Applying Patch for new update locks up Mac at 28% - FIXED / SOLVED

Xoelarasizerer · February 2018

For the entire day (12th feb), after all the maintenance done for the EU megaserver (I am in the UK and thus play on the EU megaserver), my launcher has been freezing at the same spot whilst trying to download and apply the new update.

Every time I have tried, at roughly 28338.45MB remaining of Applying the patch and 28% complete total progress, the launcher always comes to a complete halt and unless I force quit out of the launcher asap, my entire iMac slows to a halt and everything locks up.

I've had to hard reset my Mac twice today from the initial tries, but have attempted this 5 times all with the same result (except for me avoiding my Mac locking up the last 3 times after each of the spots of maintenance today.)

My Mac has never locked up before, it's a 1ish year old iMac (Retina 5k, 27-inch, Late 2015) model with OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 with all the latest updates. I was playing ESO yesterday (the 11th of Feb) and experienced no problems. My Mac has had no signs of any issues at all today when it hasn't been running the Launcher in an attempt to download the update.

Is this an issue I can solve? or is this something on the server's end and out of my power? I've seen nobody else report this issue today amidst all the problems so I'm not sure what to do or what's going on in my case :S any help'd be appreciated.

Xoelarasizerer · February 2018

Attempted to Repair via the Launcher and my Mac locked up on me whilst the launcher was Verifying at 32996.16 MB remaining at 38%.

I haven't a clue what's going on, if anyone else that plays on Mac on the EU servers are having this problem or what. It literally only started and revolves around the Dragon Bones update patch so I have a hard time believing it's on my end..

kamimark · February 2018

The patcher takes a ridiculous amount of CPU and disk I/O. One thing that helps is to pause sync in Dropbox (which watches every filesystem change) and any backup system like Backblaze or Time Machine. Run nothing else, stop your iTunes, Safari, etc., but leave Activity Monitor up so you can see that it's working.

I have an older but similar system, and it just took all morning burning the CPU red.

Vapirko · February 2018

I had no issues with this on my Mac. Went very smoothly. Make sure you’re not running any other programs. I also use a program called Clean My Mac which cleans up old unused files and scripts, generally makes things run more smoothly, you could try that.

Edit: is there a reason you’re running and old OS? Eventually outdated OS will make your after sluggish and since you have a decent machine there’s no reason not to upgrade. At least go to Sierra. High Siera has issues.

Xoelarasizerer · February 2018

After the first attempt, each try after I did with nothing else open and running.

Xoelarasizerer · February 2018

UPDATE: I found the problem and solved it. Details below.

The problem was that the game file eso0043.dat in the depot folder for ESO had somehow at some point last year become corrupted, to the point that attempting to open it (via text edit) would almost lock up my Mac, and I was unable to make a copy of the file (despite the fact that i've had no problems with ESO or updating ESO until yesterday.)

Through messing around with a few (time machine) backups of ESO from other failed troubleshooting attempts, I found this out, it made itself suspicious when my backups were excluding this uncopyable file. Renaming the file (as to not perma-delete it if I was wrong about it due to it being uncopyable) I found the repair process succeed and create a new eso0043.dat file that could be opened and copied like the others.

And thus the game has successfully downloaded and I managed to launch and sign in (loading times feel slightly longer on my, but it's a new ESO update so not too surprised... that and first loaded into Stormhaven so duh) My uneducated guess was the corrupted eso0043.dat file was locking up the launcher and entire system because of whatever the update was trying to possibly add to it and when the repair process was trying to verify it.

I'm considering this problem solved. Thanks for reading and thanks to kamimark and Vapirko for the suggestions/advice.