HOW TO FIX: PING/LERP

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

THIS IS ONLY FOR PLAYERS WHO GOT EXTREME PING OUTPUTS AFTER MESSING WITH L4D2 DEFAULT LERP SETTINGS! DO THIS ON YOUR OWN RISK I AM NOT ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANYTHING YOU DO. THIS DID WORK FOR ME AFTER COUNTLESS HOURS OF TROUBLESHOOTING. THIS IS NOT MY GUIDE, AND I DID NOT FIGURE THIS OUT MYSELF; BUT GOOGLE.

What you can expect from this post:

- A guide on how to fix your default lerp settings in L4D2
- Mistakes and how to avoid them in the future
- Conclusion


A guide on how to fix your default lerp settings in L4D2

Please, make sure that you've also deleted you modified Autoexec.cfg / config.cfg before staring.

1. First thing you wanna do is to exit all your games, explorer windows and additional background running processes that is non-critical. EXCEPT YOUR STEAM APPLICATION, can be held OPEN. We do this to start on a clean page.
2. When you got your Steam application running, go to Steam > Settings > Cloud Tab > and enable Steam Cloud Synchronization [SCS].
3. To check if SCS is enabled on your game that you want to fix e.g Left 4 Dead 2. Go to Steam > Library tab (where all of your downloaded games will be listed) > right click Left 4 Dead 2 > Properties > Updates tab > See whether Enable SCS (Steam Cloud) option is Checked. (It will also show the storage which is saved on your steam cloud).
4. Now we want to test and see if your local files is being downloaded to your local directory. This is critical to verify that the operation will be successful. Exit steam and Head to your steam directory eg. (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\USERID) and delete your APPID (APPID for L4D2 should be 550). Refresh the explorer page to see if the folder indeed is deleted. Open Steam and login, the APPID should reappear. (If not, you can try to start the game)
5. When the operation is indeed successful, we will delete the steam cloud files
6. Exit Steam and clear all Steam related processes from the Task Manager. Delete Steamclientbootstrapper first. Then Go to you steam directory > C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\USERID\APPID and Shift + right-click the folder and select Open Powershell Window here. Type in the following string in PowerShell: clc –path "Crogram Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\SteamID\AppID\remote\*" and hit enter (this in theory shall corrupt the files and give you the Cloud Sync Conflict Dialogue. If this did not work you can do it manually. Follow step 7, or skip to 8.
7. Head to steam directory > C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\SteamID\AppID\remote\ > open every files in any text editor i.e Notepad ++, and remove all text and save. (Files: remotecache.vdf, config.cfg, spray.vmt, spray.vtf)
8. I did corrupt both files from C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\SteamID\7 and C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\SteamID\550 (7 is steam and 550 is l4d2).
9. Start steam, and a Steam conflict error is forth, do NOT click any options yet see step 10. If you did NOT get any message start l4d2 game and it should appear. If you still dont get any error see step 11.
10. We will now delete Cloud Files navigate to Steam\userdata\SteamID\AppID and delete all the files There will be two files (remote folder and remotecache.vdf). Now go back to the conflict window and select the option of “Upload to the Steam Cloud”. Now Steam will sync your AppID folder while there will be nothing in it and the previous data on your Steam Cloud will be deleted. ow the game will start automatically but it will create new files that will be synced to your Steam cloud when you close it. We can prevent it from happening by pressing alt + tab. This will open the open windows on your screen. Select the Steam client from the list of windows. Once you are in the Steam client, open the client’s Settings. Navigate to the Cloud tab and uncheck the line which enables cloud. Now return to the game and exit. No files will be synced to your Steam cloud. Exit Steam and delete the AppID folder as we did before.
11. Open your Steam client. Open its Settings by pressing the Steam button present at the top left corner of the window and selecting the option. Open the Cloud tab present on the left side of the screen. Uncheck the option “Enable Steam Cloud synchronization for the applications which support it”. Now navigate to your Stream directory as you did earlier and delete all files present in the folder of AppID. The file path for deletion is Steam\userdata\SteamID\AppID. Now start the game to make new and different files in the file location. Exit the game and Steam completely by ending all Steam processes in the task manager (end steamclientbootstrapper first). Now delete the remotecache.vdf file present in the location Steam\userdata\SteamID\AppID. Start your Steam. Head over to the client’s Settings and enable the cloud. Now a Steam conflict dialogue will come forth and we can proceed with the remaining method at step 10

Mistakes and how to avoid them in the future
Do not mess with anything that is named autoexec.cfg or config.cfg, unless you actually know what you're doing. Its critical files that will be uploaded to Steam Cloud Servers, and will reflect back and forth between user local files and back.

Conclusion

This has given me intense and long hours to troubleshoot, until I asked Mg community on Discord.
I should've asked there first, could've saved me many many hours... Always hear with the community and do not touch anything you dont understand, like me xD

This is not my guide, tho. I'm just happy to share it with all of you.
Also its maybe not the "cleanest" guide, So I recommend searching on google for "how to delete cloud files on steam". It should be better looking guides then this one, haha.