Guild Wars 2

When I hit “Play” on the launcher the character select screen should load, but instead I’m getting the occasional BSOD informing me my graphics driver (nv4_disp.dll) just had a bad day.

Also occasionally, the character select screen’s background appears to be in negative (like a photo negative). Graphics corruption. So I restart the client and it’ll be okay, probably.

I’ve been playing since beta. This is the return of an old problem I used to “fix” by periodically deleting my local.dat file when it got too bloated (starting the launcher used to download a clean, unbloated version.)

My graphics card is a GeForce GTX 560 Ti running driver version 327.23 (latest at time of posting), on WinXP 32-bit. I went through a marathon last time around and the culprit was the local.dat, or at least periodically deleting it provided a workaround. There was no proper fix that I could find on my end.

Now, the local.dat has gone AWOL. The crashes are back. Is it somewhere else now or what do I do?

The local.dat file has been relocated.
The new location is at:
C:\Users\MyComputerUserName\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2

“AppData” is a hidden folder.
If you require assistance to enable showing of hidden files and folders on your computer then follow these steps:

Make hidden files visible

1. Browse your My Computer to: “C:\Users\YourComputerUserName”
2. Then in the window menus (File-Edit-View-Tools-Help), click on “Tools” and then select “Folder Options…”
3. In the window that pops up, click the “View” tab
4. Select to “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and click ‘OK’ (attached image)
5. You should now see the “AppData” folder in your file listing

StinVec.3621:

The local.dat file has been relocated.
The new location is at:
C:\Users\MyComputerUserName\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2

“AppData” is a hidden folder.
If you require assistance to enable showing of hidden files and folders on your computer then follow these steps:

Make hidden files visible

1. Browse your My Computer to: “C:\Users\YourComputerUserName”
2. Then in the window menus (File-Edit-View-Tools-Help), click on “Tools” and then select “Folder Options…”
3. In the window that pops up, click the “View” tab
4. Select to “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and click ‘OK’ (attached image)
5. You should now see the “AppData” folder in your file listing

Wow… I missed that they moved it. Thanks!

StinVec.3621:

The local.dat file has been relocated.
The new location is at:
C:\Users\MyComputerUserName\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2

“AppData” is a hidden folder.
If you require assistance to enable showing of hidden files and folders on your computer then follow these steps:

Make hidden files visible

1. Browse your My Computer to: “C:\Users\YourComputerUserName”
2. Then in the window menus (File-Edit-View-Tools-Help), click on “Tools” and then select “Folder Options…”
3. In the window that pops up, click the “View” tab
4. Select to “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and click ‘OK’ (attached image)
5. You should now see the “AppData” folder in your file listing

Thank you StinVec!

Happy to help. The relocation was not that long ago and was not mentioned in any patch notes that I could find.

Considering how many issues require players to delete this file so it can be recreated, I’m not sure who thought it was a good idea to relocate it to someplace else without notifying of the change, as well as relocating it to a hidden folder of all places. It does not make sense to me.