Stuck on Could not fully initialize Steam Client

Please provide your output log. Instructions here.
https://community.7daystodie.com/announcement/11-report-an-alpha-21-bug/

No log files are written. The log folder is empty. 

Does A20 still work for you? Have you tried cleaning your game data via the launcher?

Yes. A20 works every time. When I install A21 as an update or as a clean install this problem happens. 
 

I have tried cleaning the data in both configurations (a20 upgrade and fresh a21). Both lead me to could not fully initialize the steam client. I’ve also tried different ISP’s. All other steam games work. 

It should also be noted that the application seems to be locked up at that steam client message. I get an hourglass type cursor, nothing is clickable. The application has to be force closed. The 7d2d process does show cpu and memory activity. It just never comes back. This is why no log files are written because the app looks like it’s locked up. 
 

I do get the new fun pimps logo and sound. The next screen shows some normal startup status messages, and finally Something about initializing blocks, then I get the steam client message, and nothing. 

Can you do me a favor and see if you have a log here that matches an attempt in A21 please?
(Win+R, and paste the below line in to the box)
%AppData%..\LocalLow\The Fun Pimps\7 Days To Die\player.log

Barring that, do you have anything in Event Manager (Errors and Warnings mostly) that coincides with an attempt where it fails?

I have logs but they are from a previous installation and a working version of A20.  The A21 doesn't generate logs, unfortunately.  

However, yes, I do have events from Application (nothing in system)

 

Level    Date and Time    Source    Event ID    Task Category
Error    6/16/2023 11:28:40 AM    ESENT    413    Logging/Recovery    DllHost (14608,R,98) WebCacheLocal: Unable to create a new logfile because the database cannot write to the log drive. The drive may be read-only, out of disk space, misconfigured, or corrupted. Error -1032.
Error    6/16/2023 11:28:40 AM    ESENT    488    General    "DllHost (14608,R,98) WebCacheLocal: An attempt to create the file ""C:\Users\jabel\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WebCache\V01tmp.log"" failed with system error 80 (0x00000050): ""The file exists. "".  The create file operation will fail with error -1814 (0xfffff8ea)."
Error    6/16/2023 11:28:40 AM    ESENT    413    Logging/Recovery    DllHost (14608,R,98) WebCacheLocal: Unable to create a new logfile because the database cannot write to the log drive. The drive may be read-only, out of disk space, misconfigured, or corrupted. Error -1032.

I have checked that there is space on the drive.

 

Maybe a permissions issue?

Sounds like permissions or drive health to me. I'd look into that, we've not received any other similar reports from other users, and none of the team has run across this.

Thank you for looking into this.  I am seeing other people with similar issues, however.  I'll troubleshoot on my own and follow back up if I find anything.

I will say Upgrading from A20, or Clean/Fresh install from A21 yields the same result.  It may be worth while testing from a clean install on a machine without ever having 7d2d just to make sure the install is working normally.

 

I'll let you know.

Just to follow up - the application errors were not related to this issue.  I resolved them by reinitializing the Webcache.  This was just coincidental.  

There are no correlated System or Application errors with this problem.  

I did, finally, get an application error for the 7d2d.exe

 

Faulting application name: 7DaysToDie.exe, version: 2021.3.19.29007, time stamp: 0x63e53a4d
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.22621.1848, time stamp: 0x48d14984
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000002168d
Faulting process id: 0x0x35C0
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1D9A079418DD261
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\7DaysToDie.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 633e96cb-4684-4e15-b037-2f85aeed22ef
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

 

Make sure you don't have 7dyd installed on your system drive. I transferred to the road and the disc and I can play. The A21 is messing with some Windows settings regarding permission to make changes to the system drive.

I’ll give that a try. Thanks for the tip. Will let you know how it works. 

What version of WIndows are you on?

Windows 11. I don’t have my device handy to confirm the patch level, but it’s up to date.

Have you moved the 7dtd files folder to another drive/partition? Steam>>library>7dtd>>RMB>>properties...>>installed files>>move installation files. It helped for me. My wife and I spent a joyful evening eliminating zeds

 

Thanks for following up. Weirdly enough, I’m in Oklahoma, and we got hit with a massive thunderstorm that basically took out power to the whole city. We’ve been out of power since Sunday. Power is back on though, and will try tonight. Will follow up with results. 

same result, unfortunately.  I moved it to a non-system partition.

did a fresh install of A21 - now I'm back to the NULLREFERENCEEXCEPTION spam message on launch.  There are no log files, in fact, there is not APPDATA folder created.

Has anyone installed this game from fresh with success?

I've installed/upgraded a few times trying to reproduce this and have not had the issue. A NullReferenceException is a very generic error and could be caused by any number of things. That's why the output log is so important, because it gives us an idea of what failed, where, and why.

The fact that your entire appdata folder is absent is definitely not normal. Just to be clear, what happens when you press the Windows key and then paste %AppData%\7DaysToDie into it and press Enter?

Please post a picture of that folder, and double check the log folder inside of that, if they exist.

Have you checked your system RAM / drive health to make sure things are good there? A failing drive or bad RAM could cause this issue. I see you have other open reports so I'm closing this one.