Guild Wars 2

Ever since about 4PM today the launcher has been simply freezing upon opening (no crash, just never responds and has a black background). It freezes before it downloads any data for the launcher.

I’ve tried downloading the game again and installing in order to see if it’s something specific to my installation, but it simply does the same exact thing. I’ve been unable to play for most of the day because of this issue :/

same problem here: launcher freeze at start when saying downloading 0 KB ( 0 KB/s) and can’t be closed and never happens…

Same problem here. Finally bought the game yesterday and started to installing it from CDs and downloads up to 10143Kbs and then shut down and comes back up and then it reads 0KB (0KB/s)….

and no response from guildwars2 team?

Same problem here as well. Open the launcher as normal, says downloading 0KB (0KB/sec)…

And nothing. If you click on the screen windows says “Guild Wars 2 Game Client is not responding” and a larger white box seems to surround the launcher

My loader also started crashing today (never had any problem with it before), crashes immediately on start, with:

—> Crash <—
Assertion: Failed to load file.
File: ..\..\..\Services\LoadHandle\LoadHandle.cpp(142)
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 8748
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 15477
When: 2012-09-09T16:50:23Z 2012-09-09T17:50:23+01:00
Uptime: 0 days 0:00:02
Flags: 0

—> Error Logs <—
Warning: changing size of versioned file 0×0002ac70:0×00029b3c from 485829 to 296043
Warning: changing size of versioned file 0×00003c8c:0×00002ba4 from 485836 to 296050
Decode was cancelled in the middle of a file-load (0×0004846b⁰). Corrupted?
File size mismatch from archive for 0×0004846b⁰; expected = 170812, actual = 109784
File 0×0004846b not found in main archive.
Deleting file 0×0004846b
Failed to load file 0×0004846b⁰

Bump… not being able to play is getting to me.

Hate to bump this again but it’s been two days now that I can’t play or really even diagnose the issue since it requires a hard reboot to even get rid of the hung launcher.

I’m having the same issue as of this evening – working fine earlier today..

I had an issue with AVG failing to load earlier which may be related, I uninstalled that and installed an alternative AV program and now GW2 won’t load..

update – a couple of re-boots later and it’s now working…

Still keeps crashing. Was fine from the headstart until yesterday’s patch!

Been able to make it work by setting the compatibility flag to “Windows XP SP3”…

Remember to “Run as Administrator”. This mostly occur when im not running as admin.

Tjynde.1604:

Remember to “Run as Administrator”. This mostly occur when im not running as admin.

Thanks for the tip, but running it as admin also gives the same crash. Only running it in XP SP3 compat mode seems to work at the moment. Only got this issue since the latest patch, it was running fine since the headstart.

VirtualBS.3165:

Been able to make it work by setting the compatibility flag to “Windows XP SP3”…

This makes the launcher work, but gets me a black screen upon entering the game.

Hey guys, since there’s no official response on this yet I’d like to share a tip with you that I’ve found semi-decent enough to get playing again.

I was looking around at other threads about launcher issues and it seems like doing the following works sometimes, and you need another computer you can get the launcher to run on (doesn’t matter if you can really play the game on it):

1 ) If the launcher is stuck currently, reboot.
2) Try moving or renaming your Local.dat (mine is in Documents\Guild Wars 2) before you do the next steps.
3) Run the launcher on the other computer, and log in (don’t hit Play or launch the game).
4) Run the launcher on your normal computer, it will sometimes magically not freeze up (if it doesn’t work, reboot and start with Step 1 again).

This method is tedious and annoying but once you get it working you can leave the game up and just make sure not to get AFK booted and you shouldn’t have to relog for hours, but keep in mind if you close the game after doing this, it will freeze again when you run the launcher again (and you’ll have to use this method over again).

Thanks for that info! I deleted all my “Documents\Guild Wars 2” content and the “local.dat” on the GW2 game folder and the launcher immediately started working again, without needing the admin flag or XP SP3 compat flag!

Interestingly, after deleting my Local.dat my GPU stopped overheating (in single-GPU mode, a GTX 590) so I was able to turn on SLI again, and imagine my surprise when I looked at my FPS and I’m now doing 150FPS without supersampling and 80FPS with (and I used to get 35-45FPS without and like half that with, but granted that was only one GPU, and it would still run hot), and neither overheat me with both GPUs running (supersampling used to get the card up to almost 100C with only one).

In any case, deleting the Local.dat only unfroze my launcher the one time, after that I still had to log in from another computer first, but your mileage may vary.

