Every day and sometimes more than once a day Battle.net is updating every version of WoW (six of them) that are installed on my primary system. The version numbers don’t change and on my backup system (which only has retail and classic), it behaves normally.
This behavior has only started recently. I have found articles about resetting the Battle.net download / cache folders, but these articles are very old. Are there up-to-date instructions that might solve this problem? I will assume that any pointers supplied to older articles will validate that the older article is still valid.
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Sounds like something is removing the files being downloaded, like a security app putting them in quarantine.
I checked Kaspersky for any activity and there wasn’t any but I have uninstalled it anyway and that didn’t help. I think its something with the Blizzard update procedure but I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to uninstall / reinstall Battle.net and six versions of World of Warcraft to fix it.
Are you running Bnet in admin mode? Sometimes that can help.
I tried running Battle.net in admin mode and it didn’t help. I have also uninstalled and reinstalled Battle.net which also didn’t help.
I can’t believe that all six versions of World of Warcraft are corrupt but there has got to be some data files somewhere that are.
Why not just one install?
But have fun reverse engineering , against the ToS.
Hi Aiggan
You mention the reinstall of Bnet. Let’s give that another go. A clean uninstall
- Uninstall the Blizzard app
Step 5 must be completed - delete the Battle.net folder
- Next open these temp locations and delete any “Battle.net” and “Blizzard” folders you find in each location.
(Press Windows Key + R and type or copy/paste each of these lines in the Run box separately. Click “OK” afterwards.)
%LOCALAPPDATA%
%APPDATA%
%TEMP%
%PROGRAMDATA%
- Then go ahead and reinstall the app from here:
Afterwards right click the desktop icon then select “Run as Administrator”
I did all that and it still didn’t fix the issue. Is there any kind of debug logging available that might help diagnose this?
I am having the exact same issue. Unable to launch WoW due to constant updates, despite WoW being the only blizzard game I have installed.
I followed all the steps above and have had no luck whatsoever. In fact, following the instructions above has now left me unable to reinstall the battle.net client entirely. I’m being given BLZBNTAGT000008FC when I attempt the reinstall.
Solution?
As Elocin mentions. This entire thread has the looks of a typical antivirus issue. You may want to temporarily uninstall any third party security to test. Disabling never really works - nature of the beast. Windows Defender takes over instantly.
To properly uninstall Antivirus you may need a tool from the vendor’s support site. There is a link on this support page to locate those:
Troubleshooting Security Applications - Blizzard Support (battle.net)
I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Antivirus (in my case). I have the error with and without AV installed and with and without AV disabled. Not to mention that my backup system with the same software installed doesn’t have this problem.
As long as I don’t get disconnected while in a group, it is just annoying. When in a group, it adds 10+ minutes to the time it takes to reconnect because I have to wait for the client to “update”. Much longer if the version I was playing is queued behind the other four updates (I deleted Shadowlands Beta).
Hello Aiggan,
Even though the AV is disabled they do often times have background tasks running. I have seen disabled security programs continue to cause problems with the app at times. An easy way to test this would be to temporarily uninstall any third party security software.
Might also be worth a shot reinstalling the game to a different folder or drive if one is available. This can tell us a lot about the situation.
I am a retired Software Engineer and IT professional and I know how to disable/uninstall an AV program so when I say I disabled/uninstalled it the task was done correctly.
I have uninstalled the PTR, Classic PTR, and Burning Crusade Classic beta. I will reinstall Burning Crusade beta on a different drive.
I am the author/maintainer for Skillet, Skillet-Classic, and will soon have a working version for Burning Crusade Classic.
I’ll report back here if the uninstall / reinstall fixes this problem.
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I’m having the same issue. This just started recently. I have Norton as my AV.
Same deal here. ESET. Has been happening since 9.0.5 dropped. Disabling AV does nothing to alleviate it. Not running anti-virus is not an acceptable solution btw 
Windows Defender takes over antivirus duties automatically whenever a 3rd party antivirus is uninstalled. I have a good number of techy friends. We all use Defender.
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To add in my 2 cents on this coming from a Mac we have this same issue. Turning off auto update at times does solve it however we have to end up changing user permissions on the build.info file (since the permissions are wrong that are being written directly from blizzard) in order to temp fix it. Even then any update that does come out reverts it back to it old permission settings. (easy fix with cron but not the point).
This is with a fresh install of MacOS as well and totally new install of Bnet launcher also. So this is not just a PC issue as even Mac users are having the problem. Granted it is not everyone (I’m one that’s having the issue) yet the fact that it’s still going on months later is rather perplexing. Also just to add I was also having this exact same issue on a windows machine before getting my Mac. So I’ve now seen this same issue within 2 totally separate OS’s. Also there is no AV running (nor did I have one on the windows machine when I was using it as I full disabled Windows Defender and had no other AV running at time as well).
For some I can see this could be an AV issue however that’s not the case for a lot of people. The fact that this is also happening with fresh installs of Windows & MacOS (11.2 - 11.4b1 yes I’ve tried them all now) this seams more like a code error on Blizzards side. The fact that it’s been going on for over a year (was on the windows machine for about a year) and from what I’ve been reading on the Mac side of the forums as well with the only temp fix being forcing a cron to change permissions on a file to stop it it’s rather annoying.
There really should be no reason Windows or Mac that the update gets run every single time you leave the game. Also this used to happen with D3 as well (I’ve not played it on the Mac yet nor do I have it installed atm) but it’s not just WoW.
Sure. That doesn’t make “remove this security feature” a valid answer to the problem. Windows Defender is great, but you also happened to miss the part of my post where I say it’s happening without eset enabled (or even installed for that matter).
Also, I can toss out anecdotal affirmations too. I actually work in the networking field as a software engineer writing automation for our IT security folks. Your “techy friends” are not a valid reason to disable real-time protection scanning in order to make a video game function as it should.
If WoW is tripping AV software it’s because it’s behaving in a way normal applications don’t. Furthermore, you’ve yet to convince me it even is my AV that’s causing it since it has zero logs of it doing anything of the sort and it happens even with it fully disabled (nothing running in process table).
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Where did I say remove it - it is a test - this is a troubleshoot.
If you both are certain that the issue isn’t antivirus we should move on to permissions.
Creating a New Administrator Account - Blizzard Support (battle.net)
Did you try the Clean uninstall I posted above Marroc. That is usually the fix for these sorts of Bnet issues.
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You really should stop selectively quoting things. Your second sentence when you suggest uninstalling (" I have a good number of techy friends. We all use Defender.") implies that you just run with windows defender and that is good enough.
Yes I’ve cleanly reinstalled both wow and battle.net per the support articles. Yes continues to happen with a completely new user account.