GW and Windows 7

Hey folks, I don't post much these days as I'm busy with real life but I have a problem I'm hoping some of you might no the answer to.

I recently built a new pc and loaded windows 7 on it. Got GW installed and went to and command line parameters that I used in XP and the target line is grayed out. I am unable to add any command line parameters. So does anyone know what I have to do to be able to add parameters to the target line? Any help would be appreciated.

That's odd. Maybe you're not running with admin privileges? All I can think of.

I should be running with admin privleges, I'm the only user on the PC.

How do I check that to make sure I am?

Im not sure the Admin is the culprit here, My GW doesnt have admin status and ive never changed anything in compatibility yet i can add command lines.

I remember doing something to my Company Of Heroes because the default desktop shortcut wouldnt let me add -dev command...im pretty sure i just erased the shortcut,navigated to the folder it installed in and made a new shortcut.

...but that was awhile ago!

EDIT: Right click the desktop icon>Properties>Compatibility
Then the Privilege Level at the bottom,Check it.

Let me provide a little more info for clarity. Keep in mind win7 is new to me. I've messed with it all of, oh, one hour maybe.

When I click on the start button and go to "All Programs" I find a folder in there labeled "Games" and within that folder are two Guild Wars, "Guild Wars" & "Guild Wars: Factions". I have no idea where there are two GW's listed. I only installed it the one time, using the installed from guildwars.com.

It's those shortcuts that I wanted to change the parameters on, but for what ever reason, as stated in my OP, the target line is grayed out.

As an update, I found a temporary solution by creating a new shortcut on my desktop. Surprisingly, I was able to add the command line parameters there since it was not grayed out.

Something else weird happened when I added those parameters. I got a popup that said I would need to allow admin rights to make the change. There was a button with "Continue" so I clicked that. I have no idea what that popup was all about but I've had it more than once. Also had it happen when I was installing some drivers.

Okay, I tried looking at the shortcut in the "Games" folder under the start menu. No compatibility tab there. I then when and looked at the new shortcut I created on my desk. Ah hah! There's a compatibility tab. And under "Privilege Level", "Run as an Administrator" is NOT checked. Should that be checked or no?

Keep in mind I'm also going to be installing GW Multilauncher later today so how do I get that working. I saw a thread that mentioned giving GW Multilaunch admin rights or something along those lines. I'll have to go back and read the thread again.

Yes on your new shortcut Check the Administrator Privilege Level box. Then your Command lines should stick.

As for your "Games folder" thats the exact folder Win7 installed Company of Heroes in and created the desktop shortcut from which i could not add command lines to.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" is the default folder guild wars will install too
If you go to that path and find the "Gw" icon that is listed as an Application,thats the one id make a desktop shortcut of.

(more on Multilaunch when we get there )

Windows 7 removed the ability to customize the shortcuts in the games folder (the start menu one), unlike in Vista.

You can add command line arguments to the shortcuts that you manually created.

If you want to place that shortcut in the games folder, then just drag and drop the shortcut into the folder.

Command lines are sticking even without changing it.

I wonder if I can replace that shortcut with the new one I made that is currently on my desktop and be able to change parameters then. hmm

I rarely install programs in the default folders except the OS related stuff (drivers, etc.). Generally everything else goes in folders which I try to organize by application type, i.e. games, utilities, modelling, etc. Those are normally also on a secondary drive.

Ah.... OK, these are Win7 trying to be smart and auto-generating some (buggy) shortcuts to things it thinks are games. Those ones don't behave normally (or properly). Your real shortcut should be in Programs\Guild Wars as always. Or you can go find gw.exe and manually create a shortcut.

What Cthon said. The Games folder isn't really a folder at all, it's more of a library in the same way as Music, Documents and Videos.

No, I'll think you'll find that your Guild Wars is installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars - assuming you stuck with defaults and sensibly chose the 64 bit version of Win 7.

Okay, got it up and running and found the weird shortcuts that MS win7 created. They are now in the trash

Got gw multilauncher to work as well. Have my 3 accounts logged in atm. Only question about gw multilauncher. I keep getting an error message every time I use one of the shortcuts I created "Requested registry access is not allowed. Please run launcher as administrator". Okay, so that has me confused as I think I am the administrator but apparently I'm not? So who is if I'm the only user??? And how do I fix GW Multilauncher so I stop getting that error message.

Oh, one thing. After I click okay on the error message, GW Multilaunch starts up just fine. But I don't want to have to click on that dumb button every time I launch one of my GW accounts.

Thanks for all the help so far. Hope you all have some ideas about GW Multilauncher.

Just because you are on the administrator account doesn't mean programs are being run as admin (I really hope you understand this for some reason there are people who no matter how many times i explain it just dont get it). This requires right clicking on it and hitting run as admin or setting it to always run as admin in the properties.

Well let's see if I understand and if not, hopefully you can explain a little further.

Just because I'm logged in as admin, the programs I'm running don't necessarily have admin rights when they run. In order to not have the "needs admin blah, blah", the program can be set to have admin rights. Which should avoid the whole admin popup. Is that right?

So, which types of programs should be set to run as admin?

Yes, that is correct.

in my opinion only set them to run as admin if there is an issue if you don't run them as admin (i.e. what you are getting with gw multi-launch)

I would of course recommend NOT giving it to programs of questionable origins.

And that admin privilege gets set on the properties of the executables (that's the only place I've seen it so far) or does it sometimes get set somewhere else?

btw, thanks to everyone for their help

yes in the properties of the executable.

12chars.....

You'll notice my admin box isn't ticked - may well have something to do with me never installing games in Program Files

Although you seem to have gotten things working, I'll just add this for others reading this thread.
Basically, what you want to do is to ignore the icons in the nearly useless "Games" folder, and create your own desktop icon.
First, find "gw.exe" using Windows Explorer. The default location would be "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars" or, for 64-bit Windows, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars".
Then, right-click on gw.exe and choose Send To >> Desktop (Create Shortcut).

That new desktop shortcut will have a standard "Target" line that you can edit to add commands.