Installation problem

[TheHomeButton.4196]

Hey peeps! So I've got a bit of a problem, I just recently decided to come back to GW2 after a break and decided to install the game again, but after reaching 93%, it continues to download but the number of files remaining doesn't decrease, neither does the percentage. I've tried reinstalling and also restarting the launcher, both didn't work. I looked for a solution in the forums and saw a method where I had to add an additional line behind the properties of the .exe, the line was '-assetsrv origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com' cos it seemed to have worked for some, but mine didn't. Any ideas how I can get it downloaded? FYI I'm from Asia but playing in the NA servers previously. Any help is appreciated. :smile:

[Lucio.4190]

That is not easy to troubleshoot without more information. Let's try and get more information. ?What happens if you try to install it on another drive? The information I try to get here is, if the disk might have damaged sectors (or the disk is full?).

I can't remember if the process is "download everything first, then install" or "download and install at the same time".Don't have my computer in front of me, how much space does the setup require?

[TheHomeButton.4196]

Okay so for my disk, I'm using a HDD with 1.09TB free space left, and it's working cos I'm able to install other games on it. The GW2 setup file to download is about 26MB I believe, and the game download size itself I'm not too sure but the required files needed to download is over 100k files at 0%. I would get to about 39k files remaining and have this issue occur. I've also tried to download on my other portable disk which has also 1TB of free space remaining. I've got C and D drives, and my D drive is where I tried to download the game on. I'm unable to download on my C drive cos that drive has got a tiny space.

[Lucio.4190]

Then I guess the disk is not full. ;)Still not sure if the disk has a damaged sector. The exe downloads 15-20 GB in total and if the disk has a damaged sector, it is possible that one piece of any of those downloaded files may want to be saved on that sector.

I was also thinking if someone else knows of a parameter that only downloads the files, without starting to install anything. To be able to install the game offline?Are you on WiFi or connected with a network cable? Do you use a wireless internet connection or a cable (optical or copper)?

When you tried to add -assetsrv origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com, did you have a space between the exe and -assetsrv?Example: gw2setup-64.exe -assetsrv origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com

I made an nslookup on origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com and found the IP:52.202.130.14752.204.88.58

You could try using: gw2setup-64.exe -assetsrv 52.202.130.147Also found an old thread using assetcdn instead of origincdn, and that gave me the following IP-addresses:65.9.54.6365.9.54.16065.9.54.665.9.54.167

You could try any of those, see if it works better?Another suggestion I found was using: -log -image -assetsrv -patchconnections 1Example: gw2setup-64.exe -log -image -assetsrv 65.9.54.63 -patchconnections 1

[TheHomeButton.4196]

For my internet, I'm using an optical ethernet cable. With the asset thingy, I did have a space between them. For the gw2setup-64.exe -assetsrv 52.202.130.147, does that mean that I'll put the line in the GW2 setup instead of the .exe shortcut that it installs during the installation?

[Healix.5819]

The -assetsrv option currently doesn't work / was broken months ago. The alternative is editing your hosts file.

Open notepad as an administrator, then open:C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Add the following line, then save:52.204.88.58 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com

Remove it when you're done.

[TheHomeButton.4196]

Which part of the notepad do I add the line in?

[Healix.5819]

The hosts file is a text file. It should look like this:

# Copyright © 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.## This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.# ...

52.204.88.58 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com

[Lucio.4190]

@TheHomeButton.4196 said:For my internet, I'm using an optical ethernet cable. With the asset thingy, I did have a space between them. For the gw2setup-64.exe -assetsrv 52.202.130.147, does that mean that I'll put the line in the GW2 setup instead of the .exe shortcut that it installs during the installation?

Not sure here, actually. Has it already installed it before, and you've been able to run the game at least once? If you haven't been able to run the game at all yet, I would try to reinstall the game from step 1 again. Running the setup file.Sorry for the confusion, I haven't used the -assetsrv parameter yet and now @Healix.5819 says it's been broken for some months.

So, how about this?

• Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and edit the file hosts

• In that file, just add the row IP-ADDRESS Named-Address. Any of the following examples should work:52.202.130.147 origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com52.204.88.58 origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.63 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.160 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.6 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.167 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com

• Then we could try and run the gw2setup-64.exe to reinstall the game.

• If everything works fine, you could remove that extra row in the host file (or just add a # on the left, to comment it).

I would like to add a short explanation of that file.This file is used to inform the computer (Windows) on how to find a certain address. Every row that starts with a # is like a comment (or a description/instruction) to us. The computer will not use the information on that row.A row that does not start with # is used as an instruction on how to find a certain address.If you add the row: 52.202.130.147 origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com (without any # to the left) it means that if you want to reach the IP Address (52.202.130.147) it possible to use the named address (origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com).So if someone uses origincd... in some context, it will be redirected to that certain IP Address.

[TheHomeButton.4196]

I've played it before, actually reinstalled a couple times last year, but this time this issue occurred. But I'll try the methods above and see how it goes, cos currently it's downloading at only 1MB per second which is unusually slow, good news is the files remaining is decreasing now

[Lucio.4190]

Sounds like we'll get to see after 5 hours. 2 hours left?Fingers crossed!

