trouble installing guild wars

i have just bought Guild Wars and whenever i try to install it from the CD drive or the DVD drive it just says installation failed. this happens no matter where i install it. i am an administrator. can anyone help me? cause i am really pissed off now. thanks
edit - this also happens with the downloadable game client from the website.

Since you gave no info about what kind of computer it is, the os, the hardware etc., it's impossible to help. For all I know, you're trying to install it on a 286 with 2megs of RAM and monochrome ISA graphics.

But, as an offhand guess, have you checked your firewall?

ah sorry about that i was in a hurry im using windows xp, 1024 RAM, using a radeon 9200 series graphics card with the latest drivers. im not sure what other specs you need (im a noob at computer hardware and stuff) so just post what you need.

Quaker... kudos on the ISA reference... I almost peed myself. Nothing like a ten foot ISA card with Sound, Video, Audio, and Fax! lmao

I would roll your system back to the day before you attempted to install GuildWars. What I mean is run a System Restore.

Start
All Programs
Accessories
System Tools
System Restore
Then select the day before you tried to install

This will give you a clean slate... so to speak.

Install latest Direct X

Now, disable your anti-virus.

If you have Norton's anti-virus (I would normally feel bad for you at this point and suggest to rethink your firewall program), temporarily disable that, too.

Install guildwars. This should go through without a hitch. If you have any further problems from there, please post in this thread again.

you are absolutely correct sir. unfortunatly it is not my choice as it is a family computer and my parents know crap about good firewalls. im uninstalling as i type this as it wont let me disable it. why do i need to do system restore anyway?
edit - uninstalling the firewall didnt work
edit - lol bthomehub doesnt let you bypass the router. gg BT. /sarcasm

Okay... first... if something went bad with your previous installs... it could leave some corrupt registry settings on your computer. This could screw with any future install we want to do. Assuming this is so, because it is always safe to do this, we want to start with a clean slate in order to rule that out. Understand? So we roll your system back to the day before you attempted to install guildwars (hence, clean slate). You don't need to uninstall Norton's, I am just not a fan of it, because Norton's has proved time and time again that they screw with many legit programs and have a "Oh Well" attitude when their products are not compatible with third party apps. You just need to disable it temporarily. If you are unsure of how to do that... google (type "disable Norton anti virus firewall" in the search section) w/o the parenthesis. Then read any threads on it.

Norton's firewall will sometimes block your system from downloading and authenticating from any gw server. Later on, when gw installs, we will have to add GW to the exclusions list on the firewall to "Always Allow This Program". Otherwise... errors.

system restore doesnt work. tryed it and it went through allt he restarting the computer and everything, then when it logged in, it said that windows was unable to restore the system because there are no available restore points or something.
edit - here is a screenshot of the error if it helps:

Beginning to sound like a serious problem. You have already ruled out that you are an admin on the system... correct?

You have checked to make sure that you have enough space on your hard drive... correct?

yep. check out the chat in the background. im still an administrator and i got 90GB of HD space left. by chance this couldnt be anything to do with the server being down? could anyone spare 20 minutes reinstalling or installing on a different HD to see if it works?

edit - tried forwarding ports using this guide:
http://www.portforward.com/english/r...Guild_Wars.htm
still doesnt work.

Nope... not a server problem. I was able to begin an install of gw on my laptop.

i was able to get past the bit i cant get past on my laptop so its not the server or the game, but my laptop cant handle guild wars anyway

i downloade this: http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_...ry_cleaner.htm
and it found 1726 problems with my registry settings. i looked through it and i couldnt see anything to do with Guild Wars but could all this be the problem?

Are you using an NTFS file system or a fat32? Sometimes Fat systems don't want to let you install files that are over so many gig...don't remember the exact number.

Also if you run multiple accounts on your PC try logging into the "true" administrators account...

i think its fat32 but i have never had this problem before with other games.

FAT32's absolute limit for file size is 4 binary gigabytes minus one byte (2^32-1 bytes). The clean gw.dat I downloaded recently via the -image command line argument is about 3.5 GB, so depending on how you install the game it's quite possible you could run into the limit.

A friend of mine had only installed the game once right after its original release and had then installed the Factions and Nightfall campaigns, presumably with a lot of patches too. His gw.dat was bloated to more than 3.7 GB with old versions of files and assorted junk, and this was BEFORE they added the GW:EN content.

so how can i get round this? i have never encountered this problem before... am i stuck with a useless game until i get a better computer or something?

*****Only do this if you're 100% sure you want to, if you're not sure get someone who knows about such things to assist you.******

You could always convert your HDD to the NTFS format. It's pretty easy to do, I'm a little rusty on this but I'm sure it's done this way.

START > RUN > Then type CMD and hit enter.

That should bring up the command prompt window. Then you need to type this :-

Convert C: /fs:ntfs

Click yes and allow it to work.

Actually, here's the Microsoft article explaining it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

SUCCESS! i went onto my dads account which is the main administrative account, and the installation worked! i am now a level 2 necromancer thanks for your help

Exactly what I was about to suggest. FAT32 is made of fail. Never trust it. Like... like ever.
/wave NTFS flag