Curse

deadman_uk · Feb 23, 2007, 03:40 AM // 03:40

I use to play just the standard Guildwars many months ago and I had zero problems. I had my sygate firewall on and it didnt cause Guildwars any trouble.

I bought factions and nightfall together 2 weeks ago, and installed them on my dads PC. Played them for a week, then came back home. After downloading the updates for Guildwars, I could play it at my house tool.

I can play guildwars fine, its the loading screen which is the problem. When downloading an area my computer has never loaded before, Guildwars runs extremely slow. It says decompressing then to the bottom right it says how many files are remaining (e.g 210). The files download really slow, and most often my Guildwars game freezes during these loading screens for as long as 2 minutes. During the freezing, the background music loops, my keyboard doesnt work, and I cant do anything but wait. My PC will respond again and the files will download fast for a few seconds, then I get the same freezing again for several more minutes.

I tried loading Lions Arch today for the first time on this computer and it took 5 whole minutes to download! I only have this problem on areas that I havent downloaded. Lions Arch loads in seconds now because the files are already downloaded onto my computer.

Let me tell you, its not my internet speed, I have 4MB cable, it can download a maximum of 500kb/sec so its plenty fast enough. Here is the strange part... if I shut down my sygate firewall, and then attempt to load a new area, Guildwars is fine. Its only when sygate is turned on and running that I get the problems. I have always used sygate firewall and never had a problem before.... why do I have a problem now? Why is sygate causing this?

tijo · Feb 23, 2007, 07:21 PM // 19:21

First thing you should know is that nightfall takes more performance from your computer than factions or prophecies so if you were already close to the minimum requirements for prophecies, your firewall + Guild Wars might be hard to handle for your computer. If you have a decent processor and video card but only 512 mb ram, GW + the firewall might be hard to handle for the ram. If you are not close to minimum reqs, then ignore this.

Secondly, installing updates may cause your firewall to remove GW from the trusted applications which might prevent you from playing or slow download considerably since it's checking every packet the anet servers are sending to you.

Thirdly, if you still get slow downloads add - image to the Guild Wars shortcut and let it run for the night. To do this, right clict on the shortcut and modify the target so it read like this: "C:\Program Files\GUILD WARS\Gw.exe" -image

Just don't forget to remove it after you've downloaded everything because if you don't, as soon as everything is downloaded, the game will close on it's own.

deadman_uk · Feb 25, 2007, 03:37 PM // 15:37

[QUOTE=tijo]First thing you should know is that nightfall takes more performance from your computer than factions or prophecies so if you were already close to the minimum requirements for prophecies, your firewall + Guild Wars might be hard to handle for your computer. If you have a decent processor and video card but only 512 mb ram, GW + the firewall might be hard to handle for the ram. If you are not close to minimum reqs, then ignore this. /QUOTE]

Here are my specs...

AMD Athlon 64bit 3500 Manchester
2GB Corsair TwinX DDR400 PC3200 (CAS 2-3-3-6)
eVGA GeForce 7900GT CO 256MB
ASUS A8N-E nForce 4 Ultra
Western Digital SATA-II 320GB
Western Digital ATA100 160GB
Creative Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeMusic
Windows XP Pro with Service pack 2

I consider this not the best, but a pretty good system. It should be powerful enough to run Nightfall no problem.

It's funny you mentioned the specifications because I remember changing AntiAliasing from 4X to 8XS. This MAY be the cause of the problem. I havent had time to check this out but when I do, I will let you know. Could having AntiAliasing too high cause this? Guildwars looks much better with 8XS AA than 4X. I don't see how this could cause it though, while playing the game, the game is really smooth with no slowdowns. Why would the loading screen slow down because I increased the AntiAliasing? Surely the game doesnt use AntiAliasing during loading....right? If this is the case, it wouldnt explain why disabling my firewall fixes the slow loading times of new areas because 8XS AntiAliasing is still enabled...

Quote:

Secondly, installing updates may cause your firewall to remove GW from the trusted applications which might prevent you from playing or slow download considerably since it's checking every packet the anet servers are sending to you.

Is there anyway to stop this from happening or to permanently add Guildwars to the trusted applications list?

Quote:

Thirdly, if you still get slow downloads add - image to the Guild Wars shortcut and let it run for the night. To do this, right clict on the shortcut and modify the target so it read like this: "C:\Program Files\GUILD WARS\Gw.exe" -image

I dont completely understand this, and it doesnt sound too appealing for me. It would be simplier to just temporarily disable my firewall.

tijo · Feb 25, 2007, 04:04 PM // 16:04

Anti-aliasing doesn't looks like it's a problem for you seeing the system you have is even a bit overkill for GW

.

As for permanently keeping GW in the trusted applications list, to my knowledge there is no way to do this since the update makes GW seem like an entire new program to some firewall after it's downloaded.

There's also a thread on how to use the -image command (which downloads every area and other stuff you havent already downloaded on you PC, forgot to mention in my earlier post :S) and the other -xxxxx commnds on this forum, i've been using using -image for some time now and it works fine but if you don't feel comfortable with it there's no problem with not using it.

As for temporarily disabling your firewall, when mine is down it surely helps running GW. (I have notron internet security)

deadman_uk · Feb 26, 2007, 12:48 AM // 00:48

Ok, I am using the -image command now. Pretty cool but geez this is going to take ages!. I can download at a top speed of 500KB/sec but it's only going at about 100KB/sec. Thats a bit frustrating lol.

EternalTempest · Feb 26, 2007, 05:38 PM // 17:38

I have a pc that runs GW rather well... it's a bug with Sysgate Personal Firewall.

I've come across the same error - when warping (if it has to download files) it chokes on the decompression process. I've confirmed that if the program is loaded (and not blocking anything) it still happens. You have to unload it from memory (kill the process in task manager).

The only way I found a way around it is always use the -image switch.

Tarun · Feb 26, 2007, 07:30 PM // 19:30

Comodo Firewall Pro is a great free alternative you should look into.

deadman_uk · Feb 26, 2007, 08:50 PM // 20:50

I downloaded all the areas now with the -image command thing, thanks all, problem sorted.