ooo valve fucked up; pretty sure that's a memory leak

I'm the person with the same problem he spoke of. We have similar rigs, except different graphics cards (I have nvidia, he uses AMD) and he's on Windows 10 while I am on 7. There seem to be no other correlation between us other then the fact that we stopped playing earlier today, and when we came back, we were both getting this error. I have also tried all the things he spoke off, and I have searched for the solution to this problem for about 2 hours now.

My only question is, is valve pushing server side updates? Like, updates that would not require a physical update to be downloaded, but one that updates the game internally (values getting changed for example)

Any help in this matter would be vastly appreciated.

Does it happen if you use -novid as a launch option?

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please help my man barycenter, he has a match to carry me in on monday!

edit: I know you probably tried this, but everything I see when I google the error says it's an issue with graphics drivers, so it's probably worth updating/rolling those back.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/4t4snf/tf2_crashes_on_startup_cutllinkedlist_overflow/

Not sure if you are referring to this person. This guy has the exact same problem as you and he made a thread about it 17 hours ago.

I don't know bary I made that thread because I'm having that problem too. I reinstalled, verified, deleted custom stuff etc and nothing has worked so far.

Well, considering there wasn't a client update today and you said you were playing I think config issues can be ruled out, so...

This is a really weird long shot that probably won't work but try disabling Steam Cloud and then going to your tf folder, then scripts, then deleting the item_schema file, and then try re-verifying game cache.

I'm not a hardcore programmer but I do believe your item_schema file is one of the things that Steam Cloud catches (so if you delete the game and reinstall you'll get the same old one back and verifying without deleting it won't do anything) and there have been some updates pushed to it through the Game Coordinator recently I believe. Maybe yours got corrupted or something along the way. If the Item Schema is modified or corrupted, TF2 will crash. It is supposed to throw a different error message though which is why I am saying this is a weird long shot, but with the recent update maybe it's not throwing the correct error message. (very unlikely but not something that can be ruled out either) I'm also not sure how it works with multiple accounts tho since I only use 1.

This is about the only thing I can think of since it's extremely unlikely to be a driver/config issue with no client updates today. Hope you get it fixed though. Seems like a really weird issue since it kinda spontaneously broke on you guys.

Also having this exact problem (alt worked fine tho), is there any way to fix this or are we just going to have to wait it out?

I did what DarkNecrid said and my client is working again. Thanks for the help.

I had that issue when I would leave my game running without touching it for about half an hour. It would quit and that error popped up.

Glad it helped Zanthous, hopefully it gets Bary fixed too.

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No problem, I will say this is pretty weird though because it really was supposed to be a long shot fix, like I felt pretty dumb for even suggesting it because the only way it was going to work is if Valve fucked up their error message handling which would be pretty rare even for them.

The thing is that when your Item Schema is corrupt and crashes TF2 the error message it pops up is supposed to be something akin to (not verbatim) "Your items_game.txt is corrupt, please delete it and verify your installation through Steam" because that isn't confusing and tells you literally how to fix it, whereas "CutILinkedList overflow (memory exhausted allocator)" is a warning message that encompasses both memory leaks and something not being allocated into your RAM or VRAM (hence the GPU driver update suggestions common on threads about the error) properly and crashing the game.

So either the recent update or some update quite a bit ago messed up the error message TF2 is supposed to throw here. You guys kind of lucked out on the fact that there was no client update but there was some item schema updates because that eliminated almost everything else as being a problem.

Can only guess that Valve pushed a corrupted schema accidentally and then you guys closed the game before receiving the updated correct Item Schema from the Game Coordinator.

Exact same problem. DarkNecrids solution doesnt work for me

This is my experience with this issue;
So today when I wanted to play some TF2 I couldn't get the game to launch. I got this error message http://i.imgur.com/LDy1wyr.png I've tried the following;
Removed my custom folder
Verified the game cache (3 times)
Rebooted, also 3 times
Deleted the files items_game.txt as suggested in http://www.teamfortress.tv/34874 (and verified game cache afterwards)
Reinstalled the whole game and all traces of it.
All of this was done with steam cloud disabled (haven't used that in years). I even tried enabling it and disabling it again but nothing...
It works in offline mode AND on my alt-account. This is really concering me... Anyone know what else to do?

