[Guide] "How to install Swtor Correctly and address Windows 10 issues"

Log into your account on the www.swtor.com website

now select "My Account"

Click "Download Client" ensure to save to your PC.

now open File Location.

Right click the setup.exe and select "Run as Admin".

Very quickly you will have the basics installed and a shortcut will appear on your desktop.

click OK so that you are looking at your desktop now with the shortcut.

Now right click the shortcut and select properties, here you wish to put a tick into "Run as Admin" on the capability tab, click apply/ok.

Run the shortcut now (double click).

Sit back and wait for the client to install then update; you may receive an error or 2 saying something along the lines of "only 1 may run at a time", just click ok and ignore them and continue waiting.

Approximately within a few minutes you should be looking at the nice new Launcher client.

Shut this down NOW.

It is time to address a few firewall issues.

You wish to ensure that -

1) The launcher.exe has inbound and outbound exclusions.
2) The brwc_swtor.exe has inbound and outbound exclusions.

Now quickly right click the Swtor shortcut on your desktop and select "Open File Location".

Right Click the brwc_swtor.exe and select properties, change this to also "Run as Admin" via the compatibility tab, click apply/ok.

Now it is time to Reboot your Machine.

*If your Launcher is Broken here is the link to the "NEW" tool to fix your Launcher

Located Here (*Updated)

Now that you have Rebooted, lets run the Launcher on your Desktop you will get a small confirmation box notifying you that it is running as admin and that it's permissions are elevated, simply click ok.

(*If your using a Laptop ensure that it is plugged in power and Ethernet cable is preferred).

Log In to the Launcher with your Account info

Go make a Sandwich/Coffee/Work on World Peace

*Here you should see the game information is starting to download, ideally you wish to LEAVE IT ALONE until it is done.

Patience is really an asset here and 100% installed and working mint is better then 5% installed and can fart around on the starting planets and have a world of grief finishing the install.

*If you have Patching issues this link will quickly identify if you should have an issue.

https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/cdn-patch.swtor.com

Once the game is completely installed and the Launcher Bar completed to 100% and it no longer shows, and the play button is the only thing calling your name...

Shut Down the Launcher - we are not ready yet to click Play.

Now we will once again Open your swtor folder by selecting your desktop shortcut and selecting Open File Location.

Here you will see another swtor folder inside your swtor folder lets navigate our way though it star wars blah blah/swtor/retailclient.

Here you will find your Swtor.exe; as before we are going to change this to "Run as Admin"
(*Right Click, Properties, Compatibility, Tick "Run this program as administrator", Apply, OK, close)

Now lets go back to your Firewalls and add the exclusions in and out for this exe also.

Time to reboot again 🙂

Cool were back.

Now click Start and type %appdata% into your search bar and hit Enter.

your explorer has now opened up to the address "blah blah appdata/roaming".

Click on the appdata in the address bar so that you can now see the 3 folders Local,LocalLow and Roaming.

Select Local, and scroll down to "Swtor".

Right Click and select Properties, remove the tick from "read only", click apply and yes for including all sub folders and files.

Now lets navigate our way through your appdata/local/swtor/swtor/settings folder so that we can..

now Open client_settings.cfg (opens in notepad).

Here we wish to ensure we have

Now would be a great time to ensure that you have manually downloaded and installed Dx9.0c correctly.

Directx9.0c
http://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/download/details.aspx?id=8109

*As before save the file location to your PC, unzip the file.
Now Run the Setup.exe as Administrator (right click).

Power Options for Windows... better off not saving the planet here and just ensuring that all your power settings are set to High - zero power saving options please

Reboot Time 🙂

Your generally good to play now, sadly windows 10 users have to ensure that they have turned off a few more settings, it helps if you have 7&8 to continue reading also.

Xbox app on Windows 10 contains an Overlay that is recommended that you turn this off, annoyingly you have to actually log into the app with a Microsoft Aaccount in order to do this.. you will find the DVR settings on the 8th icon down on the left and the 2nd tab in, just remove the tick and your goood.

Ati's Raptor and Nvidias Gaming evolved best to not have these running and certainly any and all overlays turned off.

Mumble/Teamspeak/Ventrilo overlays are also temperamental.

QUOTE=OwenBrooks (*credit where credit is due)
ESET - disable protocol filtering
Kaspersky - disable scan secure/encrypted connections
Nortons (Firewall) set exception to Allow instead of Auto

"I stole this link off Owen for rolling back your Video Drivers or clean installs".

Lastest Display Driver installs or reverting Display Drivers

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

Things to remember I'm doing this at 4 am and I currently do not have access to my previous guide so I will add things as I remember them. All of this should get 99.9% of all swtor gamers up and running.

*If after all of this you still have Network/Connection issues please give the tools that I have provided here a go.

http://answers.ea.com/t5/STAR-WARS-The-Old-Republic/Simple-guide-to-identify-network-issues-for-Swtor/m-p/4845147#U4845147

Taking all of this onboard any further issues please either come back with questions and "Logs" or..

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/star-wars/star-wars-the-old-republic/swtor-support/

*Updated Dec 2016*

This Link Contains all the numbers and options open to you for calling  one of the many Swtor call centers.

Or you can add +18553452186 to your contacts on Skype as this is how I do it from NZ.

*The team that handle the phones are really quick and helpful in these areas, whole things should take you less then 5 minutes if you use Skype.

"To say thank you for reading my guide please feel free to use my cantina codes"

 

Morning All, Today is Tuesday March 22nd 2018 09:07am in NZ.

I thank all those who still find use from this guide, sadly I have been busy away from the PC and have been unable to put in the time that I once did.

It is nice to see that this guide still emails me and my phone receiving EA XP points, for this reason I am going to add a few "NEW" tid-bits to try and help those navigate some of the changes that I am aware of that have happened with Windows 10 since I first created this guide.

1: Windows 10 has added an almost hidden optimization targeted towards gaming that has created alot of issues for gamers.

If you navigate to your games EXE files you will be able to "Right Click" the EXE (in this case SWTOR.EXE this can be found in your Swtor/retailclient folder; this may be required after each new swtor update);   Here you will wish to click "Properties" and then select the 'Compatibility" Tab.

Down the bottom you will wish to add or ensure that both 

 - "Disable Fullscreen Optimizations" &

- "Run this program as Administrator" 

Are Both Ticked, click Apply and now close.

2: If you have an Nvidia card and experience a colour (we spell 'Colour' correctly in NZ) flashing tint all over your screen 'Only' when you load a game, this may be due to how Nvidia and Windows 10 interact.

You will wish to OPEN your "NVIDIA Control Panel", you can do this by simply "Right Clicking" your "Desktop" and selecting it.

Now with NVIDIA Control Panel open select "Adjust Desktop Color Settings" on the left hand colum 

In "2. Choose how color is set", please Select "Use NVIDIA settings" and click "Apply" and then close.  and your done; good to go.

I can only hope that these minor adjustments help those who may still find that they are having issues.

Any massive issues please feel free to sing out.

Enjoy your weekend and free time gaming.

Woody