Julian Klewes

The file "WoW.exe" could not be found.

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error fix wow

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Dated 2 years ago

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Read last: March 18, 2010

The file "WoW.exe" could not be found.

First of all, I am no WoW Geek, but this problem fix might be helpful to some people

Error: The file “WoW.exe” could not be found. If this problem persists, you may be able to solve it by uninstalling and then reinstalling the game. If you are unable to correct this problem, please contact Blizzard Technical Support.

Fix: press windows key + r (you will get the “run dialog”), enter “regedit”, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft

Got a value called “install path” there? if so, you can fix the annoying error in 5 seconds.
Change the path there to the folder (including drive pre-fix) where you WoW Install is.

Re-run the patch. You are all done.

Here is an exemplary entry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft]
“GamePath”=”N:\\World of Warcraft\\Launcher.exe”
“InstallPath”=”O:\\World of Warcraft\\”
“UninstallPath”=”C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Blizzard Entertainment\\World of Warcraft\\Uninstall.exe”

People asked me to put up a donate button or something similar, so here it is: if you care to buy me a beer or Red Bull (I drink the Dutch equivalent called Spam Energy), feel free to donate, anything is appreciated!

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2 years ago
December 16th, 2007 4:16 am

Chrunz

Hello, first of thank you for making this. I have had this problem for some time and I must say thank you for making this fix :) Cheers

1 year ago
July 16th, 2008 5:43 am

Austin

Thanks for this. BTW, for users of 64-bit Windows, you need to change “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft” to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft”

1 year ago
July 16th, 2008 10:18 am

jez

@Austin: thanks for your addition, great site you have there!

1 year ago
October 2nd, 2008 4:36 am

Mike

thanks for this quick fix! saved me a lot of frustration.

1 year ago
March 5th, 2009 10:11 am

oops

An other option is to start WoW.exe as administrator. This recreates the registry configuration.

1 year ago
March 5th, 2009 10:17 am

jez

thanks for the contribution flash, much appreciated!

11 months ago
April 15th, 2009 4:46 am

b-rad

thanks a ton I moved the game from my old lappy to my new one and didn’t have those, regvalues at all but after reading this and the blessed Austin’s little x64 tidbit I wrote in the registery values that weren’t there (which I don’t recommend doing unless you know what you’re doing) and everything is peachy now. Thanks again.

11 months ago
April 22nd, 2009 8:02 pm

computerdaves

Wow this guy is stupid, I spent 30 minutes trying to follow his instructions to see how another dummie does it. * talken about me * right, anyways.

Simply search for the patch your installing / failing on, find it copy it paste it to the root of your wow directory then install works 100% everytime.

wow… registry editing for nothen really…

10 months ago
April 23rd, 2009 9:03 am

Whit

I want to thank the author for this wonderful post, but I also want to than Austin for the x64 fix, as that’s what did it for me. Thank you both, this is great info

10 months ago
April 23rd, 2009 11:00 pm

Phaed

Brilliant… saved me having to reinstall the game from scratch when I moved from XP to Vista! And the comment from Austin further up in the comments about 64bit versions was great too!

10 months ago
May 15th, 2009 8:01 pm

Steven

Wow, thanks so much. I just got a new computer and got this error when trying to update my game.

7 months ago
August 5th, 2009 4:06 am

Steve K

thank you thank you thank you.

7 months ago
August 8th, 2009 7:02 am

Vanshade

Quite an old post actually, but I couldn’t keep from thanking you. I was in trouble while trying to install WoW (after deleting the folders) and your post saved me. Thank you very much.

6 months ago
September 1st, 2009 12:25 pm