Greetings fellow earthlings,
Recently I've started farming 'rares' for achievements and decided to write a two-line batch file to automatically delete WoW's cache folder and then start the game.
While nothing particularly spectacular, I realised that there is probably at least one other person out there who might find this useful and so I've posted it here.
For those who do not know, a windows batch file (.bat file extension) is a small plain-text 'script' that can perform basic windows tasks very quickly.
Reasons for deleting your WoW Cache prior to running the game vary, but for me it relates specifically to the 'rares'. Each time WoW 'discovers' a character inside of the game and sends that information to your computer it is saved inside the cache for easy reference the next time you see that NPC. For AddOns like _NPCScan, this can hinder their performance as they will only alert you when an NPC is added to the cache and so will have no effect if you've already seen that NPC before.
To create a batch file:
Right-click inside of an explored folder (or on your desktop) and select 'New > Text Document'. Once the document is created, type in a name (it can be almost anything) and hit enter.
Next, open the file in your preferred plain-text editor (Notepad works well) and add the following two lines:
Code:rmdir /s /q "C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\Cache" START "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe"
Now save and close the document.
For the final step, you need to rename the document from a .txt file type to a .bat. This can be done either by clicking the file twice with a short delay, or 'Right-Click > Rename'.
Now you should have a .bat file that when run, will automatically delete your WoW's Cache folder and then start WoW in 32-bit.
Important Notes:
The file contents shown above are for the default Windows 7 installation of World of Warcraft. If you've installed WoW to a custom location, you'll need to change both file paths to match. To do this, navigate to the folder in windows explorer, then copy the file path out of the address line at the top of the window and paste it between the "" at the end of each line.
If you run WoW in 64-bit, simply add '-64' before the .exe of 'Wow.exe' in the line above.
Code:START "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\Wow-64.exe"
Advanced:
Create a shortcut:
Open Windows Explorer (Right-Click Start > Open Windows Explorer) and navigate to your batch file
Right-click the file > Cut
Navigate to your WoW installation folder > Right-click inside the folder > Paste
Right-click the file > Send to > Desktop (Create shortcut)
(Optional) Rename the new shortcut to something more suitable (Right-click > Rename)
Pin to Taskbar/Start Menu:
Create a shortcut as outlined above
Right-click shortcut > Properties
At the start of the 'Target:' box (selected by default) add 'explorer ' (including the space, but not the ' marks)
The 'Target:' box should look similar to: explorer "C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\Launch.bat"
Click 'Apply' and 'OK'
Right-click > Pin to Taskbar/Start Menu
Note: After pinning a shortcut to the Taskbar or Start Menu, it is safe to delete the original shortcut, as windows makes its own copy.
Change Icon:
Create a shortcut as outlined above
Right-click > Change Icon > Browse to your WoW folder, double-click Wow.exe
Click 'OK'
Click 'Apply' and 'OK'
Troubleshooting:
If you cannot get the batch file to work correctly, double check that you are displaying file extensions. By default, windows hides file extensions (the letters after the . at the end of a file) for common file types. To change this, open windows explorer 'Right-Click Start > Open Windows Explorer > Press 'Alt' > Tools > Folder Options > View > Un-tick 'Hide extensions for known file types''
Hopefully someone else will find this information useful; if you have any issues or questions, feel free to reply to this thread or PM me here on the forums.
Cheers.
-Vin-