Guild wars not detecting gw.dat?

Hey guys im sure this has come up before but I have no idea what to google or what im even looking for.

Basically I had some massive graphical issues with my gw so I decided to try to force the repair system as it didnt come up itself after happening 3 times, I found -repair which I used but now it seems whenever I log in I have to load 10k files and with -image its 60k, so basically looks like I have to download the entire game again.

But when I look in my gw folder there is a gw.dat file that is at 4gb already so im really not sure whats going on, I used the exe from the gw folder instead of desktop incase its trying to download into another folder but it still wants to load a ton.

It would be nice not to have to download it all again (yay for 20kb/s average) any help would be great.

Thanks

Ok a few questions for you
1. what OS you running (xp/vista etc)
2. where is the datfile located - eg in gw main directory
3. Is the datfile protected - rightclick it and see its properties
3.1 Unsure if this applies but do you have admin rights to change dat files setting in above.

Off top of my head - -repair many of us woulkd say dont use , it tends to try and repair the datfile and from my own experience of -repair its shite at doing it.Ive spent an hr before watching gw try and repair its datfile then when restarted it repairs again.

This is the important bit - find the datfile and delete it - yes delete it.
Make a shortcut copy of gw shortcut ( on desktop ) and name it image
Ensure that its a shortcut
Then rightclick the image shortcut and at the end after the gw.exe" add a space then -image.
It should read towards the end .... gw.exe" -image ( remember between the " and - is a space )
Then run the image shortcut - probably best before bed as it takes a while
Finally if you have either a rw dvd or space on hd make a copy of the datfile and keep it safe.This saves a lot of time having to reload datfile and so far even on 2 new computers ive never had to download the whole datfile.

Damn this is becoming a wall of text.
-image i feel is better because it does a fresh datfile rather than try and patch up the old one which may be too bad to recover.

Thanks for the reply, im on XP, its in the "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars" folder, as far as I can tell its not protected not really sure what that means and I dont think admin rights apply theres only 1 profile on this PC.

Yeah I didnt really think, I just kinda saw -repair and figured it was obvious what it would do lol, maybe I shouldnt of been so hasty.

So re-downloading it is the only way?

If you rightclick a file and then properties then general tab you will see at bottom a checkbox under attributes and if its read only then it protected and you need to uncheck it.
I would do that and use -image , gw will keep trying to repair a bad datfile even if its just repaired it from my own experiance.ALso having the datfile from -image tends to load up everything from last update and maps etc will load a lot quicker and no waiting for the background downloads

Ah ok no its not read only.

Thanks for your help .