The corrupt profile thread (Back up your data NOW!)

[Taffey]

My thought is to have this thread be the single source of information regarding corrupted LBP PSP profiles and other save data issues. I will keep this post updated with the latest and greatest findings. If you have any information or experiences with corrupted LBP PSP data, please post here.

Yesterday I was the lucky recipient of the dreaded corrupt profile bug. This has happened to a few people around here (including Sackwise... twice!) and let me tell you, it's a major pain in the burlap. I was out of commission for most of the day, but after much tinkering I managed to get LBP up and running again. Yes, that's right: It is possible to recover your profile without losing any My Moon levels you have created. Read on.


Before we go any further, stop what you are doing and BACK UP YOUR DATA NOW. If you do not have a backup of your LBP save data, you are screwed in the event of a corrupted file. Stop reading, and go run a backup. Seriously. I can wait.


How do I backup my LBP PSP data?

1. Quit LBP and exit to the home screen (aka "XMB").
2. Plug your PSP into a PC using a USB cable.
3. Manually browse to your LBP save data folder. It is located under PSP > SAVEDATA > UCUS98744PROFILE . (Note: This is for NA region games. EU region games use UCES01264PROFILE, and other regions' save data folder names will also likely vary.)
4. Select the entire UCUS98744PROFILE folder and copy it somewhere convenient on your computer.
5. Rename the folder to reflect today's date (e.g., "UCUS98744PROFILE 12-3-09") This will help you locate historical backups in the future and will also prevent you from accidentally overwriting previous backups.
6. That's it! You've just backed up your LBP PSP save data. (It is a good idea to retain one or two previous backup files in the event you need to revert to a prior date.)
7. It is highly recommended that you retain a "master" save data backup (that you never delete) when you finish story mode, collected all items, and/or aced all levels. This will serve as your baseline profile recovery point.

With that out of the way, let's get on to the details. I've done my best to organize the content below into sections to make it easier for people to find the information they need.



What is a corrupt LBP PSP profile?
A corrupt profile is a situation that occurs where you are able to load the game but are unable to edit your Sackperson or play any levels, including story mode, community, and My Moon levels. The game will begin loading a level, freeze, and reboot your PSP. (Note: In some cases, it is possible to enter Create mode and edit a My Moon level with a corrupt profile. Entering Create mode, selecting "save level", and exiting Create mode may resolve the corruption.)



What causes profile corruption?
Although it is unclear at this time exactly what causes a profile to become corrupt, it seems to be linked to create mode. I have read reports of people placing race gates in a My Moon level and immediately experiencing data corruption. Unlethalizing a gas cloud (then saving the level and exiting create mode) is what killed my profile, so we can add that to the list. It may well be that there is no particular action that will cause data corruption but rather a combination of actions. Just be aware that if you are using create mode, you are at risk.



Help!! My profile is corrupt! What do I do?

