Game Crashing - Do I HAVE to reinstall?

[Verahya]

I've had an ungodly amount of problems with WoW, and Blizzard's tech support has been absolutely no help whatsoever, so I thought I'd post here in case any other users might have some insight or a solution to my current problem.

WoW started crashing about four days ago, giving me this message whenever I logged into my main character:

"ERROR #134 (0x85100086) Fatal Condition
Program: C\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WoW.exe

Failed to read item\objectcomponents\shoulder\rshoulder_plate_horde_d_0200.skin - Data\common.MPQ"


So I looked to tech support to find out what to do. I ran repair.exe which got through 5/14 items and gave me this message:

"The amount of data required to repair World of Warcraft is too large. Please reinstall."

At first it only did it when I tried to play my main character, but today it did it to a second character, and I get the feeling that it will eventually do the same to all the characters I've created.

I've already had other problems with WoW in the last two months. I've already had to reinstall once (maybe twice, I can't recall, there has been so much HASSLE) so my question is this: Is there ANYTHING... ANYTHING at all that I can do to fix this issue without having to do a complete uninstal/reinstall??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


And a personal gripe of mine: Don't you think that Blizzard, being such a lucrative company, could create a game that didn't require COMPLETE reinstall every time something silly goes wrong??

[triplex]

There is probably something wrong with your had drive, or less likely memory.
It seems like the problem lies in your hardware, so don't blame blizzard on that. Usually you wouldn't need to reinstall at all if your hardware was fine. I'm still using the same installation i did at the launch time (or was it in stress test) on one of my comps.

If you got corruption in common.MPQ copy that file from a friend. But if it is problem with your disk starting to malfunction it wont go away for long.

I would advise you to backup all important data from your computer.

[Wintrow]

1. Do a thourough hardware-check. First the RAM (downlaod a bootable CD that'll REALLY check it for you), then the Harddrive. These are the main two suspects.

2. If it comes out clean or after you replaced what's wrong you can avoid a complete reinstall if someone you know is also playing the game. Take an external drive over to their pc and just copy over the game folder. Back home you delete your own and copy over his. Delete his WTF-folder though (technically not needed, but it's a bit of common decency).

[Erinion]

I've just fixed this exact error on a friends laptop. He was getting this problem (+ his laptop restarting randomly). After a fresh install of WoW and XP it was still happening. We pulled the RAM out a replaced it with brand new sodimms. Another XP and WoW installation and all problems have gone away.

I could have spent days checking the hard drive and the RAM - but as RAM is so cheap atm I took the gamble. Job done.

[Clavina]

As other have said, the constant errors are most likely down to a hardware fault. Get that sorted and it should clear things up.