Aaaarrrggh!
I believe it was Monday (perhaps Tuesday?) last week, when I discovered I couldn’t log into any of my characters in Dalaran. I kept getting stuck in the loading screen and when I alt+tabbed out of the game, I would find a WoW error waiting for me. It’s a shame that I didn’t think of making a screenshot, but I remember something about not being able to load a file related to Dalaran. I was dumbstruck. Just the day before I had been raiding Icecrown Citadel without problems.
I decided it was a good idea to run the repair tool that comes with World of Warcraft. It quickly came up with a message telling me that World of Warcraft had been seriously damaged and needed to be repaired! It also warned me that if I did so, it would probably mean I had to download and install any patches again. Well, so be it. I let the repair tool do its job and not too long after I was happily downloading the first in a series of patches to get my WoW up to scratch again. This is where the trouble started!
Not long into the update process, I got greeted by a message “Unable to verify common-2.mpq…”, as can be seen on the screenshot at the beginning of this paragraph. I started the updater again, figuring it was just something random. However, I kept getting that message! I ran the updater an additional couple of times, until I broke it completely and got a different message about the file being corrupt.
No big deal, I thought to myself. I’ll just reinstall the game from scratch, surely that’ll work! I found my Wrath of the Lich King DVD and started the installer. Quite soon into the installation process I got another “Unable to verify common-2.mpq…”. Once again, I was dumbstruck. I had never seen this. I shrugged it off and told myself that perhaps I needed to install from the classic cd’s and then incrementally install the expansions. However, when I tried installing the classic discs I got an error message as well and the installer would quit! At this point I started to google and found a lot of people where having this very same issue. Someone said that installing it from the web installer worked for him. Figuring it wouldn’t hurt, I went into my Battle.net account and got the web installer. It seemed to be working initially, until around 22%, where, again, it was unable to verify common-2.mpq. Being completely clueless as to what was going on, I did a last ditch effort to get WoW back on my PC. I took out my laptop, updated the WoW installation and started copying it over.
Yay! So now I had Warcraft on my computer again. However, when I started the game the loading screen where Sindragosa flies into view was tinted with green! That is not supposed to happen! I almost got a bit of a panic attack, because not too long ago one of my graphics cards had been replaced by DELL because it had broken! Amagad, not again! In an attempt to try and fix it, I uninstalled my graphics drivers to try and update them with the latest version. After rebooting my PC, I found it was working very slowly and not at all like it should be! I rebooted my computer again and this time I got a message that windows failed to load. Thankfully Windows repair managed to restore my computer into a working state, but it was clear to me something was dreadfully wrong with my PC at this point. At every reboot, Windows needed to be repaired, or when it didn’t it was just working very, very slowly.
My next move was running hardware tests. Just in case! After running the DELL diagnostics for about, oh I don’t know, 10 hours (at least) I found that the diagnostic tool simply exited without presenting me a list with the test results! I grumbled to myself, but I hoped things were well anyway. I decided to reinstall Windows, get my chipset and graphics drivers installed and then run 3D Mark to test if my graphics card was still in working order.
I installed Windows successfully, installed 3D Mark successfully as well and ran all their tests… successfully. With good hope I started the Wrath of the Lich King installer from the DVD again. And again it was unable to verify common-2.mpq. I tried the web installer again, but no luck. Again, unable to verify common-2.mpq. Being at the end of my wits, I decided to post on the Technical Support forums from World of Warcraft. A Blue poster there told me the cause would likely be a defect on the hard drive, as this was a common cause of the installer being unable to verify mpq files. I refused to believe it! I ran all the tests and I didn’t get any failures there! I had a complete clean Windows installation! It simply could not be my hardware!
Suddenly a community member made a post and suggested that I install another game or run a large file to see what would happen. I didn’t see any harm in that, so I installed Anno 1404. I installed it successfully, I patched it to v1.1 successfully as well and I could play it without problems too. However, when I tried updating it to v1.2 I got a CRC error and the update process couldn’t be completed. At this point I got very suspicious of my hard drive.
I did a chkdsk and it reported a couple of errors as can be seen on the screenshot here. No big deal. I was under the impression chkdsk would be able to either recover bad sectors, or flag them for non-usage, so I scheduled chkdsk to run on the next reboot. Strangely enough, it didn’t find any errors to fix and I found myself in a situation where I literally had no clue what to do next. Eventually I settled for creating a support ticket at DELL with a plea to replace my hard disks.
However, the community member who had advised me earlier, had a new advise for me. He asked if I could install HD Tune and see if it reported any errors. He had heard the Health tab was a very good tool for finding errors that might be missed by other diagnostic tools and tests. When I had installed this application however, the Health tab was empty and stayed empty. Nor could I start any scans from there. I tried running their error scan, but it all showed “green”, in other words: no errors found. Another google search learned me that for the Health tab to work, S.M.A.R.T. Reporting needed to be enabled in the BIOS. I restarted my computer, went into the BIOS, found the S.M.A.R.T. Reporting feature and enabled it. I saved and exited.
At the next reboot my computer immediately came up with another chkdsk. Apparently errors had been found and my disks needed to be scanned. I let it scan and the results scrolled over my screen too fast to clearly make out whether errors had been found and/ or fixed. Figuring I still had nothing to lose, I tried the Wrath of the Lich King DVD installer again. I got past the dreaded common-2.mpq file this time and I actually managed to complete the installation! Hoping that perhaps now my problems had been solved, I started the patching process again. I downloaded all the files and updated without issues!
I have no clue what this S.M.A.R.T. Reporting feature does and how it affects chkdsk, but I’m happy that it seems to have solved my problems! I’m still a little unsure if it has been truly solved, but time will tell!
A little while ago I wrote about spending quality time in Netherstorm. I found a gap in my time this weekend and I settled down for some hardcore grinding action. It wasn’t all that hardcore, but I think I managed to grind roughly 600 insignia’s today! Thankfully there was some football on TV to keep me a little entertained while I was doing this; although I can’t say it was an interesting game, since I can’t even remember which teams were playing!