I’ve entered and exited the game several times now and everything is still working 100%. The delete everything in “Documents\Guild Wars 2” trick really worked! Thanks again!

That’s good news, I think I’ll test it more tonight myself.

So everyone, new guide is

• Rename/move your Local.dat in Documents\Guild Wars 2 and try running the launcher. If it freezes and can’t be closed, try restarting and doing it again (the process has to be ended in order to move/rename/delete Local.dat).

And if the “local.dat” fix above doesn’t completely solve your problems:

• Delete everything inside “Documents\Guild Wars 2”

The game will take care of rebuilding any needed files.

Just an update, this work around no longer appears to do anything for me, the launcher simply freezes 100% of the time.

Hope ANet can fix this, it’s been a few days and multiple threads with the same issue but no response.

This is now happening to me also. Cannot get past the initial launcher screen. Freezes and task manager cannot stop it. Only a computer restart will allow another attempt.

Renaming local.dat, deleting the whole directory, running in Xp sp3 mode, run as admin all make zero difference.

@Pyles, XP compatibility mode definitely won’t work (make sure it’s off).

In any case, try deleting local.dat (Documents\Guild Wars 2) as well as Gw2.tmp in your installation folder. I was testing it this morning and it seemed like both things had to happen for it to work, as just deleting the local.dat was no longer doing anything for me either. Also, sometimes it just doesn’t work and it freezes anyway. Usually I just restart and try again (or if you can kill the process, do that, but it never ends for me) and it eventually works, though sometimes it takes dozens of restarts.

I really wish we could get some response from ANet on this, having to restart my computer a dozen times just to get the launcher to work is driving me batty.

So basically from what I’ve found, it seems to be random when it works. I often have to just restart 15-20 times to get it to finally load the launcher.

I even installed the update to the launcher via copying it from my other computer which doesn’t have the issue and it still freezes up most of the time.

I’m begining to wonder if this is hardware/driver related given how few people are suffering this problem as i now have another program which refuses to run and/or not responding to taskmanager kill requests.

I’m going to do a full OS reinstall tonight as its no longer just GW2.

I’ve ruled out virus/malware through some pretty intensive testing using multiple programs.

One thing which is probably nothing is at some stage i’ve allowed nVidia sata drivers to replace the win7 ones. Back running XP it hated the Intel SSD + nVidia sata driver combo.

Too many questions not enough answers and testing yet.

@Ashley, sure thing, I’ll post one soon after I get home from work (~2 hours from now).

You can also try the trick to download the “gw2setup.exe” from your account page, rename it to “gw2.exe” and drop it in the gw2 folder overwriting the “gw2.exe” there. It will automatically update to the latest “gw2.exe” when run. Also remember to delete all local.dat copies and anything inside the “Documents\Guild Wars 2” before you run it.

Mine is still working 100% from 2 days ago, thankfully!

I’ve attached the output of the Game Advisor tests.

There have been reports of launcher issues with nVidia SLI, try disabling it for gw2.exe and see if it works!

Just tried turning off SLI, no effect.

Stuck at 0kb nearly 15gig in dat file tried launching just stuck, fed up now like this for days. Refund I think

I have discovered what was causing this for me.
I had a faulty SATA port on my MB which my DVD was plugged into.
It appears the SATA controller was filling its underpants anytime it was needed to do anything, which is pretty much everytime anything happens.

I swapped it to a new port and everything again seems normal.

Hardware

In my case, no software or hardware was changed at all between the update that started causing the freezing (between noon and 3PM Pacific on Saturday the 8th). Previous to that launcher patch, it worked fine and never froze, after it, freezes every time.

@Ashley, thanks. I’ll definitely try updating the service pack/install any critical updates. I did try disabling MSE before but it didn’t change the behavior at all.

I’ll report back after I install updates later today.

GW2 was working this morning and now i’m getting this same issue. tried deleting the temp file the local file everything here except logging in on another computer as i dont have access to another one. Turned off all firewalls my computer is an open book right now and i cant get passed the launcher. although task manager still allows me to close it.

Hey guys. I was having the same exact problem. Was playing fine this morning, then at about 5pm est when I tried to load it froze immediately at launch. Tried a couple of things, read a lot on the forums, and hours later finally ran across this thread that had a solution that worked: Game freezes at initial loading screen.

Different issue but the solution still worked for me.

@Ameranth, sadly I already tried that with no effect.

@Ashley, I’ve installed SP1 and tried disabling MSE again, no effect.

