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Blazings

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What the..

I played GW today, everything normal. I logged out as usual with just normaly using the "log out" button, followed by the little cross in the top right corner.
I ate, made some homework. Was finished, started up GW and what do I get?

Does anyone had the same problem? Or does anyone knows what the hell went wrong here? I had the time to make a screen, edit it in photoshop as a .JPEG, upload it ánd make this topic and it's not even on 50% =(

~Blazings

01/22/08 12:13

Faarr Seer

Posts: 28
Joined: 01/02/2006
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RE: What the..

it happened to me a while back ever since error message everytime i quit the game duno how to get rid of it but it doesn't eefect my game.

IGN: Prototype, Faarseer, Zicarous
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01/22/08 12:16

Nyoxis

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

I had the time to make a screen, edit it in photoshop as a .JPEG, upload it ánd make this topic and it's not even on 50%

...there is a such a thing as modesty...

Sorry can't help. =)

01/22/08 12:17

Blazings

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RE: What the..

Modesty? =$

01/22/08 12:18

Kanna

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RE: What the..

It happens. Can't say why it happens, but it happens. I've had to repair 10 .dat files in the past 2 weeks. =/

X-Fire = kannasesshou

01/22/08 12:27

mginn82

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

It happens. Can't say why it happens, but it happens. I've had to repair 10 .dat files in the past 2 weeks. =/

I heard it comes from downloading pr0n with viruses and such embedded in the files... *stares pointedly at Kanna* So 10 times in the past 2 weeks eh? ;) j/k

Seriously now...

That sucks man. So far I've been lucky enough not to have to experience this. Have you tried contacting Anet support? They've always been helpful when I've had an issue.

01/22/08 12:57

Blazings

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RE: What the..

Oh well it was only once, if it happens again I'll be sure to contact them. Thanks for the replies though, good to know this isn't something serious ^^

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01/22/08 13:02

Chrisworld

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RE: What the..

I used to get it like 3 or 4 times in a row when the "return to character screen" option first came out. Ever since tho, i've been good.

01/22/08 14:22

XMegidoX

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RE: What the..

ive got that a few times. when it finishes, its exactly the same as normal. its nothing to worry about.

X Megido X - W/Rt - Questionable Tactics [hax]

QUOTE

HackingHippie89

s**t, meg doesnt approve...it blows

If you don't know what you're talking about, ask the questions, don't answer them.

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01/22/08 14:59

Benms

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RE: What the..

It means something in the .dat file is corrupt, so if it keeps happening you have to delete the .dat file and redownload everything; this just happened to me last week and its kind of a pain to download so many files at first, but it hasn't happened since and i was getting it every 2-3 times i tried to start GW. Hope that helps you out.

01/22/08 15:12

XMegidoX

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

you dont have to do this at all. usually, after the time it does this, the next time is fine. it seems to happen somewhat randomly. you dont need to reinstall at all.

X Megido X - W/Rt - Questionable Tactics [hax]

QUOTE

HackingHippie89

s**t, meg doesnt approve...it blows

01/22/08 15:14

RevBudGreen

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RE: What the..

I get this from time to time to. Never have figured out why it happens. But it doesn't effect anything other then to waste your time waiting. Nothing to worry about, it's just annoying.

PETA....IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER

01/22/08 15:57

lani

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RE: What the..

Here's a thought: Corrupted data file needs replacing.

Guild Wars can't initiate defragmentation or disk-scans for you, so when a file gets spread out to thin the system starts getting a new file. Everyone who gets this, I bet it's not the day after their last maintenance run on their PC's, right?

edit: P.s. In Kanna's case it comes from shuffling armor sets around ;-)

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01/22/08 16:02

RevBudGreen

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

Thats a good theory, however I have got it after running maintenence.

PETA....IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER

01/22/08 16:26

Forumite

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

GW.Dat is being moved as one file by my Defragger, however i dont use windows default program, so maybe that's it.
When i first ran the Defrag after a few days when i got my Defrag program, GW.Dat was actually cut in two, one of +- 3GB and the rest was so it displayed, on a different section. Managed to merge it, but i never had problems before with this error.

Then again, every system is different, but this is too widespread to be just one faulty computer, im quite clueless.

01/22/08 16:57

lani

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RE: What the..

Hey, it was just a thought :-)

GW.dat is the file that frequently gets modified, through Anet's infamous streaming content technology. For some reason they choose the single-file solution. This makes it vulnerable to data corruption due to fragmentation for one. The extend of the (possible) problems deriving from that is an unknown.

If this is happening to a lot of people at more or less the same point in time, it's more likely to have a common cause somewhere in that streaming technology.

01/22/08 17:23

BobDown

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RE: What the..

Over the whole time I've been playing GW, I've never had this happen...maybe I'm just lucky?

01/22/08 19:05

Forumite

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

If this is happening to a lot of people at more or less the same point in time, it's more likely to have a common cause somewhere in that streaming technology.

In other words, your saying what im thinking.

A BUG

Still, its only a speculation, but perhaps it has something to do with it, considering alot of people are having it around the same time more or less.

