How to restore persistent file after power interruption?

[Agent 86]

While playing Kerbal space the power went out for just one second.  After computer reboot, The program says that I have to start over. 

I have at least 8 persistent files from the last 24 hours and many more saved files.

How do I start the game using these files and/or saves. 

Steam says that I have played 384 hours since I bought the game 35 days ago.  I would really HATE to start all over again.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dan Bair

[Geonovast]

It's quite possible your 'normal' persistent.sfs file is corrupted.

You can take the most recent file in the Backup folder, or if you have a recent Quicksave file, and just rename it to persistent.sfs with it being in your save's main folder. 

Then try to load the game again.

 

I'm also going to suggest picking up even a cheap UPS, if you can.  I have all my computers that matter on them, and I think WalMart has cheap ones for about $40.  They're very nice to have in the even of power outages.

[AHHans]

10 hours ago, Geonovast said:

if you have a recent Quicksave file, and just rename it to persistent.sfs with it being in your save's main folder. 

Well, I wouldn't rename it but make a copy of it. (In order to keep a backup of the original.)

It might also be useful to "Verify Integrety of Game Files" to check if any of the program files got corrupted.

P.S. I just did the verify myself, and it did find modified files. So I guess KSP is doing some things that confuse Steam. Maybe only do the verify if you run into further problems. (It also didn't break anything.)

Edited October 1, 2019 by AHHans
Added P.S.

[Geonovast]

4 hours ago, AHHans said:

Well, I wouldn't rename it but make a copy of it. (In order to keep a backup of the original.)

The renaming would be necessary if the original got corrupted, as the game won't load a save if the persistent file is borked.

I would rename the original persistent file to something else first, though, just so it isn't lost.

[Agent 86]

14 hours ago, Geonovast said:

It's quite possible your 'normal' persistent.sfs file is corrupted.

You can take the most recent file in the Backup folder, or if you have a recent Quicksave file, and just rename it to persistent.sfs with it being in your save's main folder. 

Then try to load the game again.

 

I'm also going to suggest picking up even a cheap UPS, if you can.  I have all my computers that matter on them, and I think WalMart has cheap ones for about $40.  They're very nice to have in the even of power outages.

Thank you for your quick response.  I have tried your approach.  Unfortunately when I do that that the default game I click on does nothing.  It show the default but says that I have just started.

Can you be more specific as to the exact file location you want me to place the renamed quicksave file as persistent file.  Do I also need any meta data files? 

I do greatly appreciate your time and consideration.

 

Dan

[Geonovast]

11 minutes ago, Agent 86 said:

Thank you for your quick response.  I have tried your approach.  Unfortunately when I do that that the default game I click on does nothing.  It show the default but says that I have just started.

Can you be more specific as to the exact file location you want me to place the renamed quicksave file as persistent file.  Do I also need any meta data files? 

I do greatly appreciate your time and consideration.

 

Dan

Inside of your save's folder, there would be a peristent.sfs, which is the files the game autosaves to.  Any time you create a quicksave, it sticks another file in that save folder, called quicksave and then a number.  There's also a folder called Backup, which will have 5 files, all with dates and times as part of their filename.

All of these files are the same, as in that they're full-on saves of your game.  Any of them, if they're in your save's folder (Not the backup ones directly, you need to pull them out of the Backup folder) can be loaded from inside the game once you get the save loaded.  Just hit Esc -> Load Game.  However, if your persistent.sfs file is messed up, it won't even let you load the save.

So what I would do, is rename persistent.sfs to something else, then go get the most recent file from the Backup folder.  Copy it and paste it into the save's main folder, alongside the original persistent.sfs.  Rename it to persistent.sfs and try to load the game again.

 

The loadmeta files aren't important, they'll be regenerated once the game autosaves again.  In fact, I'm wondering if it's part of the problem.  I'd just delete it.  The game will make it again.

[Agent 86]

Thank you all for your help.

I did verify the integrity of the files and there were 6 errors but that did NOT resolve the problem.

But I did resolve the problem.  I had done a complete backup of the entire Kerbal sub directory 2 weeks ago.  I renamed the corrupt one and copied over the old one and I was able to log onto the older setup.

I then transferred a few of the most recent save files.  I was about to then select them once the game started again.  I did also copy over the most recent copy of the ships file as well.

It does appear that I am back in business. 

I tried to upload a screenshot of my one station on the mun on day 44

[Lisias]

May I suggest a tool to act preventively on the problem?