have saved the user.ini file after inserting the debug lines
• You might not have restarted the client after saving the user.ini file
• The debug lines might have been inserted in the middle of another section

Go back to Step 2 and start from there.

b) You see this popup when you close the client:

• You probably saved the user.ini file while the poker client was still open/running. (i.e. you may have done Step 4 before Step 3).

If you have not changed anything in Settings this session, click Keep External Changes, which will preserve the edits you made to your user.ini file and then close the client. Go to Step 6 and continue from there.

If you have changed something in Settings this session and it's important to preserve it, click Save Settings, which will write those changes to your user.ini file and then close the client. Next you should open your user.ini file to make sure that your insertion of the debug section is still there. If it is, restart the client and proceed. If not, re-insert the lines from Step 4 and continue from there.

===========

I'm sorry that you have been having problems. You may be among those who are affected by a bug we are investigating, which causes some multi-tabling players to experience client freezing or crashing, but not (as far as I know) frequent disconnects.

In any case, Support will need your log files to start investigating, and it may be helpful for you to first insert a debug section into your user.ini file, restart the client and then send logs after your problem occurs again. I just posted detailed instructions for how to do this in my preceding post:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ostcount=25226

The debug section will cause the client to produce more detailed data, which may help us figure out what's going on more quickly.

Thanks for replying Keith. I find your reasoning sound & PS7 GUI is a vast improvement over PS6 But these are the anomalies that bug me ever so slightly:

PLAYER NOTES:
Settings Menu: Notes settings & where to save them
Tools Menu: Notes editor

INFORMATION MESSAGES
Settings Menu: Turn on/off lobby banners, tooltips, table message box, chat announcements
Tools Menu: Restore visibility of pop-up messages, lobby banners & info tips that you've turned off elsewhere in the interface!

Out of curiosity... why do you refer to menus as "apps"? Is it something to do with how the GUI appears on Mobile & in Metrosexual [my word for those horrible touch interface tiles]

I can understand how those two sets would chafe slightly.

The thinking there was splitting between settings and utilities. The alternative would be to put both aspects in either the Settings app or the Tools app.

So, for Player Notes, it would have been odd to have both sides in Settings, because the note-taking aspect (utility) isn't really customizing the software. We could have put both parts in Tools, but then it would have been odd to have Player Notes Settings in the Tools menu and not the Settings menu.

For the Info messages, the restore functions don't overlap 100% with settings. Some do, but others don't. Most are tied to "Don't show again" checkboxes when popups appear. The Restore function is much more of a utility than an option.

Anyway, that was the reasoning behind why we split up those two sets. I'll concede that we could have easily gone a different route, but that, too, would have had drawbacks.

Regarding the use of "apps" - We called that right-hand vertical lobby tray the "App bar" because our long-term vision is to add a bunch of apps there over time - things that are not games but widgets and functions that support the gaming experience (like a calendar app), that would slide out from the side when engaged (to preserve the main lobby real estate for finding games). Once we get around to adding apps, the app bar will expand, either with pages or a bump out, and we'd add a Settings option to reorder or hide the apps. Since the GUI is similar to mobile phones (where apps are presented as large icon with a small text label), "Settings app" sounds more appropriate than "Settings widget". :-)

Not expecting an answer - know you're busy, but something to think about:
[1] As per Windows Task Bar, offer the option for those users who would prefer it, to show/hide app bar entirely. A mouse over pops the hidden bar out from its hiding place
[2] Same for the top bar including the tabs
Now we have 100% lobby space

Off topic:
And add google-syle quote marks functionality to the search box i.e. "$215" to filter for exact terms [thus one doesn't get all instances of non-money related 215 appearing]

I have just one custom hotkey for FOLD action set up on shortcut F1. I am using only PokerTracker4, no other 3rd party software. I have this issue for about 10 days now. I am just on mobile now, so cant check my PS client version. I will send it to you later. Thank you.

https://gyazo.com/6249889622e1333ed36d34bd025ca15e
Problem is back. Couldn't even log in this time. Just noticed that I get 0-20% bad conection to pokerstars website server, and 100% for every other address.

Just did a ping -t to www.google.com for 5 minutes and haven't lost a single packet.

Any idea why is this happening?
Problem is back. Couldn't even log in this time. Just noticed that I get 0-20% bad conection to pokerstars website server, and 100% for every other address.

