Whats with the Decompressing

Hello all,

For some reason when i go to a town or a mission in nightfall it takes a really long time to decompress files,now we are not talking 200 files maybe like 100 or sometimes 60 files.It will take me sometimes 30 mins just to get into a town.I am on cable and I do go thru a router which is hardline, sometimes I go straight from the cable modem.

Here is the pc I used:

CPU:Pentium 4 3.6
Memory: 2Gb 533Mhz DDR2 (PC4200)
Video: 8800 GTX 764mb
HD: (2) 74Gb Raptores (10,000 rpm)
Sound: Soundblaster Xfi

If you guys have any suggestions what I do to fix this problem that would be great.

Run a -image once in a while if you don't want to download in the background all the time.

Additionally, there has been a 30+ file update during the last few minutes.

It took me over 7 hours to decompress the latest update of 1000+ files. I had this problem a long time ago and found out that I had the program Free Picture Grab running on startup. This completely locked up the decompression screen. After this new update, and possibly me changing to a NVida 7600GT from a 9800 Pro, my decompression problems have returned.

I was able to "fix" this problem by following your advice. By creating a second shortcut with -image added at the end of the target, it allows me to download and decompress the new files "outside" of the game. After the new shortcut runs the -image, I click on my original Guild Wars shortcut and it runs the game fine.

Now I just need to run the second -image shortcut file any time I see any new files loading (bottom righthand corner on login screen) when I first log into the original Guild Wars shortcut.

I wish Guild Wars would fix this, but at least with this workaround I can still play the game.

It really is working as intended.

The -image switch option allows you to download all the new content instead of getting it in the background as enter into those game areas. Obviously, some updates are "pushed" to us by ANet if they are game fixes or critical new features.

It may seem a pain for some people, especially if they have slower internet and older machines, but after -image has been done it is just a matter of staying caught-up.

I prefer to play without any background downloading because I have a less than perfect net connection.

As for decompression, that can take a long time depending on CPU speed, disk space and fragmentation and amount of RAM. It's juggling an awful lot things during the process.

Note: For about 1 year I had no problems with downloading or decompressing. I have a 3.0GHz P4, 1 Gig ram and DSL connection so my hardware was fine for almost a year before this past week.

Is there a command line that I can enter at the end of my original Guild Wars shortcut target, that tells it NOT to update in the background?

No
Otherwise you can't play the game.
Trust me use thier advice.

I'm having the same problem .. my thread is over here
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10146708

but i agree with a previous poster. My computer was fine from the time that the game (prophecies) came out all the way up until a couple of weeks ago.
I also agree, I wish they would fix guild wars. It makes no sense as to why would it be ok for so long and then suddenly it doesn't work anymore. I'll try adding a -image shortcut.

edit--
actually i'll hold off . just in case someone has a better idea. seeing as i have already re-installed .. well that is a lot of files to decompress *L* and it is a good way to find out if the problem is solved. .. i enter a 'new' area and if the files take forever to decompress then the problem still exists.

Wow, glad I found this thread. One of my guildmates has just encountered this problem starting a couple of weeks ago. The super loooooong decompress/load times when zoning. He says he hasn't added any new software to his PC, and it's a pretty fast rig. I'll get some more details from him to see if there are similarities between the computers (software/hardware) that is causing this.

One temporary work around that he found is to switch to windowed mode before zoning, zone to the next area, then switch back to full screen mode. This makes load time back to the normal couple of seconds. He balked when he tried running with -image and it said 27,000 files remaining.

Do you use any sygate firewall software, in particular, sysgate personal firewall.

That is one thing that will cause this problem, just having it loaded in memory and not checking anything can cause this. Since Sygate was bought out by Norton, I doubt there will be any more updates.

To get around it, I use the -image command for any update.

That's actually quite normal. When you run the -image command, it downloads ALL content for ALL areas and campaigns, regardless if you own them or not. Consequently, you'll sometimes get a large file count, especially if you don't own Factions or Nightfall.

There is no documented way of disabling this, nor do I think such a switch exists.

In this case, it's more likely a 'too many programs for too little memory' issue. This could also be casued by any number of things running in the backgroud; spyware, adware, instant messenger programs, internet browers, programs installed by the computer's manufacturer (i.e. HP or Dell's Service and Support monitoring features). When there's not enough physical memory to go around, the computer has to go and use virtual memory on the hard drive, slowing the whole system down even further.

I can give it a shot (all I can do really); Take a screenshot of the 'Processes' and 'Applications' tabs of the Windows Task Manager (The box that shows up when you press CTRL+ALT+DEL). Run everything you normally would when you play GW, and when you'd experience the slowdown - In all honesty the slowdown is coming on your computer's end, and I'm looking for anything to either rule it out or point to.