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