Just did a ping -t to www.google.com for 5 minutes and haven't lost a single packet.

Any idea why is this happening?

my display pci not showing in client and table after the recent update can some one help me ?

This could be a similar problem with not working hotkeys. I am using Mercury theme too, recently uprgrade to Windows 10, PS7 build 13425.

is there a way to close a cash game table without being asked if you want to leave? this is extremely annoying.

I guess your new around here

An update is coming out within a couple of weeks to fix this.

This doesnt make any sense. If you rollback, players who are unaffected will still be unaffected. If you want me to be your rat lab, then at least dont charge me ridicolous amounts of rake.

Im done playing in Stars. And my friend, who is a rec player having the same problem, is done too. He only wanted to play in your site, despite of me telling otherwise, because of your marketing (ronaldo, neymar...), but now he will be playing in party.

What percentage of people is affected by this? 0.5%? Im pretty sure thats a lot of money...Take a look how the spins traffic has decreased the last week, seems a lot more.

With all due respect. Im not sure how the person responsable for not wanting to rollback hasnt been fired.

Keith how much more time , whats the progress ?

Have you find anything from the files which was sent to you ?

Please update

I'm sorry that I don't have much to update at this point. The team is still investigating, collecting data, reviewing logs, analyzing code, etc., but we have not received any updates from the developers so we still don't have a timeline for a solution to be deployed.

I did see that more than a dozen players sent in logs, most with .dmp files attached, so that's good - thanks to all who have taken the time to do so. These files and any more we receive will be key to understanding what is going on, so we appreciate the help.

This is getting absurd and worst every day!
I was having the usual disconnections that were mentioned here itt so I closed and reopened stars but this time the client loaded up as if its the first time ever without remembering my user iD, settings, themes, and notes.
I recently backed up a copy of the notes file and user configuration file and I tried to copy and paste those files into AppData>Local>Pokerstars but this didnt work and the client still loads up as if its my first time using it.

I am sure you realize how frustrating it is and I really hope that there is a way to recover all my settings and notes.

Also by reading this thread and seeing so many players complain about the software in the chat I am sure there is a lot of players affected and the recent versions are almost unplayable so why can't we just roll back for now to an older version?

Problem with hotkeys solved. Found this solution later in this thread. Thanks for this.

Keith YOU ROCK. As a developer and a logical guy, I gotta say that your verbiage above is THE BEST description of large-user-base deployment and user trouble shooting I have ever seen attempted.

Most MMOs etc are in the same boat but I doubt they ever have had any of their staff so clearly explain the reasons for not just immediately rolling back when something unexpected happens for some of the users.

:BoratDoubleThumbsUp.jpg:

I haven't had any of the software problems mentioned. Strange, why some and not others? I'm on the .com software, maybe that's why. Also I have high-end PCs; maybe the new software is too resource heavy and slower PCs can't handle it?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

OK, I've been out of it for a while, but did they remove the 1/2c Zoom tables? (McNaughty it was called if I remember correctly). Can't find it anywhere in the lobby??

My PC is enough to run almost any PC Game @ max settings @1080p, I doubt its that. Just bad code, since Amaya is stingy with everything it seems.

No it's still there. May be a problem with your filter settings?

Filters are off. It is on the .be site although that shouldn't make a difference? Really strange...

When I go into the cash games tab f.e. there are some 1/2c cash tables but the lowest zoom table is once again the Hyakutake 2/5c table...

In another thread PokerStars support have replied by email to kmeirlaen as follows [click the little blue thingie to go to the full post]: It seems the PokerStars experiment with Card Hunt & the Pyramid challenges - [the latter finishing tonight midnight ET] was a rake revenue success.

It was limited to cash/zoom stakes $0.05/$0.10 or higher & plenty of the $0.01/$0.02 & $0.02/$0.05 players moved up to take advantage of the opportunity to bink the unlikely middle/top lottery prizes

You can see the relevant numbers below. Screenshot taken at peak traffic today Saturday. Note the player number at each stake bumps up where the challenge kicks in. Also note the rake at each level [I've shown the NLHE rake structure, but not the PLO rake]. The right hand $number is the 5+ player rake cap. I assume the .BE change will inevitably be rolled out eveywhere:



kmeirlaen's thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...lgium-1615542/

_Loki_ Thanks for your reply. It seems you analyzed the situation well and could be quite right...

That cardhunt challenge must be great for recreationals and the poker ecosystem

LOL