UI Bag/Box Settings Not Being Retained (again)

[urgatorbait]

<p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><p>PLEASE HELP. Once again, a long-standing problem with the UI has cropped up again. It legitimately baffles me how this well documented and frequently discussed issue has not been corrected by now since it has persisted since the game's infancy. The problem I am referring to is when the placement and settings for storage containers (i.e. bank boxes, bags, house vault, etc.) are not retained once set. I have encountered this problem frequently during my time playing EQ2 which began at launch. To say it frustrates me is an understatement. To know me, is to understand that I am obsessively organized. It is key to my enjoyment of the game that I have my UI meticulously arranged where each window is precisely where I want it. Having some of these settings not saved in the manner that I want them undermines my enjoyment.</p><p>Brief history: a few years ago I upgraded all my bag, bank, shared bank and house vault slots to tier 8 strong boxes. Given the bigger size, I had to rearrange the placement on the screen for each box so that they did not overlap. I also like to have each bag reduced in size and reshaped so they fit well on my screen when they are all opened at once. I set everything to my liking but once I logged out and then back in again, two of my house vault boxes were reset to their default settings. I reset them to my preferred settings and the same result happened each time I would log out and back in again. I tried making new boxes and swapping out the ones that would not save but to no avail.</p><p>At that time, I had submitted help tickets with CS, posted in the support forums and solicited suggestions from people I knew in the game. It was suggested that I delete all my UI files, etc. and start from scratch. This did not fix the problem, but rather made me waste an hour or two setting everything back up again. I have tried everything I can possibly imagine to fix this issue including, but not limited to, doing a full file scan, reinstalling the game, and even formatting my hard drive. The problem always persists.</p><p>Given that the only two boxes that would not retain their settings were house vault slots 5 and 6, I decided to give up the fight and just live with it that way since I hardly ever have to see/access my house vault boxes.</p><p>Then, right after one of the recent Game Updates, "magically" the two offending vault boxes started saving their settings and life was once again great in Norrath. I'm not sure what triggered the fix but it was now working and I was happy.</p><p>The present: Two nights ago I made 26 shiny new tier 9 strong boxes (40 slot) and swapped out all of my tier 8 bag, bank, and shared bank boxes. I set each box's cell size (26) and padding (2) and then configured them to 8 slots across by 5 rows high. I then arranged them on my screen so they were close to each other and not overlapping. I renamed each box based on its contents and sorted everything accordingly.</p><p>Last night, I login and go to my bank to get something. I hit the shortcut key to open all bags and much to my dismay, 3 of my 12 bank slots and 1 of my 8 shared bank slots were back to the default setting. In my bank, slots 8, 9, and 10 were reset and shared bank slot 8 was reset. I fixed everything again, logged out and back in - same result. Tried loading another toon's UI, then rearranging the new bags before logging out and back in - same result. I tried fixing all the bags again, then deleting my toon's UI settings file while still in the game and then logging out so it would write a new file - same result.</p><p>I need some assistance in getting this resolved as soon as possible. Please do not begin by giving me the standard "delete all UI files" since I have done this ad nauseum over the years in response to these occurrences. Unlike my last experience with my house vault boxes, this most recent case is NOT something I can overlook as it will stare me in the face daily everytime I have to go to my bank. I am not trying to be melodramatic, but if a solution to this issue cannot be found, I will cancel my subscription. I love this game immensely, but if you can't already tell, this is just one of those major, hot-button issues for me. I will not continue to play (pay) with the UI continuing to stay this way.</p><p>Thanks in advance for your help.</p></span></p>

[janmystique]

<p>This is an aggravating problem which I sorted out last time it happened. Then, I tried the "official" advice here which didn't work and went on to use a solution by EQII Interface which did work. I can't seem to get the link to the latter now.</p><p>Please, can't we have a solution to this?</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p>Greetings,</p><p>I have never been able to reproduce this error on my end but I believe this is the fix you're referring to:</p><p>"Rename "Servername_CharacterName_EQ2_uisettings.ini" to something like "Servername_CharacterNameBACKUP_EQ2_uisettings.ini"</p> <p>Start EQ2 and log onto the character. Do NOT load any UI settings.</p> <p>Go to a bank and setup bank boxes the size, shape and pos you want them.</p> <p> Type /leaveall in chat to leave all chat channels.</p> <p>Camp out and back in (did this just in case) to the character.</p> <p>Type /load_uisettings and load the settings of CharacterBACKUP."</p> <p>That was posted in the following thread:</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=418404" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=418404</a></p>

[Antryg Mistrose]

<p>I have had this issue for months/years too.  4 boxes in bank vault keep resetting to 2 slots wide, 30 odd pixels size, with 2 pixels packing.</p><p>This is consistent across 4 chars across 2 accounts (although I have done a bit of load_uisettings / save_uisettings between them).</p><p>I will try TSR-DanielH's suggestion and report back.</p><p>I had the idea it was due to swapping between running full screen and windowed mode, as that moves some other bags around.</p><p>p.s.  on /leaveall - Channel 80 is getting annoying -  can't join it, can't delete it, error msg every time you log in.</p>

[Antryg Mistrose]

<p>Did not work <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[urgatorbait]