1. STAY CALM and do not delete anything. Deleting My Moon levels, costumes, captured objects, community objects, or community levels will not fix your data. Just leave everything as is for now.
2. If you are able to enter Create mode, you may be able to un-corrupt your profile fairly easily. If you are unable to enter Create mode, skip ahead to Step 3.
   • Choose any level on My Moon and select "edit".
   • Save the level and then exit back to My Moon.
   • Attempt to play a story mode level. If you are able to play a level, you have just repaired your corrupt profile! If your PSP freezes and restarts, continue to Step 3.
3. You will need a historical backup of a previous save game. We will call this your "prior state backup". If you don't have a previous backup, then you might as well stop reading. There isn't much that can be done I'm afraid.
4. Make a backup of your current data. This will capture all of your My Moon levels that we will be restoring momentarily. (Be careful not to overwrite your previous backup on your PC!) We will call this your "current state backup".
5. Isolate your My Moon level files. This can be a little tricky but it isn't impossible, so stay with me.
   • Every level on My Moon has five individual save data files associated with it on your PSP. To identify which files these are, load LBP, go to My Moon, and delete all the levels you want to keep. (I know this sounds backwards, but it will make sense in a moment.)
   • Exit LBP and connect your PSP to your computer again. Browse to your LBP save data folder (UCUS98744PROFILE) and identify the files that are missing by comparing them to your current state backup. I had over 200 files in my LBP folder, so this exercise took me a little while. My level file names were all two digits and started with a '7' (e.g., 72.xxx, 73.xxx, 7A.xxx, 7B.xxx, etc.). Your level file names should be similar but will vary.
   • Make a copy of all of these files and put them in a folder on your PC called "Levels I want to keep". Do not drag and drop them - you want to retain an unaltered version your current state backup! You should have five files for every My Moon level you want to keep. If you want to keep 7 levels, you should have 35 files. Double check to make sure you have all of them.
6. From your current state backup, also make a copy of the file called FECONFIG and put it in the "Levels I want to keep" folder. (This file may show up on your computer as FECONFIG.BIN) This is an index file that stores the locations of all your levels. Without it LBP will not know to look at My Moon for your levels.
   • If you do not have your current state FECONFIG file for some reason, see the section below for an alternate method to restore your My Moon levels.
7. With your PSP plugged into your PC, browse to the UCUS98744PROFILE folder and delete all the contents.
8. Copy the contents of your prior state backup into the UCUS98744PROFILE folder on your PSP. We have now restored your previous save game but not your My Moon levels.
9. Copy the contents of your "Levels I want to keep" folder into the UCUS98744PROFILE folder on your PSP. When your computer asks if you want to overwrite the files, choose yes. We have now restored your My Moon levels to your previous save game.
10. Launch LBP and confirm that your save data works. If the game does not load and you get a "corrupt save data" error message, you missed a step somewhere. Just start over and try again.
11. Confirm that you can see your restored levels on My Moon.
12. Confirm that you are able to launch and play a level.
13. Congratulations, you have recovered your corrupted profile and kept all of your My Moon levels. Whew!!

I don't have a current version of my FECONFIG file. What do I do?
Thanks to jeffcu28, we now know the answer to this. You will still need your My Moon level files from your current state backup, but here is how you recreate a valid FECONFIG file:

1. After you have restored your prior state backup, go to My Moon and create a new blank level in the same location as a level you want to restore. This will create a new FECONFIG file that points the game to look in a certain crater for a level.
2. Exit LBP and plug your PSP into your computer.
3. Copy the My Moon level files from your current state backup into the UCUS98744PROFILE folder on your PSP. When your computer asks you if you would like to overwrite the existing files, choose yes. What we have done here is to replace the blank level you created with your current state backup level.
4. Launch LBP, go to My Moon, and confirm that you can see your restored level in place of the blank level you created earlier.
5. Repeat this process for any and all My Moon levels you need to restore. It is critical that you choose the exact same crater on My Moon or this process will not work.

What if I also want to keep costumes? Or captured objects?
I did not have any costumes or captured objects I could not live without, so I skipped this step. The process, however, should be very similar to the above. Isolate the desired files, copy them to your PSP over your prior state backup, and copy the FECONFIG file. I cannot confirm at this time that this will work, but it should. If there is enough demand, I will do some experimenting and expand this section.



What file is being corrupted that causes this whole mess?
Right now, we simply don't know. It may be one file, several files, or some unique combination of files in a specific configuration. All we know at this point is that it's possible to restore current data into previous save games. If you have any insight, information, or suspicions what the root cause is, let me know!



Thanks, you saved my stuffing! What can I do in return?
Post your experiences here, and include as many details as you can. The more information we can gather on this the better.



**Edit: Added the alternate FECONFIG restoration section using jeffcu28's method.**
**Edit: Added the "Create mode fix" as documented by MrFlippant.**

[Black265]

Ok, I'll try to backup my save data. And thanks for the warning, Taffey.

[jeffcu28•]

I was working on a level, saved it, and exited. On the loading screen, a mysterious gray box appeared saying my data was corrupt. After pressing retry for about five minutes, I finally said "no" and the game restarted...all the way to the beginning of story mode. Everything was gone.

