Unable to launch game

[Erurainon]

I started playing WoW in Sept of '07 on my laptop which has Vista Home Premium on it. I set it up per suggestions from people here, most notably Cairenn and Kudane, as well as numerous others. Early this year I switched to my desktop - which has XP Pro on it - for more computing power. My desktop developed problems the other day, so I went back to my laptop and installed WotLK via a purchased DVD which I had previously installed and played on my desktop. I downloaded and installed the WotLK client without incident; however I am unable to launch the game at all.

When I click on either the Launcher or the executable icon I briefly see an hourglass on my cursor and then nothing. I've tried right-clicking them and running as Admin with the same result. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Seerah]

Just to be sure, do you still have WoW installed on your laptop?

[Erurainon]

Originally Posted by Seerah Just to be sure, do you still have WoW installed on your laptop?

Yes. In fact, after I could not launch the game initially, I uninstalled/reinstalled the game to include the original WoW, BC and WotLK versions one after the other all in the same folder. I then downloaded/installed the WotLK client. Still could not launch. Did a WoW repair which verifed everything was ok. Still could not launch. Rechecked to ensure the proper ports were enabled. Attempted to launch with all Startup programs disabled to include A/V and firewall. Still can't launch. Don't know what else to try.

[Erurainon]

I've been thinking about this and now wonder if I should have installed the game to the Program Files folder and then copied it over to my Games Files folder? I'm wondering now if that is the only way that things get written to the registry? Reason I'm wondering is I posted for help on this topic over on the WoW Tech forums as well and someone there asked if I had attempted to manually start wow.exe.

I wasn't exactly sure what the poster meant, so I googled on how to manually start an executable and attempted to do so by starting Task Manager and clicking File - New Task (Run), typing in wow.exe, and pressing Ok. A message box popped up that said Windows could not find wow.exe!

So, I'm going to try uninstalling the game (again /sigh) and reinstalling it into the Program Files folder. Will keep you posted as to the results and hope for more suggestions in the meantime.

[Gemini_II]

No registry keys other than the Control Panel entry. You can drag & drop your wow folder almost anywhere.

Couldn't find wow.exe because it's not in your PATH staement. You would have to launch "C:\Program Files Files\World of Warcraft\wow.exe" (or wherever you have it installed).

Check your event log for application errors.

You are running as an Administrator correct?

[Psoewish]

The registry doesn't matter for WoW. Last time I've installed the game was about a month after it was released, I just cut/paste to my external drive whenever I format and it works.