[Potential] Solution to freezes and quest lag (8.2.5)

Support Technical Support
1

Hi everyone.

So I’ve replied to some of the threads about this already but I’m not sure if people read replies that are not blue.

I will try keep it short here: it has to do with slow storage drives and log writing.

Go to your installation location and then: "_ retail _"

Open the “Logs” folder.

Find the Hotfix file and right click > Properties

Go to Security>Select Everyone>Edit>check Deny for everything

Hit apply.

Edit: Some people might experience launching the game from the Battlenet client reverts the permission changes. Try launch the game from the _retail _folder instead if this solution didn’t work the first time. Make sure the game doesn’t run as administrator and that the battlenet client is not open or running in the background when you want to play. Whenever you start it up, it will want to restore the file permissions to default.

Edit 2: Blizzard has responded to this fix and they do not reccomend using it as it is not the official fix. However, at the current time this seems to be the only workaround so if you do decide to use this for now, they reccomend changing it back once an official fix is released..

It’s also highly recommended to make a copy of your game files before attempting this in case something goes wrong at a later point.

I have had this issue ever since patch 8.2.5 and I think I have narrowed down what is causing the problem for me. Maybe you too. I have not seen this kind of fix being mentioned in any of the threads so if nothing has worked for you, try this and see if it makes any difference.

Might also consider a better storage drive for the future :wink:

14 Likes
2

Just for clarity, are you referring to freezes when accepting and handing in quests? I’ve noticed a very brief freeze when this happens, and it started just after 8.2.5.

3

Yes. And completing world quests, looting chests, killing/looting rares, raid lag/freezes as well.

4 Likes
4

Cool, thanks. I’ll give it a go today and will update with my findings!

5

I agree that the problem probably lies in the hotfix log files. Everything else seems to be correct. I denied everything for my users and my own user. However, I still need to restart wow in order to load it properly

6

Can confirm this works

7

May the Elune Bless you! It worked for me. :smiley: running on win 10, without any addons…on my normal hard drive. Cheers!

8

Dang, still getting freezes :frowning:
First two quests I accepted worked perfectly smooth, so I thought it was going to work. But after that it went back to the short freezing.

9

Also fixed my loading times :blush:

10

Could you try and do the same with the Tooltip file and see if that helps?

And could you also check if the permission changes you did were complete?

You could also try not launching wow from the bnet client but from the _ retail_ folder instead. Make sure it doesn’t run as administrator.

1 Like
11

Thanks for this solution, it works for me and the game is even smoother than before, but if i launch wow from the bnet client it reverts the permission changes back, so better launch it directly from wow folder for now.
Defenetly there is something with this log file causing the lags and hope some game dev read this suggestion

1 Like
12

Aha, this must have happened to me also. They were definitely on deny, but when I checked after closing the game they were all back to allow.

13

Yeah its gone after a reboot :frowning:

14

Tried disabling addons, reinstalling addons, updating drivers, none worked. Used this, instant fix. Thank you.

15

Just a quick update. Running it directly from the retail folder worked after applying the fix in the OP. Didn’t have any freezes after that.
It does reset after using the bnet launcher though, which is going to be a little annoying because obviously you need to receive updates. Fortunately Blizzard have acknowledged the freeze problem and are working on a proper fix, but this is definitely a good temporary solution if the 1 second freezes bum you out.

16

Just thought I’d mention another workaround I did before this one. It’s not perfect and isn’t as smooth as denying writing permissions but its much better than none at all. However, this works only if you’re playing from an external storage drive or have separate drives on your computer like 1 small SSD with your OS and 1 HDD where you keep your games installed. It also requires no actual change like changing a file’s security permissions.

What you can do is create a link between a Logs folder in your installation on your external drive to a folder on your computer instead using the cmd command mklink /J. This works if your computer has a small SSD but you cannot fit wow on it. Moving just the logs folder though takes almost no space at all but does the trick.

So, as an example:
Let’s say you play on an external SSD or HDD through a USB on a Windows 10 system.

Your External Drive is (E:)
And your computer is (C:)

The external drive might have different letter for you like G:\ or F:\ so make sure you know which one you have.

What you will do is:

  1. Move the “Logs” folder from your E:\World of Warcraft\ _retail _\ folder to your desktop. This folder will now be located under C:\Users\UserName\Desktop\Logs.

  2. Make sure there’s no Logs folder in _ retail_ and open cmd (just search cmd)

  3. Type in the following command:

mklink /J “E:\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Logs” “C:\Users\UserName\Desktop\Logs”

Make sure the pathways are correct, otherwise the link will not work. Spaces are also to be included. If your username contains spaces and let’s say your WoW directory is a subfolder of a main folder called “Games” then the path would be:

mklink /J “E:\Games\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Logs” “C:\Users\Your User Name\Desktop\Logs”

  1. Now just hit enter and you’re done.

There should now be a new Logs folder in your wow directory but it appears like a shortcut. Which is basically what it is. The game will detect there’s a folder and read it like normal, but when it attempts to write to it, it will write to the folder that is on your desktop instead which, assuming you have a small SSD as your C:\ , will increase the speed of the writing process and reduce the freezing greatly.

This method requires no changing of file permissions and you can revert the change simply by deleting the new junction folder in your WoW directory and move the old one back whenever you want.

17

From the US forums, by a blue poster:

Hey all,

We are not recommending to make any permission/security changes to files at this time. This is not an official fix.

This issue is considered a high priority bug and our WoW team is working to get it resolved as quickly as they can. Hang tight and we will provide an update once the fix has been released.

Thank you all for the reports and your patience through this.

18

While it is not an official fix the workaround saves my PC health and WoW runs as it should be for someone who is not alpha/beta testing.I don’t want to play Beta For Azeroth and imo so many others who experienced the worst UI bugs, a ton of blizzard lua errors all expansion and now this.Maybe that support should better recommend to not play the game at this time then?
I don’t know, but if that temporary solution was not found by their helpful players/respect to them/ would we see this problem getting fixed at all and when?

P.S: Maybe it is not the right forum place, but those log files in the retail folder affect Classic WoW also, as the bnet client update its installation every time the files permissions were changed.

2 Likes
19

I wrote this for a friend. It’s a windows batch file. Paste into notepad and save to your desktop as wow.bat (make sure it’s not wow.bat.txt!) ie enable explorer to show file extensions.

Running WoW from this .bat file will perform the workaround and will restore the log permissions when you exit, thus not triggering the launcher file check every time.

Change the wowpath variable at the top of the file to match your setup.

@echo off
set wowpath=C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\_retail_
echo ---
echo wowpath : %wowpath%
echo ---
taskkill /F /IM Battle.net.exe /T > nul 2>&1
taskkill /F /IM Agent.exe /T > nul 2>&1
attrib +R "%wowpath%\Logs\Hotfix.log" > nul 2>&1
attrib +R "%wowpath%\Logs\Tooltip.log" > nul 2>&1
start "" /B /WAIT "%wowpath%\Wow.exe"
attrib -R "%wowpath%\Logs\Hotfix.log" > nul 2>&1
attrib -R "%wowpath%\Logs\Tooltip.log" > nul 2>&1
exit
2 Likes
20

This is so frustrating, I mean how this could pass from the PTR it’s so obvious and serious bug that you cannot miss it…

1 Like