Referring to TopHerCheese's post above
That's the fix I suggested in the demo, after trying out all the old F1 2011 tricks, which didn't work at the time.
It was a quick and dirty method that got you up and running again, but with NEW profile, losing everything that went before. If you had deleted EVERY file in the 'remote' folder, you could not do anything in the demo, not even start a new profile. You would get a 'No Profile' warning, click OK, and get the warning again, stuck in a loop.
I spent around 4 hours last night trying to fix my full game, as autosave had failed at some time, but I wasn't sure when.
If you are REALLY lucky you can get some of your profile back, at least back to where it was BEFORE autosave failed. Just like F1 2011, the
appears to be linked to your controller in some way, though I can't say that conclusively.
I had a bit of luck ...... then a painful failure, let's hope YOU get the lucky bit. Bear in mind that I
planned for this event, but still had trouble. I have a script running every hour backing up the whole of the folder above the 'remote' folder (Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\4389737\208500) to my Skydrive. Buried in the 'local' folder will be ghosts (if you have any saved).
I also have disabled the STEAM CLOUD for this game, after all, there is little point in adding **** files to cloud, then managing a manual fix in some way, then have the cloud put that **** back into your game.
Sometimes it does do that, without any warning about files not matching, it just says 'synchronising'.
Firstly either backup the 208500 folder or the remote folder before playing around with files.
Here is the bit that I hope works for you, some will recognise it from F1 2011, I have just added a step or to ensure that the controller is disconnected, and can play no part in the procedure.
1/ Disconnect your wheel form the USB port.
2/ Right Click on F1 2012 in Steam > Properties > Updates > Untick "Enable steam cloud synchronization for F1 2012"
3/ Boot the game using your keyboard, using the ENTER key as the START button.
4/ MyF1 > Controller Settings > Manually select the Keyboard as your controller
5/ MyF1 > Click the big Save menu item > Do you see the AUTOSAVE warning?
6/ If YES, it should be fixed. If you don't see it you might have to try the another method.
7/ Close the game and reconnect your wheel
8/ Start the game > MyF1 > Controller Settings > Reselect your wheel (not custom), and then do any button remappings, ffb and other settings that you wish.
9/ Back out to the MyF1 menu, hopefully the autosave warning showed, if it didn't try the big manual Save menu item. If you see it saving, then you should be good to go, and you will have lost anything after the point that autosave failed, but at least not everything.
I was OK at this point, but then I went into the MyF1 > Profile menu item, and disabled autosave. Then from that moment on, the game would not autosave nor manual save. So I repeated 1 to 9 above, but I could not get it working again.
Another alternative, was mentioned above (KellerF1). It uses the files from the 'remote' folder that you backed up earlier (you did, didn't you?). I just added the controller steps below, because I am just convinced there is something in the profiles files, associated with the controller, that is part of this bug .....
1/ Disconnect your wheel (remember Steam cloud is best disabled) and start on the keyboard.
2/ Start the game > Create a new profile > Make sure the new profile has the exact same name as your previous profile. It is up to you if you want to use autosave again, select no to the autosave questions if you want manual save (I certainly do)
3/ When you get into the Garage, escape back out to the main menu (why do they do this, when you haven't had a chance to tweak any settings?)
4/ Tweak a couple of settings, anything will do, and CHECK that autosave works (you get the warning). If you are on manual save, then try the SAVE option in the MyF1 menu. In manual save your will see a red busy symbol displayed. It should all be working, it is unlikely that it doesn't work.
5/ Close the game
6/ Copy all the files back from your backup copy of the 'remote' folder, into your Steam 'remote folder, overwriting everything.
7/ Do not connect your wheel
8/ Start the game on the keyboard
9/ Make sure that the keyboard is selected as the controller in the settings, try changing a couple of minor setting and see if autosave or manual save is working. If all is good, then you can close the game, connect the wheel, start the game up and set it up again from fresh.
If nothing is working after all this, the you are pretty well screwed, and will probably have to start again from day one.
At this point is is up to you whether to re-enable the Steam cloud.
In my case, I had hourly backup files to use when trying to repair the install, so had more to work with, It did take hours going through them all, and going through the procedures above with each on of them.
As a side note, there are a couple of file in the 'remote' folder that are VERY similar to the ones in F1 2011.
savegame@profile0#gtehxosjz_0
savegame@profile0#gtehxosjz_1
In F1 2011 some people repaired (up to a point) their career profiles by deleting file 0, copying file 1, then renaming the copy as file 0. If that didn't work, then they did the opposite. Delete file 1, copy file 0, rename the copy of file 0 as file 1
When I tried this in the demo ...... yes I got this bug in the demo too ....Grrrrr!
The result when booting the game is 'Corrupted Profile'. So I didn't try it this time in the full game.
I think the theory was that one file was a backup of the other, and both files held your career data. Well. not in this game it seems ......
Right ...... I am off to watch the Singapore Grand Prix Quali, that has just started.
Toodle Pip!