WoW Patch 3.2 Installation Problem

So I sat down last night to play a wee bit of WoW and lo and behold I was told that I needed to apply the newest patch before I could start my game. So, I figured, OK, this patch is supposed to have some good stuff going for it, I may as well get down to it.

So the patch started downloading and installing and I occupied myself for the next twenty minutes, not bad considering how long some patches take to download and apply, with reading the release notes. I won't go in to great detail on them, mainly since I still haven't been able to play the game with the new patch (foresahdowing anyone?), but some stuff looks cool, such as the new mount system; a mount at 20 instead of 30 and an epic at 40, cool, and a 1.5 second cast for a mount instead of 3, even cooler. On the other side of the coin I can now use my Paladins Exorcism in PVP, but the cast time has gone up to 1.5 seconds; that's a pisser since I don't really care all that much for PVP and the instant cast on that powerful spell has made it a mainstay of my heavy artillery, but whatever. Like I said, I still haven't had the chance to try it out.

So 20 minutes later the process fails, gives me a message about being unable to delete and rename files in the update process. No problem, I know what the problem is, since I'm on Windows 7 all I need to do is right click the application, select "Run as administrator', and away we go, so I quit the application and do just that. Another 20 minutes of reading release notes pass, and another failure occurs.

I was actually getting a little concerned by this point as I've been at my computer for over a half hour and I still can't log in to WoW; did I mention that you can't access the servers until you apply the patch? 'Cause yeah, you need to get the patch applied before they'll let you play. No biggie though, I've done tech support for a living, and I'm currently working in QA for a software developer, I can work through this. I went straight to the .exe and launched it with a right click and 'Run As....' directly, confident in the success to come.

By this time I had read all the release notes and was bored by them so I picked up my book to pass the time, I started reading Moby Dick recently if you care, interesting read. I was approaching the church service by the time I got the error message again. Well, now it was time to get serious and do what no man likes to do, read the message and possible take the advice of others. They suggested a Repair using the built in tool, so away we go. It ran and checked the previous patches and said everything was good. To save time I'll now just detail the next steps, each ending with a "Unable to apply patch" message:

- Google search, they recommended what i tried already.

- Delete the existing Patch.mpq and run repair. This was my favorite step of the evening as it required me to re-download all the previously downloaded and working patches to get back to the point of failure.

- Download 3.2 patch files separately, drop in containing folder and attempt start up again.

- Run Background loader as administrator.

- Another Google search, nothing new in the last hour.

- Run WoW.exe instead of Launcher.exe (as admin).

- Tracked down temp patch files and ran installer as admin.

- Copy WoW installation folder from second partition onto main partition, hoping that it was a rights issue.

- Rinse and repeat all steps above with new installation.

By this time 4 hours had passed, and I had done nothing but curse the name Blizzard and read the first 100 pages of Moby Dick. So I figured fine, I'll go to bed, get my 6 hours sleep and start again tomorrow.

Lying in bed, grinding my teeth, contemplating failure points in this process I came up with an idea, is it my AV? Side note here, I've been using ESET NOD32 for several years and have loved it up until I started working in Windows 7. 7 required a new version, which has plagued me with firewall issues, prompting me to reconsider my choice in personal AV, but nothing I had acted on yet. Further contemplation reminded me of another issue I had not mentioned as yet: during my first attempt I got a message from ESET stating that they didn't trust the files I was downloading. I clicked past the message, turned off the AV and proceeded with my evening. Could this be the root of the problems? I though no, how could it? I even rebooted the computer and turned off the firewall and main process before continuing the update, so how could it?

The next morning I thought, lets put this to rest. I turned off all start up processes, using the good old msconfig and 'Disable start up items' option. After the reboot I started the process again and went for my shower. Later, all shiny, clean, and optimistic, I checked again and was unsure if I should feel vindicated in my initial instincts or contemplate swearing a little louder and harsher (not an easy thing to accomplish at this point) as I found the same error message waiting for me, 'Unable to apply patch'. Obvioulsy the AV wasn't at fault.

As I got dressed, yes I was naked in the last part of the story, stick that in your pipe and smoke it, I considered things a bit more. True, I hadn't allowed the process to start, but maybe it's sneakier than that. I went back in my fort, now fully dressed, and decided to remove the AV software altogether. Hell, I wanted a new one anyway! Half way through the uninstall I received an error stating that the process was locked and would need to be closed before removal could continue. I opened the Task Manager and saw nothing, what the hell? I clicked the 'Show all processes" button and what do I see running? Nothing less than ekern.exe, the ESET core process! Those bastards got it in anyway. Stopped it, finished the uninstall, and ran the patch one last time.

Let me tell you, I've never been a strong man when it comes to the necessities in life, things like Video Games, Boobies, and Potato Chips , so how I was able to walk away from that glowing 'PLAY' button after the patch installed I'll never know; all I know is I did.

That's right, it was the the AV, keeping the process from finishing by quarantining and locking down the patch files ,even after i told it not too. Not Blizzard, god bless 'em, not Microsoft, thanks Bill, and not even my outdated hardware, running at specs it was never meant to, yay me, it was some 3rd party piece of shit software I should have cleaned out months ago.

I still don't know if I should give a war cry in triumph or cry in frustration at all of it. Maybe I'll give it some thought tonight while riding my epic mount in WoW.