Connecting to ArenaNet

Hi all,

I am an IT professional and recently got a new client that mentioned he was having a problem running GW. When we try to install is gets stuck at 0%, Connecting to ArenaNet. I figured, no prob, just open up the ports and we're good. No go. I'm completely stumped, maybe someone here can help.

Some info:
No router, he's connected directly to the modem. I tried putting a router between the comp and the modem just to see if it would change anything. No go.

ISP = Charter

Location: Reno, NV

I've tried it from my house with no issues

He had Kaspersky, so we completely uninstalled it and disabled the Windows firewall, no go.

There is no security software on the system and no firewall, so the ports should be wide open. Modems generally don't block traffic, but I decided to get Charter on the phone just to verify they weren't blocking something. Nothing.

I tried installing Comodo firewall, since I knew it would alert on the EXE running and any inbound/outbound internet traffic. My though was since it would alert, maybe by allowing the application it would open up whatever the problem was. Nope.

I created a new user profile, no change.

On my first visit we submitted a support ticket with GW, but this was last Saturday (5/14) and we haven't heard anything.

He said he's been having this problem for a year. Said it started after he had Fry's install a new graphics card. Dunno why a graphics card would prevent ArenaNet from connecting...

I don't know the exact make/model and specs of the computer, but he's running 32bit Vista, has a dual core processor, 2GB RAM, GeForce 9800GT GPU. That's about all I know off the top of my head.

So, as I said, I'm totally stumped. I spent an hour at his house pouring over forums and trying anything that popped into my head and nothing has worked. Short of reformatting the computer and/or trying to get the modem swapped out I don't know what to do.

Any help would be awesome. Thanks!

Have you run a tracert to the server? Is the connection failing at login or after character selection? Were his characters in American, International, European or one of the Asian districts?

Can he connect to the GW website? How about the Wiki?

had similar problem when i went to a comp with no GFX card. couldn't load character that were in areas other then prophecies. i would check there. try to create a new character in Prophecies.

I've had a couple problems with GW. 1) On my Dell with Energy-Saving 350Watt power supply, I ran GW full screen & couldn't open the wiki site from in game..the pc would overheat. And 2) When I was using Norton on my latest computer (500Watt power supply) I could open wiki from inside the GW game, but, Norton would warn of 100% main chip use. So, maybe check chip heat, should be 50-60C i believe (with no liguid cooling). Also consider getting the video driver updates through Windows Update..Download Other Software switch. Windows offers drivers after a compatibility test have been passed. I suspect the video driver or power supply. Goo luck

Edit. One More thing..gw has a Check Computer switch at Logon..

And just an FYI before you go reformatting anything... ANet's servers are having issues which are affecting some people... so it may actually be a temporary problem.

There's an AT&T bridge a lot of users are having trouble getting past and into ANet's servers. It isn't on the user's end, it isn't on ANet's end, it's on the path between. Some of us have been able to get around this by forcing our IPs to change (I had to change the MAC address on my router since my ISP issues nearly eternal leases).

So this may just be a matter of you hitting that block. That's why I'd suggest doing the tracert - see if it is stalling out as it nears Dallas on an AT&T peer.

am i dumb to suggest that he tries deleting guild wars and reinstalling it?

Thanks all for the reply.

Just to clarify, this is happening during reinstall. He uninstalled it way back when he first started having the problem. We download the client from GW, it unpacks but then gets stuck on connecting to ArenaNet.

I haven't run a tracert. What should I run a tracert on? I don't know the server IP's.

He can connect to GW site, but I'm not sure about the wiki as we never went there.

One other thing, I ran a diag (-diag in shortcut) and the connections are failing. Did I answer my tracert question above? Are those the IP's I should be testing? I tried pinging these, but they all returned no reply.

I don't know how -diag works, but it's probably useful if the results can be put in a text file..Maybe google "guildwars failed install" or"...wont install" & don't forget to check the gw site for instructions. Good luck

Some of the IPs you can try tracert'ing to are:
64.25.39.41 (or .36 or .34)
206.127.147.163 (Euro servers, just for comparison sake)

The problem with a straight up tracert is it doesn't really give a complete picture, so you might also try running the same IPs using PingPlotter. Just Google it for download. Sending PingPlotter logs to [email protected] can also help them diagnose where you're running into trouble... though I suspect from what you've already said that you're running into that same bad AT&T bridge.

You might want to consider assigning a new MAC address to his computer or router, which would then force his ISP to roll a new IP address for him. Strangely, even though I'm definitely in the same close range I was in when I was having massive connectivity issues, the slight change in my own IP address sent me on a different path into ANet's servers and has allowed me to connect again by bypassing that bad AT&T bridge.

This has literally been going on for months. Pretty sure the IT team at ANet has been tearing their hair out trying to get AT&T to fix the problem on their end... unfortunately, peers can be notorious for ignoring such requests endlessly. :-(

I repeatedly ran into that problem, talked to ANet about it, and it came down to the same thing. Wasn't either of our sides, but it was the level 3 servers in texas - may be dallas, it was a while back. After a while it stabilized, but I get rather large ping spikes every so often.

Looks like I'm going to have to dig a lot deeper into this. FYI, he's with Charter not ATT, but Charter may be having the same issues.

