GW2 broken on my windows?

[Dowsey.5481]

Came home from work today after logging in last night and it comes with errors telling me windows can't load this version of gw2 but I have never changed anything. Had to do a full reinstall now just to get the launcher to come on. Not sure whether it will still work tonight but going to have to wait for the download to complete. Anyone else with the same problem before?

[Dowsey.5481]

Also changed all my gw2 desktop items from the usual logo into the plain white paper icon instead.

[Randulf.7614]

Maybe something corrupted after a patch. You can sometimes just do a repair to the client to sort such things rather than fresh install. There are instructions somewhere round here for that

[Dowsey.5481]

I usually have the repair thing ready on hand for this stuff but that also went to the white paper icon and said 'windows can't run this program, it's not compatible'. Decided on doing a full new reinstall of the game but the icon on my screen again is a white paper icon rather than the usual logo. Never had anything as weird as this happen in the over 8 years I've played. Hoping reinstalling it fixes my problem.

[Healix.5819]

When GW2 updates its executable, it temporarily changes its name to Gw2.tmp (or Gw2.### if one already exists). It can fail to rename itself back, so the next time you launch it, Windows tries to start an empty file, which causes the error.

To fix this, simply rename the file back. Alternatively, you can download Gw2Setup.exe and rename it to Gw2.exe to replace it.

[Ashantara.8731]

Did you perform a Windows update recently before this sarted happening?

There have been updates in the past that would corrupt files on your drives, and you had to uninstall them. Perhaps that's the case here. I recall such an update earlier this year, I would get a similar error until I googled and found out which KB from Windows was causing the issue (there were many announcements on several tech websites about it).