<p>Here's a follow up based on the response I got from SOE Customer Service.  Following the directions below *seems* to have corrected my issue.  Although I have not fully reconfigured all UI components to the manner that I like, nor have I positioned/reset my house vault boxes to the way I want, it does seem to have worked.  I followed the directions below, then logged in, set my inventory, bank and shard bank boxes the way I like them, logged out, logged back in.  When I went and opened all my bags/boxes they were all in the position that I had set them to.  Hopefully, they will still be this way tonight when I log back in and once I have the time to complete my UI reset.</p><p>I think the difference in correcting it this time versus past times is deleting the entire UI folder.  Before it had been suggested to only delete the character UI files and the various .ini files.  Maybe that's the difference.  GL to everyone else who is having this problem.  Try the instructions i got from SOE CS below.</p><p>***********************</p><p>To resolve this issue unfortunately we will need to <span style="color: #ffcc00;"><strong>delete the UI folder </strong></span>as well as the .ini files for the game. These can be found in C:Program FilesSonyEverQuest II. I do wish there was an easier work around as this will reset the UI windows as well. If you do not want to delete the entire folder then you may want to delete the following files and folders:<span style="color: #ffcc00;"><strong>cache foldereq2_recent.inieq2_default.iniEverQuest2.exee q2.ini</strong></span>As well as the character specific files, these will appear as such:<span style="color: #ffcc00;"><strong>Servername_CharacterName_EQ2_uisettings.iniStation name_characters.ini</strong></span>To do this, please follow these directions:1. First look for your EverQuest II directory. You can find the default directory in: C:Program FilesSonyEverQuest II2. Click on MY COMPUTER and then proceed into local disk C:3. Navigate your way to the default directory, or your chosen installation directory.4. Next look for any files explained above and delete them. 5. Afterwards, please start EverQuest II to have these files re-downloaded by the patcher.</p>

[urgatorbait]

<p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><p>Here's my follow up....</p><p>After I fixed this issue, I went and upgraded my house vault boxes to 40 slot ones and (of course) 3 of the 6 boxes did NOT retain their settings.  I cannot tell you how aggravated I was.  So I was now back to my same old situation.  Well, it was then that I decided to take matters into my own hands.</p><p>I'm glad to say that I have fixed this issue on my own and I'll share with you how I did it. Keep in mind that this is how I fixed the issue after it happened. This by no means keeps this issue from happening in the first place as that is something SOE will need to figure out themselves.</p><p>I'll start by saying that up until the other day, I had no idea that SOE had changed the format of the character UI files from a .txt file to a.xml file. The old text file contained what amounts to a bunch of gibberish to any normal person but meant everything to the game program. The new .xml format now contains readable english language, albeit a certain computer code/language.</p><p>If you double-click the .xml file for your character's UI settings it will open a broswer window where you will see what amounts to an entry for each and every UI component (window). Specifically, there is an entry for each individual bag/box which contains info such as cell size, padding, and position, etc. It is hard to tell which entry correlates to which bag/box but in my situation I noticed that there were three entries that had a much larger cell size value than all the others. Since I had 3 bags whose settings would always revert back to the larger default cell size, I assumed these were probably the offending entries. These entries were also shorter and missing a sizeable chunk of the "code" at the end than all the rest.</p><p>Now that I knew where the issue was, I went to correct it. Now the .xml file is read only in the browser so I closed that window and right clicked on the character UI file and selected "Edit". This opens the same file in a Wordpad document which IS editable. I went to the bad entries and corrected the cell size and padding entries to what I desired and then copied the code that was missing from another correct bag entry and pasted it where it belonged. Be careful to look closely to make sure your new corrected entry follows the exact same format as the correct ones - it can be easy to overlook a "/>" or the like in the process.</p><p>Once I had fixed these three entries I saved the file, closed it, and then logged back into the game. To my delight all of my house vault boxes were exactly as I intended them. I also held my breath as I logged back out and back in again and checked to make sure the setting were not re-corrupted upon log out. They weren't - everything saved.</p><p>Well, this is what worked for me. I am so glad that SOE has changed these files to .xml so that we can make corrections this way when we should encounter issues. It's by no means a straightforward process but more of an option than it had been. Be sure to save a copy of your UI file before you make your edits just in case you manage to louse things up even worse. I hope this helps those of you who have also suffered with this problem. Good luck and please report back with any additonal tips, suggestions, learning you may have.</p></span></p>

[Mysstie]

<p>Just to add a bit more detailed info:</p><p><span ><p>I had some bank bags that refused to remember their settings so here's what I did.</p><p>Loaded up the <strong>(server)_(character name)_eq2_uisettings.xml</strong> file in my EQ2 directory and removed all the lines that looked like:</p><p><Window Name="<strong>Bag_clone</strong>_0_-3" alignment="0" alignment_offset="214,-4" size="154,374">            <Properties bag_size="36" clone_version="4" icon_padding="0" icon_size="35" version="1" />        </Window></p><p>I did notice two of these <strong>Bag_clone </strong>entries had no Properties tag which was probably the two bags I was having problems with.</p><p>Saved the file after I made a back-up copy.  This did cause all my bags (inventory, bank, and house vault) to revert to default settings and placement; however, I was able to get all my bags where I wanted them.  Apparently there's a limit somewhere.</p><p>I decided to delete all these lines and start over because it appeared that there were a bunch of useless entries related to bag sizes that I no longer had.. like 16 slot bags that I had replaced long ago.  Now, with them at 44-slot capacity, I no longer open them all at once (the ones in the bank) as there just isn't enough space LOL. I just hover the mouse over the bag to see what's in it and only open up that bag.</p><p>Hope it helps.</p></span></p>

[Antryg Mistrose]

<p>Ooooh, nice trick Mystie - your fix works like a charm  (and doesn't destroy the rest of a UI)</p>