Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 won’t start, that simple. I was playing not even five hours ago, decided to head back on to finish my dailies, and now it won’t even start. Nothing has changed on the computer to cause this, firewall/internet connection is the same as it’s been.

Same problem here. Whatever they’ve done in the last day has given me a black flickering screen when the game tries to initialize after clicking “play”. The only way to get control of my computer back is to end process from the taskmanager. One other thing I’ve noticed is that after killing the process the game is still tying up a considerable amount of system resources and refuses to release them.

I tested by rebooting, terminating all processes not critical to the OS and loading up only GW2.. same crash, same hog of resources post crash. Running XP (32)

upg 2012-11-13 give this nice state this is happy birthday from AN

I can’t get past the launcher. Below is a picture of what happens when I try to open the game. It just shows the launcher and a black box behind it and just sits there. I have to kill it in task manager to close it. I’ve left it there for 10 minutes and nothing happens.

System Specs in a dxdiag file attached.

Edit Okay I found the black box only appears when I click in the launcher. Also I did get today’s earlier update before this started happening.

Edit 2 Never mind having to click to get the black box to appear. It just happened on it’s own.

Edit 3 Okay for whatever reason it works now after restarting my computer. My problem is solved now.

Can we get an update on this issue? Or at the very least some directions as to how to provide logs to help resolve the problem?

The world event will be going live in 2 days, I’d hate to miss out on this “one time only” experience because the new patch broke the game for me a few days in advance.

probobly not I cant play after upg 2012-11-13

@AshleySegovia you (support) send this link all ppl.
Just back to relase after 2012-11-13 when ppl can play, then start analize your gw2 code.

I cant run, play GW2 now 3 days.

Game was running fine until I was asked to log out so that a new build could be used 11/13. Since then, every time I click “play” from the login splash screen I’m greeted by a black screen with a flickering blue bar running a long the top (as if the game had tried to load as a windowed fullscreen application). The Guild Wars 2 title on the top left corner of the bar appears slightly garbled, possible screen resolution error? After about 30s of flickering the screen goes completely black save for the cursor, which acts as normal. After an additional 30s the flickering returns. This cycle repeats indefinitely until the process is ended by using the taskmanager. After killing the program other programs unrelated to GW2 begin to display lag, stuttering and graphic artifacts—as if there are not enough system resources remaining to run them properly. A reboot fixes the problem. Other games and graphic intensive applications run without problem, they only become unstable if accessed after starting up and shutting down GW2.

After the game refused to start up, I updated my sound and graphics card drivers to see if that would solve the problem. Nothing changed. Just recently, I disabled the gamma correction setting in Nvidia’s global panel as a previous post had suggested it to be a work around. Still no success, symptoms remain the same.

Continued from above, with the attached arenanet.log

Ashley what you want to tell in your last post.
GW2 is not more available to 32-bit OS ?

Alright, it’s working again, had to restart the computer.

Guys, tech support sends the link to everyone because it is easier to piece together the puzzle as the problem develops rather than playing hunt-and-find with errors. Please try to be a bit empathic towards the game developers and what they have to do to keep the game from imploding.

It might be nice if Arena could post a link to a reliable post explaining how to reduce RAM usage. Not sure why it’s crashing, as opposed to thrashing to/from the swap file, but I will take their word for it.

One thing a 32 bit user could do, is to maybe try to reduce their resolution/settings to see if that helps (but I don’t know if that helps.)

Another is to goto the startup programs (there’s explanations of how to do this in various places) and reduce that to the minimum needed to play. Another would be to adjust windows settings to use less memory (there’s probably decent explanations of that online as well.)

upgrading to x64 from x32 won’t cost you single dime, it is included in windows package.
so be it, if you don’t want to accept the fact.

no game for you, too bad.

computer is not only for GW2 and I need my OS
BTW if I know GW2 is only for 64-bit OS I just dont buy but I buy game for 32-bit and if GW2 is not longer support on 32-bit then I want my mony back its easy.

Zgroza Czarnych.6190:

computer is not only for GW2 and I need my OS
BTW if I know GW2 is only for 64-bit OS I just dont buy but I buy game for 32-bit and if GW2 is not longer support on 32-bit then I want my mony back its easy.

