Extremely Long Load Times

I have been having this problem for about a couple of weeks.

When I move from one town to another town , or go from in town to outside of town, or outside of town into a town.. if there is an update for that area, the files download quickly like they should.. but they take 45 seconds and sometimes more to decompress a single file. that isn't to bad if there is only one file to update, but if there is, for example 250 files .. umm that is a LOONNGGG time.

I have tried uninstalling the game and defragging the hard drive. Then reinstalling.. that didn't fix the problem.. so i uninstalled again, then deleted the directory.. then reinstalled but to a different directory.. (it used to be in program files\guild wars .. now it's just in c:\guild wars)

that didn't help ..

so i tried disabling my norton antivirus 2006. nope that didn't help . i reinabled that program and disabled norton personal firewall 2006, that helped one time, but then the problem showed back up .. so i tried disabling my tivo software.. that helped once.. but next time the problem showed back up .. *by the way .. when i say i disable the program. what i mean is that, when the computer is booted up, i hit control-alt-delete and choose a program and click end process... except with the anti virus and the personal firewall, there i just open the program and click disable.

now i also tried disabling the software for my logitech harmony remote control... that didn't help.

now i've tried disabling the anti-virus AND the firewall at the same time. that helped. but here is the question... will it solve the problem if i try a reboot?.. ..

rebooting ..

ok i just tried disabling the firewall and the antivirus. hmm nope that didn't help .. I'll try disabling those and ending the processes of the programs that i have listed above... and as you could guess. no that didn't help ..

oh yeah I have also tried doing a scan disk . but no errors came back.

my stats are
Pentium 4 - 2.4 GHz
1 gig of ram running at 266 speed
256 meg of video ram on a radeon 9800 pro video card
72 gigs of free hard drive space

i have played this game since Guild Wars Prophecies came out. i played in the open event before you could buy the full version of the game in the store. I didn't make any changes that I know of.. I do download the updates for windows and for nortons..

I also thought .. hmm maybe there was a change in guild wars and i need newer video drivers (i couldn't see how .. but..) I downloaded the newest drivers and .. no that didn't help either.

Help! please .. i love guild wars .. I can play other games without any problems.. other games that I play are..
Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour
Command and Conquer 3
Halo
None of those games have problems.
I can listen to music and watch videos on itunes.

again please help
Andrew

Firstly, what exactly is the problem? Downloading and decompressing files is normal if you haven't ran the -image switch.

Secondly, get rid of that bloated piece of crapware called Norton!

I think I have a solution to this problem. First, right click your GW icon. Go to properties. Choose the shortcut tab, then find the target (i.e. "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" ). Copy your target, including the " ". Then go to start, run. Paste the target into the run menu. Add a space after " then hyphen image. (i.e. "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image). Click ok and expect a big file (about 27,000 files). I recommend you to do this at a time when you're out or eating dinner. download time depends on your internet speed.

...and what did I say above?

Azagoth sorry if i wasn't clear. the problem is that decompressing files takes a looonnnggg time. 30 seconds to 1 minute to decompress a single file. This is not normal. It used to be, download the updated files at about 3 megs a second and decompress a single file in 3 seconds. maybe 5 seconds for a really big one.

now it is taking the same amount of time to download (which is good) . but 30 seconds to a minute to decompress a single file (and if i have to decompress 300 files) ... let's see some quick math here. if i am decompressing the files at a rate of 1 every 30 seconds or 2 every minute. umm that means 150 minutes to decompress those files.. that seems a little excessive.

my question and problem is . why is it taking so long to decompress the files?


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sandman --
that will help on getting the new files (new as in what is new at that exact moment) but it won't help the next time there is an update. because i'll be in a game and not realize that there is an update for an area and wind up sitting there for several minutes as the others wonder where am i. don't get me wrong . yes i will do what you say.. but i'm curious . as i said before why is it taking so long to decompress the files when a couple of weeks ago it was super fast.

For some folks, GW seems to max out the CPU, and for whatever reason, not enough CPU time seems to be allocated to the decompression task. I'm not really sure if that's the issue, but it seems like that's the case. And, it only seems to affect certain systems, which means it's probably a difficult problem to track down, being system dependent.

Until anet can improve this, the best solution seems to be for you to pre-download and decompress the files using -image as suggested. This seems to have a 100% success rate.

BTW, -image *will* solve your problem. You'll never get new files until you restart the client. After you get the in-game notice of a new update, exit and run a shortcut set up with the -image command, and then re-enter the game after that.

Download "lifeguard tools" from the western digital website and do a full system scan. Once it had found and repaired the bad sectors on my HD the game run way way way better. If this doesnt work try swapping in a different HD and see if you have the same problems.

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.

Get Rid of Norton and go with Avast.
I get the same problem sometimes, it's amount of people on at the time and your connection at the time. The only thing you can do without killing your computer is decompress and deal with it.