Panicking, I connected my PSP to my computer and examined the game save folder. I saved the corrupted game data on my computer, erased it on my PSP and created new save file for the game. I then copy and pasted all files that were not modified around the time my game save got corrupted into the new file I created, and my story mode progress and costumes were restored, but not my moon levels.

Looking at the remaining files that were modified around the time of the crash, my FECONFIG.BIN file was mysterious with a size of 0 KB. I copied everything else except the FECONFIG.BIN into the new folder, but my moon levels were still not there. I remembered where I had created my level on the moon so I created a new level there. I then examined the new saved data on my computer and seven new files were modified: They were the files mentioned in Taffey's list at number 4, files with numbers at the beginning designating the location of the moon, with extensions CBF, LBF, LVL, MBF, and MIP. In addition, the files CURCOST.CBF and CURCOST.CST were also modified. I replaced these files on my new game save with the ones from my corrupt save folder.

And voila, my level was back. Taffey's instructions suggest that FECONFIG.BIN on the corrupt data is essential to restoring my create moon levels, but my exprience showed that a new FECONFIG.BIN will also suffice, so long as you create a new blank level on the moon where you created your original level.

Hope this helps, and thanks for the help Taffey!

[Taffey]

Ok, I'll try to backup my save data. And thanks for the warning, Taffey.

No problem Black, and you're welcome. Definitely do back up your data - you'll be glad you did!

I was working on a level, saved it, and exited. On the loading screen, a mysterious gray box appeared saying my data was corrupt. After pressing retry for about five minutes, I finally said "no" and the game restarted...all the way to the beginning of story mode. Everything was gone.

Ah, this is a new type of data corruption I haven't seen yet. It would seem that LBP PSP has some file management issues.

Taffey's instructions suggest that FECONFIG.BIN on the corrupt data is essential to restoring my create moon levels, but my exprience showed that a new FECONFIG.BIN will also suffice, so long as you create a new blank level on the moon where you created your original level.

Hope this helps, and thanks for the help Taffey!

Aha, this is a great find. So FECONFIG is definitely an index or pointer file of some type but clearly doesn't contain any level data per se. It only tells the game to look in crater number X for a level. I'll update my original post to reflect this an an alternative method to restore your levels.

Hope this helps, and thanks for the help Taffey!

It does indeed. You're welcome and thank you for the input!

[kevin2314]

my thoughts on this is that the game just requires so much resources during loading different aspects such as gas cloud corner editing saving switching to play mode that the psp it's self can not compute fast enough or computes so much at once that it overloads.
Thats my thought on the matter anyway

[ryryryan•]

Great thread Taffey, props.

[Taffey]

Great thread Taffey, props.

You betcha.

I hate to see anyone lose all their hard work on a level, especially the talented creators around here.

[CCubbage]

my thoughts on this is that the game just requires so much resources during loading different aspects such as gas cloud corner editing saving switching to play mode that the psp it's self can not compute fast enough or computes so much at once that it overloads.
Thats my thought on the matter anyway

Generally these kinds of issues are more caused by "memory bounds" issues. That is, somewhere in the programming code that for one reason or another writes outside the bounds of the allocated memory its using.

Unfortunately, on a machine such as the PSP these types of issues can also cause issues to other data on the machine, or even affect the configuration of the PSP itself.

I have not personally run into a corrupt profile, but I did have the PSP crash and reset to its default state after a session in create mode.

This means that until LBP PSP becomes stable, it would be best to backup your ENTIRE memory card - not just the LBP data.

[eTristan]

I will back up my save right after I ace every level. (2 MORE TO GO!) I hate Tinsel Town. (NOTE: Racing Dead People was easy. Others are hard)

[MrFlippant]

I read this thread with interest because it caught my eye, not because I knew of any problem with my save. Then I read Taffey's description of how he got it by "Unlethalizing a gas cloud" and realized I had done exactly that but hadn't played any story levels since. So I tested it to find that I had a corrupted profile. As soon as I moved in a story level, it froze and shut down my PSP. No backup of my Profile, either.

