GW2 Crashes Upon Login

[EdisonTrent]

Before anyone says it, yes I'm aware you can't log in at the moment, there's no beta.

Anyway, I'm posting on behalf of a friend who recently grabbed a beta key and downloaded the client, he's been having several issues from the onset, redownloaded it, and finally managed to get to the login screen by running the game in windowed mode. By trying to log in he gets the usual "no beta" error message, but this also causes the game to crash entirely and give a fatal exception:

nt: *--> Crash <--* 
Fatal Error: Fatal disk-error (1450) on write 
App: Gw2.exe  
Pid: 21020 
Cmdline: -windowed 
BaseAddr: 00400000 
ProgramId: 101 
Build: 14610 
When: 2012-07-13T06:15:15Z 2012-07-12T23:15:15-07:00 
Uptime:   0 days  0:01:00 
Flags: 0

The "Fatal disk-error" part leads me to assume there's a problem with his HDD, but naturally I'd like to make sure before I tell him he needs a new one.

Settings can be changed quite freely, and we've tried simply lowering them all to the absolute minimum; it does nothing to solve the problem.
Has anyone else been unable to get past the login screen in the past few betas? How did you go about fixing it? Any help is appreciated, as the next beta isn't too far away; I'd like him to be able to play before then.

[Edge-]

Have him contact their support team/make a post in the official forums.

Trying a fresh install might fix the problem if he doesn't mind re-downloading it.

[EdisonTrent]

Have him contact their support team/make a post in the official forums.

Trying a fresh install might fix the problem if he doesn't mind re-downloading it.

Thanks, but we've already tried redownloading it; still had the same issue until we tried windowed. Not sure if he'd want to redownload it again, but I suppose the option is there.
As for support, aren't the official forums locked between beta periods? Either way, I'll get him to send something to the support team, hopefully something comes of it.

[grandpab]

Thanks, but we've already tried redownloading it; still had the same issue until we tried windowed. Not sure if he'd want to redownload it again, but I suppose the option is there.
As for support, aren't the official forums locked between beta periods? Either way, I'll get him to send something to the support team, hopefully something comes of it.

This is the only way to contact support afaik http://support.guildwars2.com/app/ask/

[Lucky_]

"Fatal disk error on write" suggests that you either have some relevant files set to read only, or you have problems with your disk.

[Bluedragonwolf]

Where is he downloading it to? (Program Files, Desktop, a temp folder?...) I've had some issues crop up because I didn't look where something downloaded to and trying to run it from where it was either crashed it, stopped it from running or did other various crazy errors (I typically save things to a desktop file on initial downloads for large files nowadays specifically for this reason).

The client is fairly large (and getting larger) so there's always a chance of corruption happening on the download; hence, redownloading... OR, if you live close to each other, you can attempt to transfer the GW2.dat file from your computer directly over to his.

Personally, if his d/l speeds are decent, I would say, erase the current one off the drive, redownload to say, his desktop, or a file on his desktop; make sure to run the file as admin the first time for sure, and go from there. I can't remember if GW2 has this problem, but some games just do not like operating out of the "Program Files" directory. And it's always possible that some part of the necessary data is in a "hidden" or read only directory or file. This could cause this error. Oh, and make sure when you reinstall/try any fixes to attempt the standard non-windowed first.

If this doesn't fix it; then yeah, you're probably going to have to contact A-net.

[Deleted]

also might want to run a memtest on the ram, as it can corrupt files on install. google memtest for the free program.

[romara]

If he's using Windows 7, have him right-click on the icon and select "Run as Administrator" and see if it still happens.

[EdisonTrent]

To the above, it's already on the desktop and he's been running it as admin, I asked him about the read/write permissions for the first install, but it skipped my mind after he reinstalled, I'll check if they're still as they should be.
Memtest sounds like a pretty good idea too, but he assures me this is the only game that's given him these issues.
He doesn't have another hard-drive, so moving it to one isn't an option unfortunately.

[Lucky_]

You troubleshooting order should look like this:

1. Check if game folder(s) are flagged read only.
2. Check if system drive has enough space for potentially large page file. Try setting it to fixed size if variable/windows managed is selected, with size about 6-10GB.
3. Attempt to move game directory into another directory and run the game again.
4. Check what S.M.A.R.T. says about the disk itself (google gsmartcontrol and take a look at wikipedia on what S.M.A.R.T. is if you don't know what that means).
5. Run a disk check with check surface option.

If you are still experience failures and all above checks out fine, you're looking at something pretty exotic. Your more exotic options are:
1. Move game directory to a flash (usb etc) disk and try running the game.
2. Reinstall windows.
3. Try with another disk.
4. Try testing system RAM.

[Kelesti]

Was having a similar issue, crashed several times trying to patch. But it was saving the progress each time.

[carnifex2005]

There's a new big update today that includes a new launcher (Hopefully we will now be able to switch between characters now without totally logging out). Maybe try downloading again.

[Cig]

As for the above new downloading screen I feel it necessary to mention that when I was downloading today it took me three attempts to complete the download. I kept receiving an error message about losing internet connection causing a failure to properly complete download. I did not minimize the downloader (DLer) on the third successful attempt. The two previous attempts I had minimized the DLer while watching gamebreaker.tv and footage from Youtube.

[EdisonTrent]

An update, just in case anyone else is getting / got this issue; updated to the new launcher and put -useoldlauncher, it crashed after running a few times, but after those few times the issue vanished. Still not sure if the game itself works, but he can now attempt to log in without the game collapsing in on itself.