Guild Wars 2

I played the game normally about 20 minutes ago. Wanted to switch character so i went to character selection screen just to get a black screen. Closed the game and restarted it just to find out it started to redownload all of it’s files. Any idea of what may have happened?

It sounds like your game does not have write permissions to files that it needs to modify which leads to it thinking it has to re-download the whole thing again to replace the files it needs to modify.

Ensure that you are running the game as admin and no files are write protected.

First: Run As Admin

• Close your game completely.
• Right-click your GW2 game shortcut and click on “Properties”.
• On the “Compatibility” tab, check/enable the box at the bottom for:
  • “Run As Administrator”
• Hit OK after making sure this setting is enabled.

Then

• Ensure the ‘Read Only’ attribute is not set in the right-click > Properties for these files in the installation directory:
  • Gw2.exe
  • Gw2.tmp
  • Gw2.dat
• Then re-launch and see if the issue persists.

I did exactly as you described. But the game is still downloading the files.

Do you happen to have some files in your installation directory called Gw2.000, Gw2.001, Gw2.002, .003, .004 etc.?

No. The only files i have is Gw2.tmp Gw2.exe Gw2.dat Crash.dmp (created on the 26th of Februari) and ArenaNet.log

That’s good. That rules out a couple of potential causes.

Before trying the next possible solution, if you would please do this to rule out a file error issue:

Check the game for errors and repair it

• Close your game completely.
• Next, make a copy of your Gw2 game shortcut and rename it “GW2 Repair” or to something that you will recognize it for being only for running a repair on your GW2 installation.
• Now, right-click this “Gw2 Repair” shortcut and click on “Properties”.
• On the “Shortcut” tab look in the “Target:” field, you should see:
  “C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2” or wherever you have Guild Wars 2 installed.
• After the closing quotation marks in this line put a space and then add -repair
  It will look like this but with your GW2 install location:
  “C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2” -repair
• Hit OK after making this change.
• Run this repair shortcut. Your game will run through a repair cycle and fix any damaged files it finds.
• After it runs through, start the game using the normal GW2 game shortcut (not the repair shortcut) and see if your game can start up properly without having to re-download everything again.

Also, what is the file size of the Gw2.tmp file in your installation directory? Is it greater than 0kb?

It is verifying archive atm after i added the command line as you described and the Gw2.tmp is at 0kb

It is still downloading all the files after verifying.

Ok. This should help if there was an issue with the non-archived files that the repair does not check as well as with any registry entries that may have somehow gotten changed.

What you’ll do is:

• Ensure your game is completely closed
• Browse to your game installation directory and move your Gw2.dat file to a different folder. It should be about 17.9-18 gb in size.
• Delete the other remaining files in the folder (“Gw2.exe”, “Gw2.tmp”, etc.)
• Download the Client Installer (21MB) from your My Account area at the top of this page and save it in your game installation directory.
• Rename this “Gw2Setup.exe” installer file to “Gw2.exe”
• Execute this Gw2.exe file. Windows may ask if you want to block it from running. Permit it to run.
• Running the exe will generate a new Gw2.dat file
• Close the installer prematurely once you see a new Gw2.dat file is created in your installation folder.
• Delete this new Gw2.dat file
• Move your old Gw2.dat file back into the installation folder from where you moved it out to.
• Once again ensure all files in the installation directory do not have the ‘Read Only’ attribute set in their Properties > General tab.
• Run your game normally and see if still insists on wanting to re-download the entire 255k (?) files for the game.

So you basically:

• Backup your current Gw2.dat file
• Delete the other files
• Download the 21mb installer to the installation folder
• Rename the installer to Gw2.exe and run it
• Close the installer once a new Gw2.dat file is made
• Delete the new Gw2.dat file that was made
• Move your backup of your 17.9gb Gw2.dat file back into the installation folder
• Launch your game normally and see if it still insists on wanting to download 255k files or however many it says

I will be away for some time so here is another thing to try/check in the event the above did not fix the problem:

• Move your entire GW2 game installation from where it currently is (likely in Program Files) to a different directory (outside of Program Files) like: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2”
• After the directory move, once again ensure all files in the installation directory do not have the ‘Read Only’ attribute set in their Properties > General tab.

I did all the things you told me to try. Nothing worked. So i let it download all the files and now the game works again. Still Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. I really appreciate it.