Addon Button missing.
 

so i don't have to type everything again:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...Id=21254575514

blizzard poster is pretty useless. i've given up on him. anyone have any ideas?.. playing without addons makes me want to strangle puppies.

Can we get a screenshot of the inside of an addon's folder in your Interface\AddOns directory (showing file path/directory, etc., too)?

It sounds like somehow you managed to move your addons folder if all of a sudden its done that. Or corrupted the files. But if your friends copy still has the same problem it is really weird.

I believe you said its been a day since you last played with no problems. Maybe recapping what you did computer and wow wise may help. Maybe something happened during one of those tasks.

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...aok/Addons.jpg
looks fine to me, and it doesn't make sense because i literally didn't touch ANYTHING.

i copied the folders and downloaded all new addons, as well as making a new interface and addons folder.
it was about a week ago now, but i can't remember doing anything special. chances are i was playing wow, stopped, got on the next day and started playing again. lol. but yeah. what. the. ****. i almost wanna pull the trigger and reformat my laptop here.. but i think my windows xp cd is a few states over.

Why is your addons folder in Documents and Settings?

I used to play wow off my external hd, but after i started moving around with my laptop a lot more and the fact that i had a lot of room on my laptop i just moved it here.. happened to land in the my docs folder. had been playing out of that folder for about a month.

I see the error, rename the "Addons" folder to "AddOns" :)

i'm about to check that, i figured it wouldn't have mattered but i'll try it out anyway.

also, it might be around the time that the addons stopped working, i changed my folder settings to always show file extensions. not sure what that could have done, if anything.

edit: alas, no dice, changed the O and still no button.

Try delete(or backup) the interface folder, and play the game for 5 minutes and close it down the correct way. Now the interface/addons folder should be created, and try putting an addon there, ONLY ONE, and see if it works. Then start adding more addons slowly.

Are you sure when you launch WoW you are running the version in your MyDocuments folder? Or are you using a shortcut to perhaps another installed version?

Go into the WoW folder where you are installing the addons and then start WoW by clicking on the wow.exe there.

The capitalization does not make a difference, actually.

Make sure you have a path like: WoW\Interface\AddOns\*ADDONS HERE*

This is almost always a very minor and "d'oh!" mistake. Hope you can figure it out.

Some operating systems are case-sensitive. Windows, generally, is not, though.

OP: take wow out of your My Documents folder and put it in its own directory (C:\Games\World of Warcraft or even C:\World of Warcraft) or just back into Program Files (there won't be any security permissions issues because you're on XP). While WoW should work from anywhere (including your external hard drive or a thumb drive) just try moving it from that location to see if it helps.


First, though, do what Maul said. Make sure you don't have two copies of WoW installed.


Also, to expand on what nightcracker said, try changing some options in Interface Options, visiting the auction house, bank, etc.

i've done this before, after the blue post told me to 'reinstall the addons' (whatever that means) i moved my interface folder out of the wow folder, hopped on my alt, exited, and there was no new folder. i made one and downloaded about 7 addons and put em inside. no result.

the shortcut leads to the wow in my docs. not sure why but i have a shortcut right next to the exe. i have tried both.

the screenshot is above, and if it wasn't correct it wouldn't make much sense because as i said before, without tampering with any addons or anything, it went from working one day to gone the next.

moved to program files and .exe still had no addon button.

took another screenshot, this time of my wow folder.. anything look fishy?
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...ddonfolder.jpg

this is how my directory is
in windows 7

C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft

addons
C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns

ect.. it has problems if you dont install it into a directory, documents is not a
good place.

The only cause of the AddOn button not appearing in my experience is due to the addons not being installed correctly somehow.

I see you have ACP in that folder. So, we will use that as an example.

1. Do a search for wow.exe. You should only have one occurence but let us know what it comes up with.

2. The addon folder structure is as follows:
\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\ACP\ACP.toc
\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\ACP\ACP.lua

You can replace the ACP in the toc line with any other addon you have. The folder containing the toc has to have the same name as the toc file name as far as I am aware.

3. Unless they have changed things since 3.1 removing or renaming the interface folder and then running wow into the game itself then exiting out all the way should create a folder. If you are not seeing that it might be because it is creating that folder somewhere else. Hopefully step 1 will identify that other folder. If not do a search for Blizzard_ArenaUI.pub which is one of the automatically created blizzard files and let us know what turns up with that search.

Sandoggg

The problem might be you're not running on the official servers.
realmlist.wtf and WSL.ini are (according to searches) files used in conjunction with private servers.

Private servers are not discussed here.

Or it could be ... first item when looking for WSL.ini with Bing search. Now knowing realmlist.wtf is in all wow folders regardless of offcial / unofficial use, the question is could WSL.ini be anything else. Although the second item was to do with a private server so that would be a possibility too.

changed this a bit earlier, wow directory is now in program files.


yeah, i'm really confused why it wouldn't have made a new interface folder when i moved the other one out.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...aok/search.jpg



interesting.. well, i haven't played any private servers in a few summers, and i've been solely on live for the past year, so that isn't it.


can't talk much now but i'll be back in 20 mins or so.

I know I shouldn't suggest opening Register Editor as you can mess things up if you don't know what you are doing but it would be interesting to check.

Hit your Start menu, Run and enter "regedit". Now find the following

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft

Are GamePath and InstallPath correct?

They should say something like C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Launcher.exe and C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\

(Default) (value not set)
GamePath c:\wow\Launcher.exe
Installpath c:\wow\

looks normal? although that's not where my directory is now.

