Guild Wars 2

Avast anti-virus deleted the GW2.exe for being infected. I did not read the details as to the nature of the supposed virus.

Anyone knows why?

Also, if I try to re-install GW2, will I have to sit through a full re-install/download? Is it possible to simply download GW2.exe by itself?

EDIT:
The following worked for me based on suggestion of Soul Evil.2734:
1. Download the client from GW2 website.
2. Run it and install GW2 in a different folder to your current one. I did the fresh install on my desktop.
3. Once the installed starts downloading files (you’ll see the massive list of remaining files) cancel the install.
4. Copy and paste GW2.exe from the new install folder to your old one.

Enjoy.

P.S. I added GW2 folder to Avast’s whitelist.

Same here. Was online, quit for 30 mins, now can’t play again.

I have a backup of the game on an external drive but it’s like 1 year old…

Same happened to me =/

ok.. I think this is what happened to me too. I use Avast, and GW2 played fine yesterday. Now I can’t run it nor reinstall it.

I disabled Avast (right click on the Avast! icon, disable until next restart) and it worked fine. I’ll finish what I was doing and will restart my comp and see if it works again. But yeah, somewhat annoying.

Thought I was going crazy. WTF.

same problem here.

Guess its not just me..WTH

It is good (?) that I am not the only one. GW2 was working fine then it started lagging hard. I restarted GW2, it didn’t help; restarted PC, still did not help; closed GW2 and Avast pop-up told me it has deleted GW2.exe.

I have the same problem with avast. Is there a solution for this or do I have to re-install gw2?

Had the same thing happen to me just now, I was like WTF how does something just disappear off your computer

I just updated Avast, and now I’m able to reinstall GW2. Unfortunately it’s doing a fresh install since I deleted previous installation, but I think it will go much faster if you haven’t.

Same here. Avast saying GW infected when trying to reinstall.

So it was Avast. How do I start the game now?

Reinstall. Wait. Cry.

Also update Avast and consider adding Gw2.exe to whitelisted programs. There’s risks to that, but…

So is there anyway to get GW2 back without a fresh install

just got a copy of the Gw2.exe from a friend and put it in the directory everything works fine. Also updated avast

gmail can send them if you trust your friend just have him change the .exe to something else then when u get it change it back to .exe

My Avast is up to date so I don’t think that solve the problem.

Also LF Gw2.exe

Same thing just happened to me. Glad I’m not the only one. Really annoying considering I just spent many hours a few nights ago re-downloading and installing the game, to get back into it after a year long break.

I had a backup of the gw2 folder on an external drive, just c/p’d the Gw2.exe with Avast disabled and now it’s working fine… wonder wtf is going on.

God It’d be nice of me to just start sending out the exe to people. First things First Ill do it for 5 people and I hope those 5 people do it for others. First 5 emails i see get it

Check the Quarantine (Virus Chest) – you may be able to restore it from there (in Avast, go to Scan > Scan for viruses > Quarantine (Virus Chest)). The Quarantine (Virus Chest) is a link in lower right of the ‘Scan for viruses’ screen. Right-click and restore. Whitelist GW2 (in Avast, go to Settings > General > scroll down to Exclusions > add your GW2 install directory).

Note that adding GW2 to the whitelist is not without its risks…

Sunjammer it wasnt in there. It up and removed it High Threat asked for a boot time scan

Sunjammer.5209:

Check the Quarantine (Virus Chest) – you may be able to restore it from there (in Avast, go to Scan > Scan for viruses > Quarantine (Virus Chest)). The Quarantine (Virus Chest) is a link in lower right of the ‘Scan for viruses’ screen. Right-click and restore. Whitelist GW2 (in Avast, go to Settings > General > scroll down to Exclusions > add your GW2 install directory).

What Jenovah said is correct in my case as well.

Sunjammer.5209:

Check the Quarantine (Virus Chest) – you may be able to restore it from there (in Avast, go to Scan > Scan for viruses > Quarantine (Virus Chest)). The Quarantine (Virus Chest) is a link in lower right of the ‘Scan for viruses’ screen. Right-click and restore. Whitelist GW2 (in Avast, go to Settings > General > scroll down to Exclusions > add your GW2 install directory).

Note that adding GW2 to the whitelist is not without its risks…

TY for this, the quarantine button is well hidden.