I'm going to try to ping / tracert from my computer and his computer. If there's any difference, then something is going on either on his computer or through his internet.

I'll take my laptop to his house and hook it up to his modem... if it works, computer problem - if not, Charter problem.

Also, he has a -diag report on his desktop. If what I mentioned above doesn't work I'll post it here and see if there's anything that can be gained from it.

Maybe it's a corruption of the data file?

Try deleting the .dat file and run the exe (to download all content use -image).

I'm sorry, I thought I'd understood you to say that you were an IT Professional... otherwise I would have been a little more clear:

His carrier is actually irrelevant. ANet's carrier is also irrelevant. When you try to connect to a site or service, like a game, the path your connection takes to the bank of servers on which that site or service is hosted travels "through" other banks of servers. It's like an endless system of repeaters bouncing your connection ever closer to its intended destination.

AT&T is one of the peers which bounces connections from certain areas into the ANet servers in Texas. The connection bounces multiple times, through multiple carriers, when traveling from the point of origin (your house) to the destination (ANet's servers). This is true for everyone. If your connection happens to be bouncing through the broken AT&T servers - something you can only tell by plotting the path of that connection fully - you're not going to be able to connect regardless of who your host is. This is what is happening to your client... it has zero to do with him NOT having AT&T as his host.

The reason I pointed that out is because there were quite a few posts regarding ATT. I understand that things get bounced through ATT servers, but the posts didn't say they had problems with ATT servers, they just said ATT. I just wanted it to be clear who his ISP was in case it mattered at all - apparently it doesn't right now.

Delete what .dat file? The game is completely uninstalled from the machine.

Well, I'm totally out of ideas...

Took my laptop over to his house and it hooked right up, so it's nothing with Charter nor the path to the servers.

Is there some way that the ports could be blocked on the computer end of things beyond what the firewall is doing? There is no security software on the computer, the Windows firewall is completely off, the computer is not using a router (direct to modem)...

The only other thing I can think of is a MAC address problem with the NIC... can anyone think of any reason GW would be blocking him? He wasn't doing anything stupid, so unless they confused him with a hacker or something, I can't think of anything.

I've attached a -diag report, maybe that will help (had to zip it because apparently a whopping 36K is too big).

When you plugged your laptop into his modem, you got a completely different IP address than he had... because your laptop has a different MAC address than his computer.

Try rolling the MAC address of his computer to force a new IP address.

I'll try that. He just had his modem swapped out on Sat though, so he'd have a different IP than before.

Can you recommend an easy way to change the MAC?

Not necessarily - if the default setting of the modem is to use the connected computer's MAC address, that's what the ISP is looking for... not necessarily the MAC of the modem.

I kept the same IP address through three modem changes (my ISP had a bad batch of modems) by broadcasting a set MAC address through my router.

But I've also noticed it varies by equipment/provider, so there's no way for me to be sure about this.

Chances are you can navigate to the HTML interface page of the modem and then tell it to use a MAC address you specify rather than defaulting to his computer's. Damn near everything has a MAC address today... hell, my digital camera has a MAC address and when I was forcing my IP to roll when I was having the same connectivity issue crossing the AT&T bridge, I used that MAC address in my router interface.

You could also have him get a router... the connection would then default to the MAC of the router instead of his computer.

My stance on this when discussing this method on Guru has been to say, "if you don't already know what I'm talking about and how to do it, you probably shouldn't mess with it..."

I'm very surprised that none of this was covered in whatever IT courses you took... it's pretty basic networking stuff - and I am far from being an IT professional.

Makes sense. I've tried putting him between a router and the modem. I always carry one with me for troubleshooting. It still did the same thing. Possibly a different issue like ports not being open, but I wasn't at a point where I wanted to introduce new variables to the equation so I pulled it out.

I haven't been into his modem settings, but I know that the last couple modems I've had from Charter did not allow any sort of MAC settings or anything. Basically just a restart or reset factory defaults button, along with all the information on the modem (signal, logs, etc). I can check his modem, though.

The Pathping command shown in the networkDiag results is giving a "No resources" error, indicating a possible UAC issue. Try disabling UAC and/or run GW as an administrator (using "Run As") and see if GW connects. If not, run the -diag command again and make sure pathping is able to run. (UAC is known to cause connection problems for Vista users.)

If pathping still fails try manually running tracert to those same anet IP addresses.

The "Checking server connectivity" section of the networkDiag results shows port 6112 blocked to most all anet sites (64.25.39.x, 206.127.146/147,x, etc.) as well as port 80 to those same sites (with the exception of 206.127.147.153).

It may be possible that the winsock TCP/IP stack may have become corrupted. If worst comes to worst, you may need to use NETSH to reset the TCP/IP stack or reinstall it. Keep in mind that resetting the TCP/IP stack may miss up certain firewall/security software.

Make sure there is nothing in the host file that could be blocking anet's servers.

Swapping out the NIC may be the best option to rule out possible bad/faulty NIC, but if you speculating a possible IP address ban upstream somewhere you can attempt to change the MAC Address on the current NIC.

If you manage to get proper pathping/tracert results I suggest either posting it here or on Broadband Report's Charter forum. But first mask out your customer's IP address.