I'd say change it to where it is now. Just double click and enter the correct paths and try starting the game?

Also, latest screenshot shows your WoW in your program files... are your addons in that interface folder in that same directory?

changed it to where it is in program files. wow.exe didn't work but i'll try from the launcher.exe? maybe that'll help.
edit: didn't work either

yes, the whole directory is in program files now.

Now that you have moved it, try the repair tool again.

This might be a stretch, but is the file named "bad.piece" still there? Try deleting that.

no go =\ perhaps an unrelated matter but still stupid.

sent it to the recycling bin but still no dice. i'm on and playing now but no addon menu.

Then change them to where they do exist now. Otherwise, you're running WoW from the old location.

could you clarify what 'them' are? sorry, i don't quite understand.

Fixed it.

For anyone curious, because it's still baffling to me, here's what I did.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...57248&sid=1#14

There's some great irony in that wireless network.

Sandoggg.

Forgive me for bringing my reply over here but I almost never check that forum it's in. If I put my replies here I can keep track of it easier :)

If your addons are operating out of C:\WINDOWS\system32\ then I'm afraid something's been royally screwed up with your registry somewhere.

I'm thinking that could be a default location for paths in the registry that are missing (ie part of the folder path doesn't exist any longer)

I'm guessing that if you take one of the addons out of C:\WINDOWS\system32\Interface\Addons and then start the game that particular addon is missing from the Addons screen at the login screen ?

Yeah looks like your Blizzard key's are messed up in the registry.

Honestly it sounds like you've gotten some Virus/ Naughty Little Brother on your computer that's gone and messed up your Registry.

You might want to try a Registry repair. After of course making sure there is only one World of Warcraft installed on your computer.

Normally on a computer with UAC right clicking the wow.exe (*) and running as adminstrator should write out the right keys into the registry.

(*) This is the wow.exe you might have a shortcut too that will launch the wow client when you open it

no problem, i wasn't expecting people to jump to the wow forums to respond.

i downloaded a registry repair program and ran it about 5 times, after the second time though it didn't find anything, but the first couple it found about 400 errors? supposedly fixed them all.

i'm not sure what the next step is, though.

something very annoying, my WTF folder is also in system32, but it's not updating. for instance, usually when you play a character and exit the game, when you load it back up, that char will already be selected on the char screen. with me, it always selects my newest alt, even though i didn't log off the game as him.

another huge issue, new addons don't work. they just don't apply. and if i change any of my addon settings, they just reset when i load up wow again. so. kind of stupid. ideas?

What I would do would be to :

(a) Make sure I only had one world of warcraft installed. Delete all the duplicates. Make sure it's in a folder path I had permissions to write to and that it is not locked.
(b) Go into the registry and delete all keys related to either Blizzard or World of Warcraft.
(c) Make sure the registry is updated with the right keys.

Not sure how to do (b) or (c) on an XP install. I'm primarly a Mac guy with some windows experience.

You could possibly do it with regedit but instead of deleting them just making sure all paths point to where I have a working copy of WOW. I think you can take a back up copy of regedit in one of it's menus I guess.

If I could fiddle with your system remotely via some kinda of VNC screen sharing thing that worked on OS X I would :)

But that's not ideal either as i'm in NZ and we would need to figure out some way where you didn't have to be around or awake for me to go and do the fiddling.

There's also the questionable wisdom of letting some guy fiddle with your computer from the other side of the world O_O

Also, check that the folders that ended up in System32 are not marked read-only. That would by why it doesn't save settings.

Honestly? The easiest way to get this fixed for you, instead of mucking around with the registry is to backup your custom stuff for WoW (interface/WTF/screenshots/etc). Then, uninstall WoW and go through the registry and remove ANYTHING related to it or Blizzard, as well as off your hard drive. Then, and only then, reinstall WoW from scratch. This will allow your files to be in their proper locations and you can choose at that point where to install WoW to (such as C:\Program Files). After you've got WoW installed, launch it once. Then, put your WTF/interface/screenshots folders back (and you can backup the clean versions if you want). Everything should be back to normal at that point.

An online virus scan couldn't hurt things, though I'm wondering if when you moved the WoW folder, if Windows confused itself (especially if you just copied/pasted it into place rather than reinstalling it, since that can royally screw with the paths in the registry and other system files).

changed the wtf and interface folders to be writable but they still don't save...

what does everyone else think of this? it seems liek the most straightforward approach.. kinda leaning on this.

You've tried nearly every trick under the sun so i would agree this is the way to go. Either that or spend several more days trying anything else you can think of.

After you back up your data you don't really have much to lose.

MidgetMage is right. Once you've tried everything you can think of, it's time to use the "simple and straightforward" method. Backup what you wanna save, delete everything else, and reinstall.

Sounds like Microsoft's standard line of "Format and reinstall", even when all that's happening is Solitaire won't run. ;-)

took me a while to wanna try this,
deleted the wow stuff and blizzard stuff from my registry, deleted all the folders in my system32, and deleted the wow folder in my program files. i couldn't uninstall it because it didn't appear on my list of programs.

restarted, ran a virus scanner, downloaded the installer from blizzard and i'm still getting an error message. installer data can't be found..

solved - works for me
 

I have the same problem

the solutions is that now there is a new "_retail_" folder inside wow folder...

inside this folder there is a new "Interface" and "AddOns" folders. So, copy and paste your addons in World of Warcraft/_retail_/Interface/AddOns/

Close the game and login again

works for me