Guild Wars 2

My symptoms seem similar to at least a subset of people here, the launcher updates itself then when it gets to the username/password/autoplay screen it becomes unresponsive. Sometimes not all the UI “furniture” appears on that screen

I use a proxy configuration script (this is so only a very small amount of things actually go through the proxy) – if I disable that (internet options → connections → LAN → untick “use automatic configuration script”) then I can launch gw2. But I don’t want to do that long-term

Gaile Gray.6029:

I have no idea why you’re being “forced fed Outlook Express”

I suspect the user normally uses a web-based email system (gmail or similar) and have never configured or installed an email application. When they click on email hyperlinks, it’s launching their default mail program, which is outlook express.

I ran into the same symptoms the other day. In my case, it turned out to be I was running mumble (voice comms program) and its overlay was interfering. I’d have noticed faster except this was a new build, so EVERYTHING was new.

It’s probably not the most common of reasons, but worth checking out

With regards to memory:

32-bit apps under 32-bit windows can only allocate themselves up to 2 gigs of memory (this is independant of how much RAM you have – you can still allocate 2 gigs of memory if you only have 1 gig of RAM, it’s just your computer will grind to a halt if you try to use it all)
32-bit apps under 64-bit windows can – if they say they can handle it, which GW2 does – allocate up to 4 gigs of memory.

With regards to your RAM:

32-bit consumer windows can only address 4 gigs worth of hardware memory. Peripherals consume some of this – specifically, all your gfx card RAM uses up hardware addresses. With a 2GB card, this means there’s less than 2GB’s worth of 32-bit memory addresses left for the RAM. So three quarters of your RAM is being wasted.
Press control+shift+escape to bring up your task manager, and check the “Physical memory” section – the total there is the amount of usable RAM you have.

I very strongly reccomend installing a 64-bit OS

One part of the destroyer quest that was absolutely terrible was killing the mother (or whatever it was called; the last quest in the chain) in the skritt village. The help text reads something like “stun the mother near the bomb”, when actually what you have to do is “reduce the mother to 0hp anywhere on the map”. I spent about 4 deaths kiting the boss to near the bomb, then unleashed every blind / knockdown / whatever attack I had in an attempt to “stun” it.

This is a case of the help text being too cute for its own good