Trying to open a ticket on the Blizzard web site is impossible as it keeps looping you back to the same screens and doesn’t give you a chance to chat or enter the ticket… so, I will try this here:
I played the game just fine yesterday (July 22). Today, I tried to launch from the Battle.net screen (as usual) and I get an error that states that “The retail WoW_loader.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. Try installing the program again…” I tried rebooting my [Windows 11] computer and it didn’t help.
I have reinstalled Warcraft in the past and find that it takes a week to reconfigure all my character settings and it restarts my subscription because I have to relink it again from a free-to-play trial version. I am obviously doing this wrong every time I have to do this stuff.
I know how to uninstall the game but cannot figure out where to re-download the retail version so that I do not have to resubscribe as I still have 5 months on my subscription (paying annually). Can I just do a ‘repair’ on it or pull the .dll file from one of my system backups?
I can help you do this since those settings actually saved on your computer.
This makes me believe you might have several account made and you may not know that you have multiple subscriptions.
Ye and that could be very costly if your repaying for a new account each time.
You should see if you have multiple accounts. You could be paying for more then one account if your always remaking an account from the FREE to Play accounts.
The game and your account are 2 separate entities.
When you install the game, it allows you to access the game client and you log into their online servers.
This is where your account comes in. (The one with 5 months left on subscription)
If you’re having trouble signing in, you don’t need to uninstall the game at all.
It your game client is having issues, then your unable to log in and that could be the problem, but you don’t have to worry about your account since it’s not apart of the install/uninstall process.
Yes absolutely
you can try and repair without uninstalling your wow client. Have you tried the repair option on the desktop battle.net client? It’s a separate program used to install/play most modern blizzard games.
I also checked the support website and it seems to be working just fine if you want to try and create a ticket.
I only have one account (retail) and have double checked that.
I did some searching and found the scan/repair option in the cogwheel next to the launch button. Completed it and nothing changed - I still get the same error.
There are also some old Forum posts indicating that people have had luck creating an exception in their virus checker. I don’t understand how that would be a thing if I have been playing this game since Vanilla and have never had to do that.
So, if I DO need to uninstall (saving my WTF files first) and re-install to game, you are saying that I can use the link for the trial version and it should automatically update when it sees my subscription? As state earlier, I have done that in the past and it eventually tells me to subscribe to the game, even tho my account subscription was still valid.
Note: I have seen many Forum posts about this and most say that uninstall and reinstall does not fix this. Can I just get a new wow_loader.dll file and replace it?
UPDATE…
I got it working.
While working with my virus software (BitDefender) to try to disable it to see if the game runs, I noticed that it needed a software update. Brought the application up to the newest version and now WoW launches.
How random.
Add this to the growing list of how to fix this issue.