The Single File solution probably is in some way protection against hacking, but first and foremost probably just because the streaming technology otherwise has to trace every little folder and file for GW's, while now its just one complete file it can read.
Still, i dont exactly know what is infact being corrupted, unless you defrag and let your file be dragged around alot, i dont see how some data can be lost.

Dont know, maybe if anyone here that has this error been using defrag programs, did you stop it sometime during defragmentation? Could be that it immediatly cancels, perhaps even with a few MB's from GW's, and then keeps the rest at the old sector.
Could be, could not be, im still more or less clueless.

01/22/08 20:01

mikevm

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RE: What the..

I have encountered this error many times. The first time was on my computer when I first built it. I had a faulty graphics card but it was really hard to tell it was faulty. The only way I could tell it was faulty was because I had missing objects ingame. The objects were replaced with white glowing boxes. This only happened a few times but it was enough to make my computer go haywire. Every time I would load guildwars I would get that repairing archive junk.

solution: RMA'ed the card for a new 1.

Another cause for "repairing data archive" I've encountered was when my friends laptop had a faulty hard drive. At first everything was fine. But slowly repairing data archive became more and more frequent. I took a look in his event log (windows xp) and to my surprise he had hard drive errors all down the list.

hes getting a replacement as I type this.

Hope I helped a little bit. I remember how tough it was for me to solve this problem.

on another note: Thats interesting about the disk defragmenting...I wonder what went through microsofts head when they try to make a disk more efficient, the cut files in half....wheres the logic?

~mikevm

01/22/08 20:03

Forumite

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

on another note: Thats interesting about the disk defragmenting...I wonder what went through microsofts head when they try to make a disk more efficient, the cut files in half....wheres the logic?

Not every Defragmentation program has the knowledge built-in to take an entire file like 4GB's and place it somewhere else.
Although i do expect it from Windows default Defragmenter, it doesn't have to be.

Files that are very large like GW.dat could be moved in two sections, or more, or not moved at all, with perhaps already some fragmentation here and there.
Still doesnt make too much sense though, especially if this starts becoming a trend.

About your white boxes, although perhaps it could be your graphics card, i had the same problem several times when i freshly installed Guild Wars on several computers. For me it wasn't the graphics, it was the Files.
For Example, one person had a huge white cube as head, the pictures where hilarious, but i wondered what was wrong.

So i did the download all files for GW's, after a while or so, it was done. I asked that person to come again, i asked if he did something, he didn't, he had a pair of Antlers from Wintersday, apparantly, that file was missing before i had downloaded everything thus resulting in a massive white cube of randomness.

01/22/08 20:10

lani

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RE: What the..

Good read on what Fragmentation is before you start bashing Microsoft for it. Even though Windows could handle it better, like most things, it's not something that doesn't happen on other Filesystems. I mean, they can't all be as cool as SFS but on Amiga's you got the performance loss, even though the process is easy to renice.

I do think it's a bug of some sort, and yes streaming would all but require a single content file afaik. I think the error can occur "normally" with a fragmented disk, but is now spawned due to something in the streaming.

I wonder what the exact order of events is though.
What happens right before, during and after the error?

01/22/08 20:23

mikevm

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RE: What the..

I see. The only reason why I know for a fact it was my graphics card was because when I replaced it, everything was back to normal.

I had entire toons that where white boxes running around...it is amusing..but then it just gets blatantly annoying lol.

Ontopic: if the problem persists, do the least radical thing first....reinstall guildwars and give it a few days..then move from there.

good luck

01/22/08 20:24

Chrisworld

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RE: What the..

Like i said about the "Logout to Character Select" option in my previous post.... i think that at the time that new feature was corruptiwithout logging off and therefore corrupt data but hey just my thought.

01/22/08 20:34

lani

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RE: What the..

QUOTE

Yeah, starting to think it's some kind of unfinished write operation that fubars things. But that's what makes Anet's technology special, it dares to do updates on the fly because they tackled that issue. There ought to be pretty darn good integrity control on that, but it looks like for some reason, some times incomplete data gets treated as complete and written to the file.

Make any sense? Still speculating.

01/22/08 20:48

Forumite

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RE: What the..

Or the awesome streaming engine just became its own nightmare.
If theres indeed a bug present, the client simply downloads it, like all other clients in due time.
There could be a background update to let the client work faster, a little fix here, who knows. But if theres a wrong code in there, then it can go wrong.

Could be that recently clients have been doing this, and people one by one are getting problems. But we'll see, if it would be so, would be likely they'd get onto that asap, as their entire client network is at risk of instability.

And as for windows, if it was aimed at me, i wasnt bashing windows, but i can browse up nothing wether or not Windows Default Fragmenter can or can not handle big filesizes, such as GW's 4GB.

Besides, if theres something to bash, its the entire Vista spectacle we have all witnessed, but don't bash that alone, im also very aware of the Opensource world following with Fail, that new Leopard OS just got its second update already, after it was plagued by bugs.

So both sides have released an OS that had all its problems brought with it, seems like a trend or something. A trend the public cant laugh about.

01/22/08 20:57

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