guild wars on old computer

my friend is temporarily trying to run gw on his old computer. everything works except one minor issue. half the textures don't appear. is this because he still needs to download them, or is it something else?

It may be that his gw.dat file is corrupted. That is an easy fix, just delete it from your c:/program files/guild wars/gw.dat
OR
His GPU is unable to handle the game.
Try turning all settings down to the lowest, update the drivers, and make sure he has the latest version of directx.

Does it do that as soon as he logs in, or is it after a while of playing?

specs for the old computer???? It may not be capable of rendering those missing textures...