Can guildwars run on a linux?

So my computer just crashed. I have no idea what caused it, it just crashed. It sounds like I'm going to get a new operating system, and I can't afford another windows, and linux is cheap/free. Anyway, assuming I have all the necessary hardware requirements, is it possible to mod linux to run pc games, particularly guildwars?

you might want to figure out why it crashed before trying to install another operating system.

also, there's nothing stopping you from reinstalling your old operating system. as long as you have the CD key and installation disk, you can keep on installing it on that one computer.

From what I've read Linux does run GW through Win emulators like Wine. I don't know enough about Linux to be sure that emulator is what people call it. The thing is, as moriz said, is that you need to figure out what the problem is. If you're using the same computer then you may not fix the problem by simply using Linux here on out.

Bad hardware (PSU, motherboard, ram, video card, other add-ons are most common), file system corruption, and viruses are common. I've gone through so many power supplies. The symptom is usually the system shutting down at random times, but can also be that the computer doesn't turn on, turns on only so long, and at the very last stage it can start to burn if you try to turn on the computer too much. Video cards can also be the cause of restarting or the computer not booting properly. My PC bugged me because I thought it was everything but the video card for a while, and video cards aren't cheap to replace either.

File system corruption is sometimes very easy to fix. Sometimes I've had an issue with my master boot record corrupting once in a while. You use a boot disk, and then while in DOS, do C:/fdisk /mbr. Sometimes a Chkdsk is good. Hope you had some kind of virus protection software, because viruses can be very annoying.

I had an issue with ram that I put in my computer because I touched it a little too closely to the ram chips, and that can ruin it. RAM symptoms are wierd. Good luck if you have that issue.

Bad motherboards are a pain in the ass to diagnose. It's the last thing you'll be able to identify as the problem, and it's also what takes the longest to replace.

Anyway, you need to identify your problem, because if you can't fix your windows installation very easily, then maybe you have a hardware problem and it will continue bothering you in other OSes.

From what I've read around (and this is consistent with the state of windows emulators on Linux) it's possible but extremely limited (i.e. lowest resolutions and graphics settings). And even with Wine (which is a good emulator, see http://www.winehq.org/) you still need to own a copy of Windows.

Post-edit: what does a crash of your computer have to do with the OS installed on it? (crash is assumed to be BSOD and if frequent it's probably caused by hardware problems)

Well, crash is very ambiguous. Some people say crash and mean that the computer is completely inoperable. Most people say the computer crashed when it randomly shuts down once, and it also applies to the BSOD.

Having a custom PC becomes a burden at some point.

By crash, I mean that it will give me the manufacturer screen, then a black screen that says something about a disk error and that I should hit ctrl-alt-del to restart. This happens every time I try to start it up. I had norton 360 running, but not windows firewall. I think it might be the hard drive.

make sure you don't have a CD in the drive, or (if it's an old computer) a floppy disk.

If it turns out to be the hard drive, there's nothing from stopping you from installing the same version of Windows, etc, on it. I'm a diehard linux user, but it's not worth it for GW, which would still require a windows installation and not run very well anyway (Direct X isn't pretty either). On my work laptop, I basically keep a partition solely for Win 98, firefox, and GW. It does nicely.

Have someone who knows about pc's look at your computer, judging from your posts, i'm pretty sure you will mess things up.

Here is a constructive Linux post :P. I am a linux user.It all depends on the linux operating system. I'm running suse on my laptop and it runs allot of my games with wine faster than it did on windows(Most ppl forget to enable opengl in wine). Unfortunately I haven't gotten wine to run Guild Wars .. yet. But I understand Cedega got great support for guild wars. Here is a link to their site: http://www.transgaming.com/products/cedega/ in the one screen shot you can actually see a short cut to Guild Wars :P.

Apparently, GW runs in Cedega:
http://cedegawiki.sweetleafstudios.com/wiki/Guild_Wars
http://cedegawiki.sweetleafstudios.c...wars_intro.jpg
http://games.cedega.com/gamesdb//gam...l?game_id=3370

Anyone has first hand experience with this? Does it run smoothly?

I ran the game in Linux, I have a Nvidia Video card if you have an ati it may not be as good. It ran about the same on Linux, I never tried it with cedega but it worked with wine, no tweaks needed.

The game had a random crash at one part, but I believe it's gone now

If you have an ATI card GW may not run at all under Linux, or will run at about half the speed you'd get with a roughly equivalent Nvidia card. ATI hasn't put much effort in their Linux drivers, which isn't really that surprising considering how bad their OpenGL implementation is even on Windows.

That "crash" sounds like something just corrupted the drive's boot sector. If you have a Windows install disc handy just reinstalling the OS should work, assuming the hard drive isn't broken, and if that's the case any OS isn't going to run off it.

This usually means that the computer cannot find an operating system. 75% of the time this can be fixed by simply opening up the machine and unplugging and re-plugging (or just re-seating) the cables on the hard drive and/or where hd cable plugs into the motherboard. While your in there, blow the dust out of the fans and heatsinks and re-seat the rest of the cables while your at it.
Another 10% (or so) of the time, something has happened to cause a change in the BIOS settings which is telling the system to look for an OS on the wrong drive.
The other 15% of the time, the hard drive is toast. However, this means you need a new hard drive, not a new OS - unless, of course, you don't have a copy of your original OS. But if the hard drive is toast, you can't install Linux either.

(And, there is the slight possibility that it's trying to boot a floppy if there's one in the drive. )

GW does run in the latest wine (0.9.51), you can get it from www.winehq.org,
i would use ubuntu as you're linux distro.You will need to setup you're drivers first, wich you should do with envy (just google at it and you will find it)
once you got that right, you can run Guild Wars. go to the place where you stored GW en type in a ternimal: sudo wine Gw.exe

Oh yeah, this thread is for me I couldn't get GW to run on kubuntu with cedega. I've read the whole cedega forum but get it running with ati cards is almost impossible. Anyway, i give it another shot today cause the new ati driver 7.11 supports aiglx as well. Hopefully its gonna be alright this time. Last the time GW said unsupported video card and i could do nothing.

This is what it says on the winehq web site:

wine version 1.0

Install Guild Wars into the default folder C:/Program Files/Guild Wars

Change the desktop icon link into this:
wine "C:/Program Files/Guild Wars/gw.exe" -dx8 -noshaders

you can also paste that into a console and run the game that way.

This is for people who do not have access to the Transgaming Cedega. If you have any questions you can post in this thread.

I suppose a 6-month thread necro is better than a new thread?

This forum is undergoing modernisation (behind the scenes, at present). Stuff like running GW on unsupported OSes will be a part of the new regime, I'm sure

I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean I can't talk about it anymore?

The new "plan"
They will be reorganizing things.

Of course you can still talk about it. Keep in mind, most questions in here can be answered by searching in the tech forum first before posting a new question