You seem to have missed a key point. See below:

“crashes you are experiencing are the result of a known issue between Windows 32-bit Operating Systems and certain Nvidia cards”

So you can still play using 32 bit systems. But the combination with that an certain Nvidia cards causes the problem. Which cards cause the conflict, I have no idea. But this has been going on since Beta. Some people were able to fix this by throttling back their Nvidia card speeds a little.

I’m experiencing exactly the same problems as Cael described above, only it won’t even let me restart or close down the computer normally – have to do a hard boot instead. This is after the latest big update a few hours ago. Playing on Win XP 32 bit with a GTS 250 card. I play plenty of Bethesda games that are heavily modded and never experience anything quite like this, just a straightforward ctd at worst. It sounds like it’s a massive memory leak and the devs have no idea how to plug it.
Very disappointing.

16GB on HD in 1 file this is insane.

I found a fix for me… Deleted the local.DAT file in my gw2 root folder. This resets your settings to default. Got in right away after.

then tweak more to get smooth FPS.

robber.4613:

I found a fix for me… Deleted the local.DAT file in my gw2 root folder. This resets your settings to default. Got in right away after.

Same here, thanks Robber! Something to look into anet.

With respect, the game has been working perfectly fine on my end for more than a month. This “known issue” was not a problem my particular system was having. But after the patch implemented on 11/13 I have been unable to play this game. It’s fairly obvious that something contained within that patch is the problem. Asking a customer to pay $100+ for a new OS on the off chance it resolves the issue is not a solution. Please look into this with greater detail.

Edit

On the advice of a few other members on the forums, I deleted the local.DAT file from the GW2 install directory. It completely fixed my problem and I’ve been able to log in and play the game. Thankyou guys!

where’s the “local.DAT” file? I only see a Music & Screenshot directory In my GW2 folder. :/

I played this game with no problems until the latest patch. Now after I hit the “play” button I get a flickering black screen & GW2 does not play.

Please help!

The Nov 13th patch didn’t effect me, but tonight’s sure did. The down loader did it’s thing running down the numbers, to zero, and then nothing. Has been working just find up until tonight’s patch. So to me and ppl with common sense, that would suggest an ArNet problem? I’m hearing some ppl are in, jet I see on their FB pages, many are not. And sofar, no news posted. I was able to get in on my laptop, with Ivy processor, Nvidia card, but not my I7-950 desktop with a 7970 card.

robber.4613:

I found a fix for me… Deleted the local.DAT file in my gw2 root folder. This resets your settings to default. Got in right away after.

Oh man, cheers for that! GW2 tech support should be ashamed now. Or hire you

robber.4613:

I found a fix for me… Deleted the local.DAT file in my gw2 root folder. This resets your settings to default. Got in right away after.

THIS! You’re making Gods work my son! I was almost shivering out of panic. “Do I need to buy a new computer?! God I will miss everything!”.

For some clearance, go to your GW2 folder. Remove local.DAT with SHIFT+DEL. Press enter. Start the game (be sure to remember your accountname and password) and then enjoy it.

I have a startup problem with GW2 since the last patch on november 15th. Whether I click on the shortcut/taskbar icon or the .exe file in explorer, GW2 will start with the screen and downloading message. After that the startupscreen disappears and the program icon on the taskbar shows a white empty screen when hovering over it with the mouse cursor.

It’s the same for the -repair shortcut, and deleting the local.dat file didn’t make any change to this problem. I ran the game-advisor app and attached the report.

This is what I get on screen after starting GW2:

tekwiz.8635:

upgrading to x64 from x32 won’t cost you single dime.

Except an entirely new processor…

myng.3516:

tekwiz.8635:

upgrading to x64 from x32 won’t cost you single dime.

Except an entirely new processor…

why’s that?

Deleting Local.dat worked like a charm for me.

