I have checked all the recommendations at
and I’m not expecting an answer here. Just logging it for anyone else who may find similar problems.
About a week ago, I first started experiencing the problem. I had made no changes or updates to my PC around that time.
The symptom I first noticed was that, on logging out of a character, the logout would not complete. All motion stopped on the screen, the music continued, but it would not go back to the character screen. Eventually, the cursor arrow would turn to the spinning circle, and I would get the message World of Warcraft is Not Responding.
I later noticed symptoms of graphical elements missing. The most noticeable was my own character not being shown.In that state, I can move, mount. dismount, fight, interact, all working fine, but my character is invisible to me. Other graphical elements like images in the UI might also be missing.
When I saw a graphic missing, I would try a /reload and I would get the same hang as at a logout.
I went on like this for a few days. Finally I decided to bite the bullet and reset UI.
No change.
/sigh
I have now found that WoW.exe continues running - is shown in Task Manager as running - after I have apparently closed WoW, and this is the root cause. Exit Game from the menu, or Alt-F4 from within the game, appears to close the game, but also leaves the process WoW.exe running.
I have tried running WoW.exe directly, rather than through the Launcher, with no change in the effect.
If I use End Task on WoW.exe from Task Manager after leaving WoW, everything seems to work ok. This is my current state of workaround.