Så fungerar det att flytta in tidigare hos Stångåstaden i Linköping

Jag har precis flyttat ut från en lägenhet hos Stångåstaden i Linköping och hon som skulle flytta in efter mig ville gärna få tillgång till lägenheten några dagar tidigare. För mig var det inga problem eftersom jag hade dubbelt boende större delen av sista månaden, det enda problemet var att ta reda på hur det går till rent praktiskt.

Stångåstadens hemsida sa ingenting om det här, men de nämnde följande så verkade det gå bra ilallfall: “Har du gjort upp med den föregående hyresgästen om att få flytta in före kontraktsdatumet kan du inte begära ersättning om lägenheten är dåligt städad.”

I några 20 år gamla papper jag hittade i lägenheten stod det att om man ville låta den nya hyresgästen flytta in före kontraktsdatumet så skulle man lämna en nyckel till den nya hyresgästen och sedan lämna in alla andra nycklar som vanligt till Stångåstaden. Det här var för gammla papper för att våga lite på dem så jag fick ringa till Stångåstaden och fråga.

Det visade sig fortfarande gälla så jag lämnade ut en av nycklarna till nästa hyresgäst och gick sedan till Stångåstaden för att lämna in mina nycklar. Där gick allting smidigt och på kvittensen på att jag lämnat tillbaks nycklarna så stod det tillochmed att jag lämnat in 3 nycklar trots att jag bara gav 2, eftersom jag gett den andra till nästa hyresvärd.

Starting Steam in offline mode doesn’t work

I have recently moved and are without normal internet on my computer now but I can at least get a limited connection by sharing my phone’s internet connection. After setting up the computer I tried to start Steam with the intention to play some games in offline mode. As expected I got a popup that said that Steam couldn’t connect to the network and asked me if I wanted to start it in offline mode.

 I selected to start in offline mode, but was only greeted by two new error popups where one where hidden below the second one. The first, that was hidden, mentioned that “This operation could not be completed when Steam is in Offline Mode” and the second one said that it couldn’t connect to the Steam network.

When closing the second dialog which was active the first one closed as well and Steam then shut down. I retried starting steam and starting a game from a previously created shortcut but this just resulted in the same error messages.

On the internet I found a long thread on the steam forums that’s been discussing this topic for several years and with the latest posts today. In that thread there are a lot of discussions back and forth about different theories and new people joining in without reading any of the previous posts. However somewhere among all these comments there was a link to another post by user X.nano in another similar thread that explains the cause of the problem and some workarounds.

The basic problem for me seems to be that Windows doesn’t close down steam properly when I shut down the computer. As mentioned by X.nano:

Using Process Monitor, I found that the problem cache is steamapps\winui.gcf, a file which is used mainly to store Steam interface resource files. After taking md5 hashes of the file at various points I found that the file is modified when Steam starts in online mode, and changes back when it exits. However, if Steam is not shutdown cleanly then the online version of the file is left there and this one prevents you from getting into offline mode.

So to prevent this problem from happening you have to shut down Steam manually before you close the computer to make sure it’s closed properly. Another solution that helps you to recover from this situation if you forgot to close Steam manually is to create a backup of winui.gcf after you have exited Steam manually and then restore this backup if you run into this problem again.

Since this file holds various settings for Steam you might need to create a new backup whenever Steam is updated, you add/remove friends or do any other changes to your Steam settings. A third option would be to use a hex editor to update the offline mode part of winui.gcf as described by X.nano in a followup post. Since you are modifying a binary file directly with this approach it’s possible that this method will stop working in the future if the format of this file is changed in future versions of Steam.

Summary (TL;DR)

Problem

Not possible to start Steam in offline mode when not connected to the internet.

Cause

OS doesn’t shut down Steam cleanly when turning off the computer

Workarounds / solutions

Choose one of three different workarounds:

1. Exit Steam manually before shutting down computer.
2. Start steam with network connection and shut it down cleanly. Then make a backup of steamapps\winui.gcf. Restore the backup:ed version of this file when Steam fails to start in offline mode the next time.
3. When Steam fails to start in offline mode update steamapps\winui.gcf with a hex editor following these instructions.