[TheHomeButton.4196]

Okay so a bit of an update, I was able to redownload at 11mb/s till 93% and the problem occurred again. So I went and did the 52.204.88.58 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com, restarted my launcher and the files remaining are finally decreasing, only issue is that it's downloading at 1mb/s. So I think I should be able to get it fully downloaded really soon. :smile:

[Ashantara.8731]

Do not install the game (or any game) in Program Files. Create a separate Games folder in which to install games, preferably on a non-OS partition.

Delete the Local.dat (%AppData%\Guild Wars 2\Local.dat) and the GW2 temp folders (%Temp% -> all folders starting with gw2cache-{ ).

Rename the GW2 installation file into Gw2-64.exe before you start downloading the game.

[TheHomeButton.4196]

Yeap! Looks like the host file change worked! Managed to fully download the game. And yeah, I have a side folder specifically for games cos my OCD says so XD. While I'm here, just curious, I'm an Asia player playing the NA servers and my ping is about 150-180 ish, but I don't really notice it while playing. But it does bother me a little bit, would moving to a Europe server help? Cos as far as I know there isn't any Asia servers right?

[Lucio.4190]

So.. re-introducing Cantha, but no Asia servers. Isn't that awkward? ;)I've searched through some discussions and this topic has been up a couple of times, even at WoW and Elder Scrolls it seems.https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/458671/which-server-is-best-for-australianshttps://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2tpypn/which_server_should_i_choose_if_i_play_from_se/https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/107985/sea-server-for-heavens-sakeLooks like using the NA Server is slightly better than EU, but still over 200 ms for most players. If you get 150-180 on NA, I guess that's "good".An Asian server could mean more players to Guild Wars 2, but at the same time risk losing many players from NA and EU? The agreement with Steam may be the perfect time to add an Asian server.

Don't forget to remove that row in the host file (or your could just add a # in front of it)."# 52.204.88.58 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com"That will make Windows ignore the redirection. If this problem appear again in future, you could just remove the # again.Recommendation is not to use custom redirections if not needed.

[Healix.5819]

@TheHomeButton.4196 said:While I'm here, just curious, I'm an Asia player playing the NA servers and my ping is about 150-180 ish, but I don't really notice it while playing. But it does bother me a little bit, would moving to a Europe server help?

If you want an idea of what your ping would be like, ping these to compare NA and EU:

ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.comec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com

@Lucio.4190 said:Also found an old thread using assetcdn instead of origincdn

For future reference, assetcdn is your closest patch server mirror and is what the game uses, while origincdn is the primary US patch server. The problem is, the assetcdn servers don't verify their own files, so if they're interrupted while initially caching them, they'll end up hosting partially downloaded files. When the game downloads these files, the checksum will always fail, so it gets stuck infinitely retrying.

[Lucio.4190]

@Healix.5819 said:

@TheHomeButton.4196 said:While I'm here, just curious, I'm an Asia player playing the NA servers and my ping is about 150-180 ish, but I don't really notice it while playing. But it does bother me a little bit, would moving to a Europe server help?

If you want an idea of what your ping would be like, ping these to compare NA and EU:

ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.comec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com

@Lucio.4190 said:Also found an old thread using assetcdn instead of origincdn

For future reference, assetcdn is your closest patch server mirror and is what the game uses, while origincdn is the primary US patch server. The problem is, the assetcdn servers don't verify their own files, so if they're interrupted while initially caching them, they'll end up hosting partially downloaded files. When the game downloads these files, the checksum will always fail, so it gets stuck infinitely retrying.

Thanks! Very useful information.Is there somekind of a Knowledge Base with all this information?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

The Knowledge Base is accessed via the 'Support' link above/below.

Good luck.

[TheHomeButton.4196]

Removed the line in the host file already :smile: and yeah it's really unfortunate there's no dedicated server for the Asia. Although I don't really feel the ping affecting my gameplay, it would've been nice to see it under a 100 XD Doubly unfortunate that I can't transfer my account to Steam too, since it's my main platform where I play all my games, not gonna lose my sword, nah ah! Anyways, thanks for all the help y'all! I really appreciate it. Have a wonderful upcoming new year peeps! :smile:

[Holy Shadow.1672]

On 12/27/2020 at 3:28 PM, Lucio.4190 said:

Not sure here, actually. Has it already installed it before, and you've been able to run the game at least once? If you haven't been able to run the game at all yet, I would try to reinstall the game from step 1 again. Running the setup file.Sorry for the confusion, I haven't used the -assetsrv parameter yet and now @Healix.5819 says it's been broken for some months.

So, how about this?

• Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and edit the file hosts

• In that file, just add the row IP-ADDRESS Named-Address. Any of the following examples should work:52.202.130.147 origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com52.204.88.58 origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.63 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.160 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.6 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com65.9.54.167 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com

• Then we could try and run the gw2setup-64.exe to reinstall the game.

• If everything works fine, you could remove that extra row in the host file (or just add a # on the left, to comment it).

I would like to add a short explanation of that file.This file is used to inform the computer (Windows) on how to find a certain address. Every row that starts with a # is like a comment (or a description/instruction) to us. The computer will not use the information on that row.A row that does not start with # is used as an instruction on how to find a certain address.If you add the row: 52.202.130.147 origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com (without any # to the left) it means that if you want to reach the IP Address (52.202.130.147) it possible to use the named address (origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com).So if someone uses origincd... in some context, it will be redirected to that certain IP Address.

Hi there! I'm experiencing the same problem, but my issue is that I cannot edit that hosts file at all, it won't give me access to making any changes basically?