White non-removable empty fullscreen window when closing game

I have had 2 accounts for around 5 years now, which I use (one of a time of course) on the same PC. As the launcher has failed to cater to people with more than one account for 6 years and does not offer a selection box for what account to log in, I made desktop links in the following fashion for each of the accounts:

"C:\Program Files\GW2-64\Gw2-64.exe" -autologin -email -password -nopatchui

I believe this solution was posted by someone years ago in the old forums. While I do have to start the launcher normally whenever there is something to patch, as long as there is no change to the game these desktop links work fine. Now the problem:

Often but not always, when closing the game an "Unnamed" fullscreen window with nothing in it but a white background will pop up and will not go away ever, nor will it let you close itself by selecting "close window" at its taskbar icon. The only way I know of to get rid of it is to open the process manager and manually end the GW2-64 process.

Is there any way to stop this weird white window to appear when closing the game or is it just something I have to endure for using the custom desktop links with -autologin?

Found the reason / a workaround myself so sharing it here.What I described happens when choosing to end the game with "Log out" but does not happen when choosing "Exit to desktop". So I no longer use "Log out" ever, and no longer get the white fullscreen thingy.

The blank screen when using -nopatchui is because it can't authenticate; either your email/password is wrong or your IP has changed. They unfortunately don't show any of the login errors when using -nopatchui, so you'll need to keep this in mind.

In this case, the -email and -password options are censored after launching, so when the game is relaunched, it'll fail to login. Logging out with -nopatchui isn't really supported in the first place, since it just restarts the game. This will also happen if you try to patch using that shortcut.

That is not what the post was about. I wrote that I know that I have to run the launcher each time there is a patch (because otherwise the login will fail like you describe). My post was about a white screen when exiting the game though, not when trying to start it.

Perhaps, this is the pertinent sentence in the post: Logging out with -nopatchui isn't really supported in the first place, since it just restarts the game.

Um yes I agree, as a standalone post this one sentence would have made sense to me. But the "either your email/password is wrong or your IP has changed" part in connection with starting the second paragraph with "In this case" makes it confusing. At least to me it seems that "this case" refered to email/password being wrong or a changed IP, but I guess it was not meant that way.

PS: Having just checked, the quoted sentence still seems off. Choosing "Log out" does not restart the game, it ends the game and restarts the launcher. You will still have to re-enter your email and password (unless you let the launcher save it) and in any case you still have to press the Log In button. So at that point, no credentials are actually needed or expected and the white screen should not appear instead of the launcher.

@"Shikigami.4013" said:PS: Having just checked, the quoted sentence still seems off. Choosing "Log out" does not restart the game, it ends the game and restarts the launcher. You will still have to re-enter your email and password (unless you let the launcher save it) and in any case you still have to press the Log In button. So at that point, no credentials are actually needed or expected and the white screen should not appear instead of the launcher.

Logout is meant to take you back to the launcher, but that's only when you're launching the game normally. It can't return to the launcher when you're using the "-email -password -nopatchui" combo because that instructs it to skip the launcher and start the game, which then uses the -email and -password parameters to login. When the login process used by -nopatchui fails, it does nothing, so it just sits on the white screen waiting for it to login, which will never happen.

If this is your shortcut:Gw2-64.exe -autologin -email example@email.com -password password -nopatchui

This is what GW2 launches when you click logout:Gw2-64.exe -autologin -email ***** -password **** -nopatchui -isRelaunch

Thanks for the details. Having the game client remember that it was started with -autologin seems to have no practical application except causing "Log out" to fail.

Even when the game was started with credentials given through the launcher instead of through -autologin, the credentials are not used when pressing "Log out", as the launcher just restarts without having logged you in and without giving you the same credentials that you used before (again, unless you chose to have the launcher remember them in which case they sill don't need to be parsed as argument because they are saved to disk and shown even if you start the launcher for the first time after boot). So why have "Log out" give them to the launcher in the first place, when there are only three possibilities that can happen: a) They aren't used b) They are't needed because saved to disk c) They are censored and useless

I expected the "Log out" button to work the same in every case, no matter how the game was initially started. Removing the start parameters being given by the "Log out" button would fix it, but I don't expect it to happen and I will just keep pressing "Exit to desktop" :)

-autologin has no effect when using -nopatchui. That option basically means click the login button on load, but since -nopatchui bypasses the launcher entirely, it does nothing. The -nopatchui option uses a secondary login method that occurs after the game window is created and exclusively uses the credentials passed to it by the -email and -password options.

The -email and -password parameters weren't always censored after launching; -email was just recently censored. Clicking logout a few years ago would simply restart the game to the character select as expected, but the problem is, any program could easily see your credentials in plain text, and more importantly, it was included in the crash logs that people would post or send to ArenaNet.

I doubt ArenaNet will change anything, but they need to either crash it or show a message when the -nopatchui login fails, because this will also happen when your IP changes, and you might not realize why GW2 is only launching to a white screen.