I think I’m going to try a clean Windows install this weekend and see if that fixes the issue, as I do have a lot of game/software development junk installed.

Having the same issue. I wasn’t able to play at all, nothing helped, I reinstalled the game, which eventually fixed the issue, albeit temporary as it turns out. Usually it only happens every once in a while that it freezes at the 0 kb screen and fixes itself after a reboot, but right now, nothing helps. No deleting files, no running as administrator (which isn’t a big deal anyway since I’m running XP) and no rebooting helps me fix this.

It’s frustrating, because I know it used to work sometimes, so what the hell changed? I don’t want to reinstall (plus re-download the game) every time this happens, there has to be another way. I’m really waiting for the next patch to fix this, because I know nothing that could solve this. Maybe it’ll fix itself miraculously, I really hope it does, because I really do not want to get a refund for such a great game just because the launcher doesn’t work.

Can’t you, I don’t know, release a way for us to patch without the launcher and let us login in-game instead of in the launcher like we could do in beta? I never had any problems there, so why fix what wasn’t broken? It’d be nice to have a way to skip the launcher entirely, because that’s what’s causing most of my problems with Guild Wars 2.

Oh, and I also used your GameAdvisor thingie which eventually gave me this text file that I’ve attached so that you can look at it, and, hopefully, tell me what’s the issue.

Also, I know the DirectX diagnose might show some weird results, but that’s another problem and I’m telling you before your next post contains any information about me needing to update DirectX, I’m very sure DirectX has nothing to do with this.

Did you guys upgraded your graphic cards driver ?
My GC drivers are 12.8 and i have this problem everytime im on 12.6, 12.4 etc. but as soon as i upgrade to 12.8, the launcher run correctly

Okay, so, I’ve done something new. I went ahead and completely reinstalled my NVIDIA graphic card driver, like, completely removed it, and installed the newest one again, and that seems to have worked, for now.

I’m glad this has been fixed by myself, and I’m really hoping this is the last time that error happened to me. I’d still appreciate if there wasn’t this lousy launcher, because the game would be much better without it.

Yeah like Ryou said this is what you should try :

Uninstall your driver through control panel
Go to Computer, Right click on it, Properties, Device manager, then right click on your card and select uninstall
Download Driver sweeper
Download CC cleaner
Boot in safemode
unistall your remaining graphic cards file with Driver sweeper
Clean registry with CC cleaner
Boot in normal mode
Download your last graphic card driver, install them

Then it should works

Thanks guys, I’ll be trying this as soon as I get home and post back with the results.

I really hate it when people use “Driver Finding Utilities”. Quit being lazy and go to the manufacturer’s website for your drivers.

If you are cleaning the registry with CCleaner, make sure you create a backup of the registry before performing operations. Accidents happen.

I have a Nvidia Graphics card and I have updated a few weeks back to 304.79 and it still freezes when loading then the 0 comes up for 0kb. Wait 10 min and you get the error and then finally yoiu can load in and play. Logging off the game sometimes freezes to. I have only found quick fixes but no perm solution sadly. Keep this thread going please

So, in order to fix this on my machine, my laptop, and my fiance’s, I had to right click on the shortcut for the game, go to properties, and add -dx9single to the end of the target.

In other words, this is my target:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -dx9single

It will vary upon where you have your client installed.

My guess is that there’s a problem with DirectX11 and how it interacts with the launcher using the driver. Reason being is that when I performed what was recommended above, it fixed it temporarily. In other words, uninstalling the graphics driver, running ccleaner, and then reinstalling the driver solved it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a permanent fix. It started freezing again a day or two later. I’m not having any other problems with other games or programs. I’ve tried multiple drivers, at least for my nvidia card and no matter which one I used, I had the same problem.

I’m pretty sure the issue I was having, was the same. The launcher opens, sometimes works, but most of the time it just freezes. If I try dragging it around, I get a black box around the launcher and then I can force close it.

Hope this helps others, but doing this will force the client to run in DirectX9. I don’t know if this game even has a DX10 or 11 client.

have the same issue here, tried all the suggested steps and am in the proccess of a complete reinstall of the game. my system specs are:
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz (12 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 32768MB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 4GB (driver set: 306.97)
Operation System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Motherboard: Intel Corporation DX79TO

I know its not my system as no other game has issues (that includes alphas and betas). Something screwed up is going on since the last time I was on if multiple people are having the same issue.

Coming back for Halloween after like a month, and this still hasn’t been fixed.

I’m really amazed.