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Harddrive failed, master server fail help

Posted: Wed May 08, 2019 3:58 am
by ghost
Hey guys, ghost here... I haven't played in a while, been busy with work and school. I had some time and wanted to play, but one of my hard drives failed, it had my steam account and all my games installed, don't care about the other games, but I thought I had backed up my unreal files, turns out I didn't, 'cause I had been using it through steam. I've reinstalled it, but of course I get the master server failed and I forgot what to do. I can try and figure it out, but I need some direction. I have old Unreal files, but seeing as it is through steam, it's a little more challenging. Can anyone help me out? I just need to know how to connect to see servers again.

Re: Harddrive failed, master server fail help

Posted: Wed May 08, 2019 5:26 am
by AndréRhineDavis-(DOG)-
oh no :(
i'm sorry to hear that your hard drive crashed
luckily you should be able to reinstall steam and still have all the games you've already bought. Hopefully some of them involved saving your save files to the cloud rather than locally.

As for Unreal, have you installed the 227i patch?
Among the many improvements it makes, one of them is letting Unreal know about the new master servers hosted by oldunreal, newbiesplayground, etc. (Since the original ones hosted by epic games were decommissioned a few years ago).

If you don't want to install 227i, it's possible to edit the ini file manually and just add the new masterservers to the list of masterservers, but I would recommend installing the patch just in general. :)

Re: Harddrive failed, master server fail help

Posted: Wed May 08, 2019 8:24 am
by strategy-(DOG)-
hey ghost! no problem, we'll help you to fix the problem!
i'd recommend to download and install the current 227j_42 patch. that will also provide the current masterservers.
you get the download-link and access-information from this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3064
download 227j_42.zip, extract it and copy the files over your existing installation. as you already got the original game, you might also download the full game including the patch (UnrealGold227j_42.zip) - extract it to any location on your harddrive you want to.

afterwards you might want to download the cache-files (UltimateCachePt01 - 21: https://www.newbiesplayground.net/ultimatecache/
download and extract the archives, then copy over the files to your Unreal\Cache-folder starting with archive1,2,...

then you should be fine to play again ;)
if you need any help, let me know.
cya!

Re: Harddrive failed, master server fail help

Posted: Thu May 09, 2019 2:23 am
by ghost
Thanks guys!

Re: Harddrive failed, master server fail help

Posted: Sat May 11, 2019 5:15 am
by x21
Glad to hear you're back :)

Re: Harddrive failed, master server fail help

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 5:19 am
by Dr.Flay
Unless you have a specific need to keep compatibility with an old mod, it is very worth using the 227 patch and all the advantages it comes with.

If you haven't re-used the failed drive and it still spins, you may be able to restore it with Spinrite or HDD Regenerator.
I have compiled a selection of free and paid for tools on my blog
https://dr-flay.vivaldi.net/recovery-tools/

About now, is the time you may want to consider making sure that your drives do their own regular self tests, and also run a SMART monitor tool in the background.
About 90% of the drives I have inspected have SMART enabled, but not self testing or keeping logs of the test results.
Image
EVERYONE should check that all their drives are set to self test and also run a SMART tool in the background that will monitor HD temps and retired sectors from the day you start using them.
The BIOS and OS know about SMART but no OS actively watches the drive, they only report when failure happens which is usually too late.
Seeing the signs of failure before it happens will save you a lot of heartache and lost time.
*cough* funnily enough I have a blog post about just such things :D
https://dr-flay.vivaldi.net/s-m-a-r-t-tools/