So, I read jeffcu28's description and thought that it was at least worth a try. I didn't have anything to lose, since it was all potentially already gone.

I copied the corrupted profile folder to my PC, then deleted it from my PSP and ran LBP to create a new profile. I viewed both folders (the new one on the PSP and the "corrupted" one on my PC) to compare them. The corrupted one had a LOT of files that the new one didn't have, but rather than compare tons of file names and dates, I sorted the corrupted folder by date. There were three files that had been changed at the time of corruption:
CURCOST.CBF
CURCOST.CST
FECONFIG.BIN
Since I had nothing to lose, I simply copied ALL the OTHER files from the "corrupted" folder to the new folder.
BAM! Everything was back. I tried a level (one I hadn't aced yet) and managed to ace it on my first try, saved and returned to my pod just fine.

Now, I would like to note that I only had one level I was messing with on my moon, and I can't find it. My memory is bad, though, so it's entirely possible that I deleted it and forgot I had done so, but in any case there don't appear to be any levels on my moon any more. I'm going to fiddle some more and see if I can't get my level back, in case I didn't delete it (which I don't think I did). BUT, it looks like this method will work fine for people who haven't begun creating in earnest yet, and just messing around like me, and managed to corrupt their profile in this same way.

Hmm... before posting I decided to see about that level I thought I had. There were some numbered files in my "corrupted" backup, so I figured they were a level, but it wasn't showing on the moon because of the CURCOST files having data that doesn't agree with a level being there.
I tried to create a new level, but it got stuck at creating it. Got past template selection, but not to the actual create mode.
So, I checked out files again, and re-read Taffy's fix. I decided I would try reloading my corrupted profile in total, then locate that level on the moon (and remember the location), delete it from the moon, then go through the process of creating a new profile, getting to the create point after the first few levels, creating a level in the same place and then replacing everything but the new CURCOST files.
Before doing all that, though, I messed around with my restored but believed to be corrupt profile. I went to edit my level, and was able to get into it for editing. I flew around a little and then returned to the pod while saving the changes (none actually made). Interesting. Maybe the profile was fixed, or perhaps not really corrupt? Hoping that loading and saving without changes "fixed" things, I loaded up a story level and played it through. No problem!

So.. huh..
I'm SURE I had the corruption bug, 'cus I did just like Taffey with the unlethalizing and saving, and I DID try a story level after that and it DID crash. But then it would seem all I needed to do was re-edit my level without changing anything to fix things.

So... umm... inconclusive, I guess? I decided to post anyway, simply to add a glimmer of hope to people who have run into this bug. All is not necessarily lost. BACKUP YOUR PROFILE, even if it's possibly corrupt. Then try some of the things in this thread. At the very least, you've got nothing to lose, and potentially a lot to gain if you've been working hard on a level. I'm glad I wasn't, or I'd have been in a much worse mood while messing with this.

[Taffey]

Excellent information - I really appreciate you posting it in such detail. Your experience definitely helps expand our collective understanding of profile corruptions.

I have updated my original post to reflect the possibility of un-corrupting a profile by means of create mode.

[theswweet•]

hey guys...i don't have lbp psp yet but...you might want to do what my sig says...yep lbp psp was updated,you just have to do it manually!after you update,see if its fixed!

[Taffey]

hey guys...i don't have lbp psp yet but...you might want to do what my sig says...yep lbp psp was updated,you just have to do it manually!after you update,see if its fixed!

Thanks for the heads-up on this. I checked for this update earlier today and I already had the current version of the game. So, I'm pretty sure that update is one and the same as the 2.01 patch from last month.

[eTristan]

Also, Taffey, I don't know if this helps, but I was running 2.0, not 2.01, and I crashed in levels created by others, and not story levels.

[zeldarocks]

What if I don't have the necessary cable in order to do a backup? Can I just plug the Memory Stick into a PC and do it that way? Also, do I need a specific cable or will a generic one work? If generic is a possibility, what type of cable would suffice?

EDIT: My PSP just crashed (and subsequently turned off) while attempting to modify one of the PSP settings in the XBM, should I be worried?