Tried this step by step solution by the OP, same as this but with better guidance for the computer illiterate. It worked for me after a frustrating 24 hours.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/80209/found-the-root-cause-of-many-login-issues#latest

I also found running ESO.exe instead of the launcher seems to fix my issue for 209. (Game directory\Game\eso.exe)

The thing is...we, as players, shouldn't be having to come up with our own work around just to log on. And if some of us players are coming up with work arounds before the techs at ZoS do, then that's another issue entirely.

Did this with no improvement. Please help.

When you say "now open notepad as ADMIN and open the host file and add this to the bottom" This is open to interpretation. I have the host file, my pc does not automatically open in a notepad app. Are you saying to open a fresh notepad app as ADMIN and then copy and past the text from the host file then to re-save it to replace the file? Or are you saying to just open the host file and type 54.243.115.56 launcher.bethesda.net to the bottom ? Do I need the # ? Every other line in the host document has a #. What is the opened notepad as admin being used for?

Thanks for the reply. Right, when I right click the hosts file there is no option to open as admin. When I saved a new file it was just a Text Document and not a 'file' application under the .sam. Still no fix the launcher won't patch. I get a 1/4 filled Launcher interface which just hangs. If I use the eso.exe as admin I get a timed out error upon login. What should I do next?

Sadly, I can't tell you. Somehow patching is broken for you. It isn't the 209 error that 100's were getting for 24 hours or so after the patch, which was caused by broken patching servers, and could be fixed by changing the hosts file to point at a working one.

The hosts file thing (that won't help you), you'd want to open notepad as admin, then open the file from there. If you have known file extensions hidden (the default on windows) it'll always save as .txt, you can just edit the name and remove the .txt after showing file extensions. But as I say, it won't help you here.

I was able to help people with that stuff, cos it's networking, and played into my strengths. Understanding the internal launcher/patcher tech isn't, as I don't have information about what it is checking and when. Companies don't like to publish how things work, though it is massively useful for faultfinding, so us players have to piece them together over time.

CaptainOrganic wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. Right, when I right click the hosts file there is no option to open as admin. When I saved a new file it was just a Text Document and not a 'file' application under the .sam. Still no fix the launcher won't patch. I get a 1/4 filled Launcher interface which just hangs. If I use the eso.exe as admin I get a timed out error upon login. What should I do next?

Steps I took to make it work, in Win 8 (should work for 7):

- I don't have a shortcut to notepad, so I used the search box for notepad. On the the appropriate search result, r-click the application to run as admin
- Navigate to the appropriate folder with the hosts file, C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc
- You probably see no files to open, as notepad by default looks only for .txt files. Click the button in the lower right corner of the application window and switch to "all files"
- You should now see a half-dozen files, one of which is the hosts one you are trying to edit

This worked for me yesterday. Perhaps the problem is fixed today.

Still not working after having done that.

This did nothing for my 301.

I believe there is a way to do this with the launcher. it was described in another earlier thread.

the repair function from the launcher does work if used manually. I will explain with the process of shifting the patched NA game over to the EU version without having to download the whole 6GB again. note: this is coming from a version never dowloaded, just copied from the NA version.

FIRST set the laucher to manual update (important)

then you have to just plain copy the file from the depot, game and vo_en directories from the Elder scrolls online directory to the Elder scrolls online EU directory.

remove the .version files from each of those directories.

run the launcher, set it to EU in the options, it will then check your install, and find that it is incomplete, it will ask for a complete install and start to download. press pause. a new .version file is now created. close the launcher.

run the launcher again, it will now not require a full install, but will say you need to repair. if there is content that needs to be patched eg the 70MB patch, the update tab will be there (in the little pull down box in the middle, not the big button to the right) and press that. it will patch the install with current data (only the 70MB). if there is no update option, just use the repair option in that same menu, and it will do an actual proper repair where each file is checked. the big button on the right does NOT do a proper repair.

at the end of this it may still ask for a repair, but the install is good. close off the launcher, find the exe file in the game\client directory and right click it-> send to desktop which will create a shortcut to this file on your desktop. and run the game from that.

this is of a course a lot more work than creating a host file, but it points to the problems associated with the launchers repair function.

got the wrsvc thing figured out, but this fix helped me none