1 patch = many problems. please help.

[erealmz]

First of all heres what I did that started this whole mess. Using task manager in windows vista, I shutdown windows explorer because it took up memory that i needed to play wow. So I guess with windows explorer down, blizzard background downloader was not running. (thats what i figured)

So when this latest patch came out today 4-14-09, I had to download it this morning before i could play. After it was finished downloading and i loaded the game up, i tried logging into my account and it said something like "couldnt varify game" or something. I dont remember.

so I clicked on the link and it took me to some outdated help site that told me i needed to scan my computer for viruses, download the latest patches, and if none of that worked, uninstall and reinstall wow completely.

Nothing worked so i tried to uninstall wow. It told me that it couldnt find certain files and couldnt uninstall. Yet when i went to try and find the game, it was gone.

I tried to find a place to download and reinstall it online because i do not own a physical copy of the game, it was an online download. I couldnt find anything on how to download and reinstall it.

So then i used windows system restore feature. after restoring my system, wow was back where it should have been.

Now when i try to play it, it tells me "failed to open archive interface.MPQ" SO i tried to repair the game using the blizzard repair utility and it says "world of warcraft is seriously damaged and needs to be reverted to an earlier version of the game" I click ok. then it says "amount of data required to repair world of warcraft is too large. please reinstall"

What do I do now? Would it work if i just reinstall everything from scratch? If so, how do i go about it since i bought the game online and do not have a CD to install from? Please help.

[surodat]

I shutdown windows explorer because it took up memory that i needed to play wow.

O.o

What?

I would suggest reinstalling the game from scratch. I seems like you've done quite a lot to it.

[erealmz]

yeah but how do i reinstall the game? I dont own a physical copy. It was an online download.

[surodat]

1. Go to worldofwarcraft.com
2. Log into your account
3. Download the Client
4. Use up all your bandwidth

[rgirty]

After it was finished downloading and i loaded the game up, i tried logging into my account and it said something like "couldnt varify game" or something

The error as best as you put it, was due to your client being 3.1 but the servers were not updated as of that point.

If you would have simply waited until the servers came back up (they aren't online yet btw, which means even at this very minute if you had a working wow installation you couldn't play) everything would have been fine.

Your best course of action at this point is to re-install wow.

This is why:

Windows system restore does not restore files from what I recall.

It only restores settings.

Thus, the data you need to play the game isn't there.

Start installing your cd's again.

By the time you are done and patched, the servers STILL might not be up lol, which means you really lost no playtime at all.

The best thing to do, from my experience is to backup your wow directory. Once I get my wow the way i want it, i simply burn it to dvd or put it on my external backup drive. I can easily restore it then, or slap it on a new machine or easily replace it if i format my machine.

[erealmz]

yeah Im an idiot. I should have waited. But the link they gave me is what screwed it all up. They made it seem like i had a virus or something and thats why i ended up uninstalling the game to begin with. They really should fix it so it says the servers arent updated yet that way people don't have to go through all this unneeded nonesense.

I contacted tech support and they sent me an email with a link to install the whole game online. Once everything is fixed, im going to take your advice and back it up on a dvd so this doesnt happen again. Thanks for the replies.

[Mazhulsage]

Honestly, why would you ever close Explorer? Also... If you had thought about it before going to bed or whatever it was you were doing... You could've just gone to task manager again and opened Explorer.exe that way it would be back to normal, you wouldn't have had to go through all of this.

[erealmz]

So get this.. Earlier this morning I tried clicking on an email link sent to me from blizzard. It was a link to download the wow installer. In order to do that though, I had to log in to my account. Since all hell broke loose in Blizzard HQ, I wasnt able to log in until just about half hour ago. So ive been waiting all but a few hours just to "start" the process of reinstalling wow.

Anyway, after logging in and clicking on the downloader, I clicked "open file location". Turns out there was already a copy of the freaking downloader in the folder from an earlier installation. I didn't even have to wait all these hours because it was there the whole time.

Now i have to wait another 4 hours just for the game to download. Whats the best type of rope to hang myself with?

And if anyone else ever has this problem, tell them that the "installation CD" is a simple downloader probably located in their "downloads" folder. (for anyone who bought the game online of course)