I’m not much of a poster in the WoW forums but wanted to share this with the hopes it helps out folks who are having the same problems I was so please excuse the lack of brevity and any format issues with my rambling here.
So, if you’re at your wit’s end and have nothing else to try, you’re at the bottom of the barrel, here you go.
I am not presenting this as a “fix all” but figured since it worked for me when the, “stuck on initializing” and the “WHOOPS!” errors occured for me at 98% when checking files for updating and then it would restart the whole process again in a perpetual loop.
In my case I had Wrath Classic installed as well as the retail version when this occured for me and I spent some time just brute forcing different things and found the following worked for me…
ON WITH THE CRITSHOW!
Go into the PC Battle.net application/launcher and once you’re at the main screen to your bottom left you’ll see the “Game Version & Account” section with two dropdown boxes stacked where the top one is the game version and the bottom is the account.
Under Live-Classic in the “Version” dropdown box, you’ll want to select each classic version (Lich King Classic/World of Warcraft Classic) and after you click your choice of version, look to the launcher button where you click to start WoW, if the button is not labeled, “Install” then uninstall it using the gear icon next to the button.
NOTE: Do not uninstall the live retail version.
At max you should have to do it twice for each Classic version if you have them installed but it didn’t take long at all for me as when I did this it was only a few hundred megs it had to work with per Classic version.
Now, after you have uninstalled the two WoW Classic versions exit completely out of WoW and the Battle.net launcher making sure to wait for Agent.exe to finish its exit process.
Once WoW and Battle.net are fully exited proceed to uninstall Battle.net from the Windows “Programs and Features” control panel.
Once Battle.net has finished its uninstall and closed out you’ll need to delete or move its current config/cache directories.
NOTE: If you don’t feel hunkydoory about deleting the files simply move them to a folder/directory on your desktop until you’re finished.
The following are the locations of the directories (Windows 10 x64) that need to be moved or deleted after you have uninstalled Battle.net using its uninstaller:
Note: Do not remove/delete the World of Warcraft directory, we will be visiting it here shortly.
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C:\Program Files (x86)\Battle.net
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C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Local\Blizzard Entertainment
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C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Battle.net
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C:\ProgramData\Battle.net
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C:\ProgramData\Blizzard Entertainment\
Once you have those directories moved or deleted navigate to your World of Warcraft game application and data directory which is typically at:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\
Once inside the directory you should see the following:
- World of Warcraft Launcher.exe
- Launcher.db
- .product.db
- .patch.result
- .build.info
- Data/ (directory)
- retail (directory) which has underscores on the front and back ( _ ) which I couldn’t include in the name as the forum parsing takes over.
NOTE: There may be other folders in there which will be addressed here shortly.
Now, move or delete the following files:
- Launcher.db
- .product.db
- .patch.result
- .build.info
You should then be left with
- World of Warcraft Launcher.exe
- Data (directory)
- retail (directory) ( with underscores )
If you have a “_ classic _” directory in there move or delete that as well so that you only have the WoW launcher exe and both the data and retail directories, that’s it.
So, a quick summary before executing the finishing moves here…
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Uninstalled and fully removed file/directory traces of the Classic versions of WoW that were installed.
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Just about fully removed Battle.net except for the registry settings as I didn’t have to do that when all this worked for me so I omitted it but could be something to keep in mind if this doesn’t work for you should you want to try again.
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Removed the databases/configs used for tracking the updating process (apparently).
Now, reinstall Battle.net and get it all setup with finding your install of WoW and once that is done the launcher button you click to “Play” (run) WoW should say “Update”.
Click the “Update” button and see what happens.
If it’s successful you can then reinstall any of the Classic versions you want.
I hope folks have success with this if they are plauged by these problems and I just wanted to share this since it seems to be an AOE of a problem.
Take care all.