Guild Wars 2

Hello to all. As the title says I’ve got a strange problem with that error showing up, but I’ll explain further and maybe someone can offer me more advice on what to do, as I’ve already tried countless things and tests, and if I really need to change the hard drive afterall. I actually found around 3 topics about it, one with no replies and two with the same solution that for me didn’t do much.
It started a few months ago, when the game, as I entered Fields of ruins with a character on my started to completely freeze on me… like hiccuping… a very bad slide show and the FPS dropped randomly like crazy. From like 37 to 1. I get the laptop repaired, apparently a bad hard drive. I get the laptop back… not too long after the very same thing started to happen, and it’s been this way ever since, but going worse… laptop being terribly slow, game freezing, FPS dropping, windows itself crashing, taskbar and desktop freezing completely etc. Disk usage at 100% almost constantly. It was g oing batsh*t basically. At one point I decide to wipe everything from it, and set up the whole thing anew again. Fast-forward to now, everything seems to work well, no 100% disk usage anymore either, BUT the game keeps on trolling me. I log in perfectly. It gets me to the character screen. No freezing at all. It manages to log me in all the cities except Rata Sum, which is where I get the Disk i/o error. I managed to log into the Black Citadel, and after a minute or two of wandering, there’s the error again. The few moments I was ingame, it didn’t freeze and the FPS didn’t drop either. And I am incredibly confused.
I’m really sorry if I was vague, but basically, I just want to know what does the error mean exactly and why it seems to kind of appear randomly… and if this means that I definitely need to change the hard drive (in the end I believe this could be the only faulty part), which at the moment I cannot afford. Did anyone else have this problem too? I really would appreciate any kind of replies and if I was unclear about something, do ask and sorry about it. I’m just out of options by now and I really miss the game.
(I’ll post the laptop’s specs if needed)

I tried to repair the client just now. Got the Disk i/o error yet again, so the repair didn’t continue. One option less and now I really think I did try everything.

Maybe its really a disk I/O error. Check your windows system logs and also the
smart status of your drive if you run out of redirection blocks.

Of course it could also be a defect SATA cable, so if you have some spare cables
just try to change it.

Beldin.5498:

Maybe its really a disk I/O error. Check your windows system logs and also the
smart status of your drive if you run out of redirection blocks.

Of course it could also be a defect SATA cable, so if you have some spare cables
just try to change it.

Thanks for replying.
Tested the smart status, and the only tool that gives me anything, is CrystalDisk, about reallocated sectors count. Every other test I ran resulted in everything being okay, no errors ever found. Because the laptop seems to be running smoothly otherwise. The only time I get the error is with this game.
As for the SATA cables, I’ve none of them, sadly. I’d just like to know more precisely what’s wrong (although the only option by now would probably be taking the pc to a professional… whiiich is also not affordable atm), because it’s the second disk that died on this same laptop, and I’m not sure if it was just two bad disks in a row, or there’s something that keeps ‘breaking’ them :|

If you had the laptop repaired recently for the same thing, can’t you take it back and tell them they didn’t fix it properly?

If you have enough space you can also try the following :
create a folder on your harddisk and copy the content of your GW2 folder into it.

If you have disk problems the copy may already hang at some point. Else if the
copy is finished start GW2 from the new folder.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If you had the laptop repaired recently for the same thing, can’t you take it back and tell them they didn’t fix it properly?

I had it ‘fixed’ around february/march… Anyhow I’ll need to find an another place where to take my laptop anyway.. that service is kinda… cr*ppy. Just personal experience that makes me hesitant going to the same place again.

Beldin.5498:

If you have enough space you can also try the following :
create a folder on your harddisk and copy the content of your GW2 folder into it.

If you have disk problems the copy may already hang at some point. Else if the
copy is finished start GW2 from the new folder.

Hah, tried that. PC froze at first, had to shut it down. Tried again then, and it copied files normally. But I still get the same error. I can’t log into Rata Sum at all. Maybe I should find some other forums that deal with laptop problems or something :/

Mantisse.3062:

reallocated sectors count

All SMART programs should be giving you the same information as they’re reading it from the drive. The only difference should be the threshold at which they deem the value is a risk.

Reallocated sectors is a sign the drive is failing. If it is, the problem will begin to spread and you’ll encounter problems more frequently. Backup anything important and don’t trust your drive since you may find that a file you just saved is now corrupted. If you want to workaround the problem, begin a full surface scan of the disk (right click the drive > properties > tools > error checking > check for bad sectors – this will take a while). You should also reformat to start with a clean drive, but that may cause bigger problems. Keep in mind that working around the problem carries a great risk since it can spread.

If it spreads, you will need to replace the drive. You may just be unlucky with bad ones, but other factors can also affect it, such as the age, temperature and number of writes. The magnetism is fading. After obtaining a new drive, always run a full scan.

You can use the resource monitor to watch your disk’s queue. It’ll get stuck when there’s a read error and those read errors is what’s causing the computer to freeze, since Windows is stuck waiting on it. After a few minutes of attempting to read a bad sector, the disk should automatically abort the request or simply crash, which will either unfreeze the computer and display a message, or crash it entirely.