Well I sure hope tech support keeps reading this thread. I still cannot get to the actual login screen of GW2, after starting the patch download around midnight yesterday (my time GMT+1) it gave me an error connecting to login server. This morning I cannot login as I described earlier in this thread – I would like access before the event of the Lost Shores starts tonight * fingers crossed *.

robber.4613:

I found a fix for me… Deleted the local.DAT file in my gw2 root folder. This resets your settings to default. Got in right away after.

Give this guy a prize…he fixed my problem

Glad it’s working guys! See you in the event tonight!

SuperHumongous.5647:

robber.4613:

I found a fix for me… Deleted the local.DAT file in my gw2 root folder. This resets your settings to default. Got in right away after.

Give this guy a prize…he fixed my problem

Agreed! Fixed mine, too. For those wondering, you can find the local.dat in your documents folder in the GW2 directory.

last update + delete local.dat from main dir gw2 help me too

Still not able to get to the login screen (deleting .dat file does not work for me), launcher keeps hanging on a blank screen.

Cannot get update, connection error detected. Retrying…

Just want to pitch in that I had to do the following: Reboot, rename local.dat to local.datBACKUP, launch GW, client hung, rebooted again, and was able to log in fine afterwards. Same exact issue as Cael, and same setup – 32bit Win XP with an 8800 Nvidia card.

For what its worth, I did enable the 3GB switch and tried to run GW2 with it – it worked at first, but ran into a serious graphical glitch. GW2 is currently running fine WITHOUT the 3GB switch enabled, and just with the local.dat file deleted – this problem was definitely introduced on your end with the patch, and telling people to muck around with their boot.ini as a solution to the problem is NOT good advice.

Aerk.1593:

Just want to pitch in that I had to do the following: Reboot, rename local.dat to local.datBACKUP, launch GW, client hung, rebooted again, and was able to log in fine afterwards. Same exact issue as Cael, and same setup – 32bit Win XP with an 8800 Nvidia card.

For what its worth, I did enable the 3GB switch and tried to run GW2 with it – it worked at first, but ran into a serious graphical glitch. GW2 is currently running fine WITHOUT the 3GB switch enabled, and just with the local.dat file deleted – this problem was definitely introduced on your end with the patch, and telling people to muck around with their boot.ini as a solution to the problem is NOT good advice.

The problem with the 3GB switch is your robbing peter to pay paul. In other words, your taking the memory away from the kernel mode processes and giving it to application processes. This has the potential of making your OS unstable.

Just want to pitch in that I had to do the following: Reboot, rename local.dat to local.datBACKUP, launch GW, client hung, rebooted again, and was able to log in fine afterwards. Same exact issue as Cael, and same setup – 32bit Win XP with an 8800 Nvidia card.

I have window 32 and 8800 card and did the rename local dat file and it worked

tekwiz.8635:

myng.3516:

tekwiz.8635:

upgrading to x64 from x32 won’t cost you single dime.

Except an entirely new processor…

why’s that?

A 32-bit processor cannot run a 64-bit operating system. The architecture is completely different. However a 32-bit operating system can run on a 64-bit processor, but you will be limited to 32-bit applications.

I just tried deleting that DAT file and did get back into the game but after 5 minutes or so the game froze and the colours went all wonky – as if the graphics drivers had crashed. Managed to alt-tab out of the freeze and close the game down. The desktop however was normal and the graphics driver hadn’t crashed at all.
Completely baffled.

Win XP 32 bit with a GTS 250.

Bumping for reference.

Bought the game a week ago, had multiple crashes (as if graph. card fail), end task GW, try any other modded overloaded with addons game – no probs.
After latest patch, can’t play until his day, local.dat file deletion did not help.
Question:
What have I paid for?
I want a straight answer from the “reds”.

“robber.4613

I found a fix for me… Deleted the local.DAT file in my gw2 root folder. This resets your settings to default. Got in right away after."

This worked for me, also. Thanks, robber!

Why didn’t the devs post this simple & effective solution?

I keep getting stuck at the screen below, nothing happens when I run gw2/ run it as admin….. I was playing yesterday… don’t know what happened..

Same problem. Deleting local.dat did NOT help. I tried to reinstall the game client. Setup closes without any error message.

As Nehellania I was able to play yesterday. ArenaNet please provide guidance.