At this point there is nothing you can do. It's a bug in the game's core, not caused by corrupted files. Probably has to do with our matchmaking level or backpack (I don't know what else would be different when using an alt account). I've tried everything I could possibly do. I even tried to play the game on 3 different computers, running Linux, Windows and OS X. I get the same error on all systems. I think this problem is tied to our accounts and we have to wait for Valve to fix it.

I'm at a loss on you guys because this is extending past my knowledge of TF2 now. To my knowledge the Item Schema file is the only thing that propagates through Steam Cloud, is account based, and in online mode on launch the client has checked by the Game Coordinator server as it is digitally signed and if that signature is not correct it forces the game to crash.

If there's anyone out there that is super intimate with TF2's file structure, they might know if there's anything else similar, like a stats file or SOMETHING that I'm not aware of?

The worst part is that there's also a very high chance it isn't the right error message since everyone else before you guys was receiving it for the WRONG thing.

:/

Here is a list of files that change when I start the game with my alt account.

tf/
├── cfg/
│   ├── config.cfg
│   ├── motd_entries.txt
│   └── server_blacklist.txt
├── download/
│   └── sound/
│       └── sound.cache
├── sound/
│   └── sound.cache
├── custom/
│   └── workshop/
│       └── sound/
│           └── sound.cache
├── streams/
│   └── *not important* 
├── scripts/
│   └── items/
│       ├── items_game.txt
│       └── items_game.txt.sig
├── stats.txt 
├── gamestate.txt
├── voice_ban.dt
├── tf2_misc.vpk.sound.cache
├── tf2_textures.vpk.sound.cache
└── modelsounds.cache

Given the fact that TF2 crashes with the same error on 3 different operating systems - all with a clean new installation of the game - makes me wonder if Steam stores a corrupted version of the item schema file which then gets propagated to the client, making the game crash for these specific Steam accounts. Since the file is digitally signed we can't make changes to it anyway. I don't really know what the problem is, just making blind assumptions lol.

I'm getting the same exact problem now tonight and I've never had it before either. Same issues, I reinstalled a fresh copy of Steam AND TF2, verified cache and files.

Works on the same computer with my alt as well which is why it's so perplexing.

I'm beginning to think it has to do with us being high ranked in matchmaking? I know that sounds crazy, but that is the only common denominator between all of us having the issue.

#24 if you have Steam Cloud disabled that wouldn't matter though. :/ I don't think your guys problems are an Item Schema problem because if you disable Steam Cloud on TF2, delete the file, and verify you get a fresh copy guaranteed. So while it is the same error message, it seems to be a different problem entirely from what barycenter et al had at the start of the thread. @_@

Since this is beyond mine (and seemingly anyone else's) expertise, time to try official shit.

#20,21,22,25 and anyone else still suffering from this after doing the above steps do the following:

Go to your steam install folder, then dumps folder.

There should be recent dump files here for Team Fortress 2. If there is, upload them to Dropbox or wherever. Post them here (and email them, I think Eric is still a regular TF2 email guuy you can e-mail him at erics AT valvesoftware DOT com ). Then hopefully someone who knows b4nny or other people close to Valve bothers Jill or whomever to go look at the dumps to figure this out ASAP, because only Valve developers can read the encrypted dump files fully and at this point IDK what to tell you otherwise.

fucking valve development man

Here are my dumps from when I started having this issue: http://www.filedropper.com/dumps . Emailing asap as well

It is definitely matchmaking related, there's no other logical explanation.

The only thing I can think of related to matchmaking is they mentioned that once you hit a higher rank it changes from FT2 to FT3 on 5CP/KOTH, did you guys happen to very recently hit that rank? (they don't specify what it is, and I'm not there yet)

It's about the only thing I can think of, and would definitely be something that unlike a corrupt Item Schema error would bypass Steam Cloud obviously. However, people who are at the super high ranks don't seem to have encountered this yet like Mr Slin I guess, so I don't think this would be it either.

Though I think if it is something relating to this that it's interesting that it's throwing the same error as something completely unrelated which shouldn't have ever thrown the error it did in the first place. @_@

I just reached rank 10 the day before yesterday, which was the last time I was able to launch TF2.