I recently had a bad 3 TB drive. As soon as I hit ~80% capacity, I hit a bad sector. I dumped half the drive, but within weeks, it began to spread and months later the disk was too much of a risk and would often crash. It was only a storage drive, so the crash simply resulted in a read error or the disk would disconnect and require a cold boot.

Mantisse.3062:

Beldin.5498:

If you have enough space you can also try the following :
create a folder on your harddisk and copy the content of your GW2 folder into it.

If you have disk problems the copy may already hang at some point. Else if the
copy is finished start GW2 from the new folder.

Hah, tried that. PC froze at first, had to shut it down. Tried again then, and it copied files normally. But I still get the same error. I can’t log into Rata Sum at all. Maybe I should find some other forums that deal with laptop problems or something :/

PC froze when just copying files ? That shows clearly its not a problem of GW2
but of your harddisk or cable. You can however try now to repair the copied version
and do NOT delete the old version because that one sits mostly on some
defect sectors and blocks them so that nothing else is written there.

However that doesn’t say you don’t have more defect sectors.

Sector reallocation is a sign that your drive has physical damage on the spinning platters. Reallocation is normal through the life of every HDD. As dropping, bumping, and moving laptops around will reset the HDD controller and if there is a I/O operation happening when that happens it will usually yield as a damaged sector.

If CrystalDiskInfo says you have a sector reallocation count, whats the data on that row? Does it say anything about uncorrectable errors, or Pending sectors?

As said by another poster, Look in your windows event viewer under system and look for ‘disk’ source errors. If there are any there that means the Disk I/O is also affecting the OS (I suspect it is) and you need to find out if the drive is actually dying or just has a series of damaged surface errors taking out a number of sectors.

What I would do, after investigating the above, is DBAN the HDD with 1-3 passes. And then do a full surface scan with chkdsk to validate the surface of the drive. Since DBAN will wipe the drive out completely your sector reallocation count can get reset. Running a file system check may force the errors to reappear, and then the drive has to correct for them. This process can take a long time, like 10+ hours to a couple of days. And, If after all that the surface damage on the drive is still there, or incrementing above what it is now, (again pull SMART data) replace the HDD.

Depending on how big your HDD is (I am going to guess 250GB to 320GB) you might want to look into buying an SSD. You can get a 480GB SSD for 179 or a 250G SSD for 80~ at your local Microcenter or Frys. I would suggest buying a Samsung 850Evo or an OCZ Arc100.

I’ll take everything here into consideration and see what it can be done… although I fear the best solution would be getting a new disk… whiiich is not possible at the moment :| or in the foreseeable future. Arghh…
I also find it strange that GW2 is THE ONLY game giving me the disk error. I suppose I’ll maybe try re-installing it. It’s kinda hopeless in my eyes though.
My HDD is 1TB, by the way, @sirsquishy … I kinda prefer still getting a new HDD than SSD though… These laptops never give me a break, seriously haha.

Since you cannot buy a new drive, I would DBAN (can take 24hours) the HDD with 3 passes, boot to your Windows CD and enter recovery Mode and open Command prompt.

Enter diskpart, select the disk, create a primary partition, and do a format fs=ntfs and wait for it to complete. Then quit dispart and enter chkdsk /r for a full surface scan against the newly created NTFS partition. This entire process should take about 8 hours on a 1TB 5400RPM laptop drive.

Then reboot back into the setup of the CD and delete the partition and then let the OS re-create the install as it needs.

Once you get the system setup again, install CrystalDiskInfo and run that program every 3-5 days for a few weeks to make sure your bad sector count is not growing. If you notice that its growing boot back into the CD and do the chkdsk /r again to remap the file system against bad sectors.

The reason the I/O shows up for GW2 for you is due to the gw2.dat file being 21.5GB~ and covering a large set of the surface of that failing hdd. Since GW2 is a real-time application it is not tolerant to disk wait time commands (TLER) and will almost immediately time out when a pending sector hits.

@sirsquishy I do wish I could say I know how to do literally everything you just wrote up there hahaha. Sadly, while I am not exactly that bad with this stuff, there are some things I don’t know and don’t dare to do without someone who is better than me to make sure I don’t frick it all up lol. But thank you anyway :]

In each case, I did re-install GW2 and it works a bit better than it did before. I got the Disk I/O error again though, after the game and pc froze like hell. It does not work smoothly, really, but it’s somewhat better. I can log into Rata Sum and I don’t get the I/O thing after just a few minutes ingame. I don’t know, I guess I’ll leave it at that for the moment :/ Maybe one day I’ll have the chance to get rid of the issue x.x

As soon as you buy / install a new harddisk.

@Beldin Hell will probably freeze over before this happens haha.
But anyway, I guess this is a final update now, HoT/Halloween patch doesn’t even get to 1%, and I already get the error and I have to close it. I could play yesterday. Good thing I wasn’t able to get the expansion. In each case, thank you very much for the answers and tips here… Doesn’t look like I’ll be able to play this mmo in the foreseeable future, which makes me quite depressed.
Goodluck to y’all, though. Enjoy it!