I updated Avast.

Started the reinstall from gw2setup.exe and saved it to my desktop

Canceled the download – copied the gw2.exe from the new folder on my desktop and put it in the original gw2 folder and launched it.

It reset my in-game settings (volume, windowed mode, etc.) But I am at the char screen now.

Reinstalling gw2 , after disabling avast, so I could even get as far as installing. searched entire drives on PC ,as well as virus vault in avast the exe was completely gone. Now just have to wait for the 164,000+ files to install currently @ 1%.

Soul Evil.2734:

I updated Avast.

Started the reinstall from gw2setup.exe and saved it to my desktop

Canceled the download – copied the gw2.exe from the new folder on my desktop and put it in the original gw2 folder and launched it.

It reset my in-game settings (volume, windowed mode, etc.) But I am at the char screen now.

I am going to try this. Thank you.

Re-Installing is not the way to fix it.. you just need to get a copy of the gw2.exe

Soul Evil.2734:

I updated Avast.

Started the reinstall from gw2setup.exe and saved it to my desktop

Canceled the download – copied the gw2.exe from the new folder on my desktop and put it in the original gw2 folder and launched it.

It reset my in-game settings (volume, windowed mode, etc.) But I am at the char screen now.

@Soul Evil: Did you have to whitelist GW2 to get it work again when you did this?

I updated Avast, restarted comp, and then followed Sunjammer’s method and clicked “restore and add to exclusions”, then “yes”, then “overwrite” and GW2 is now working fine, no download or re-install needed.

Sunjammer.5209:

Soul Evil.2734:

I updated Avast.

Started the reinstall from gw2setup.exe and saved it to my desktop

Canceled the download – copied the gw2.exe from the new folder on my desktop and put it in the original gw2 folder and launched it.

It reset my in-game settings (volume, windowed mode, etc.) But I am at the char screen now.

@Soul Evil: Did you have to whitelist GW2 to get it work again when you did this?

I did not whitelist the gw2.exe in Avast to get it to work again

@Sunjammer

Thank you very much kind sir!

I never had the option and mine didnt show it in chest. sorry

Also, This was my only fix for this problem as Avast did not have the gw2.exe located in the virus chest or whatever so I could not restore it.

To get the gw2.exe

Run the installer and save it to an easy to find place, for me it was the desktop.

I started the installer – let it drop the folder on the desktop – canceled the download – copied the gw2.exe from the new folder on the desktop – pasted it in my original gw2 folder and launched the exe from there

If you still have Gw2.dat, which is located wherever GW2 was installed, simply download Gw2Setup.exe, rename it to Gw2.exe and place it in the same folder as Gw2.dat.

Same thing happened to me. I just updated avast and added gw2 to my whitelist, and I’ll tell you what I did, I went into the quarantine vault, found the copy of Gw2.exe that avast had initially deleted, scanned it, found no malware, and restored it. So as long as you didn’t up and delete the folder and just had avast move it to quarantine/virus chest, you could just do that.

I just did a system restore through windows, and that fixed the problem for me.

My problem now subsists of not being able to reinstall the game at all because the installer is stuck at the very start of the process, unable to connect to the download servers at all.

I’ve completely disabled’s Avast and it still does this. Any help?

Sunjammer.5209:

Whitelist GW2 (in Avast, go to Settings > General > scroll down to Exclusions > add your GW2 install directory).

Note that adding GW2 to the whitelist is not without its risks…

Yeah .. still i did that already years ago mainly because in hope of a little more
performance if the GW2.dat will not be scanned permanently.

Avast has a habit of false reporting quite often. This is most of the time due to their heuristics scanner being very picky on what should run and what shouldn’t…

If Avast deletes your Gw2.exe, you may be able to recover it!
1)open Avast user interface
2)click on “statistics”
3)click on “component status”
4)click on “virus chest”
5)right click on Gw2.exe and click “restore and add to exclusions”

that should put gw2.exe back and white-list it.

EDIT:Here’s the Avast issue post if anyone wants to help clear the issue up. https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=161194.0

AVG just called it malware for me. Just fyi.

This is strange. I don’t know why you all are having this issue. I scanned my Guild Wars 2 folder with Avast and came back clean (see picture).

I have been running Avast for several years never had any problem.