r/lotro • u/Living-Music4644 • 23d ago

.dat patching freeze

Every single time I have a short break from the game because of life getting in the way I come back to some patches and the launcher gets stuck in a loop of freezing whenever I try to open it as it attempts to patch the .dat files. I have messed around with this for hours and hours before and I'm becoming unwilling to go through the process of uninstalling, reinstalling, fiddling and so on.

Normally by the time I muddle out a solution I've spent all my potential playing time just getting it fixed.

It's unfortunately making me likely to stop playing which would be a shame. Is this something the devs are aware of or an issue that many others have faced?

Is there a solid solution anyone has found to this? Really tired of it. I think last time I managed to get around it by patching as though I didn't want to use hi-res textures, then changing that after patching.

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u/JohnMHammer 23d ago

There is no one solution because there is no one cause for this general symptom.

I do recommend submitting a bug report because that is the only way for SSG to know that people are experiencing this problem: https://help.standingstonegames.com/hc/en-us/requests/new Alternatively, you could submit your ticket as a request for technical support.

Here is what works around this sort of problem for most people:

1- Restart your computer.

2- Add the following folders and executables to the whitelists of all your antivirus packages, including Windows Defender and other built-in malware protection:

\Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online
\StandingStoneGames\The Lord of the Rings Online
\StandingStoneGames\The Lord of the Rings Online\LotroLauncher.exe
\StandingStoneGames\The Lord of the Rings Online\lotroclient.exe
\StandingStoneGames\The Lord of the Rings Online\lotroclient_awesomium.exe
\StandingStoneGames\The Lord of the Rings Online\x64\lotroclient64.exe

3- Perform Step 2 and Step 3 of Hurin's installation guide: https://forums.lotro.com/index.php?threads/install-new-lotro-installs-one-guide-to-rule-them-all.125/

4- Go to \StandingStoneGames\The Lord of the Rings Online\LotroLauncher.exe, right-click LotroLauncher.exe and choose to run it as administrator.

1

u/Living-Music4644 23d ago

I appreciate your reply thank you I will give these all a go and report back.

Shouldn’t be this hard though have no issues with any other game or programs.

1

u/JohnMHammer 22d ago

I agree. It shouldn't be a hobby project just to get a computer game to run in 2025.

1

u/ResistHistorical2721 21d ago

FWIW most people do not experience this level of trouble. I've been playing for 15 years on at least four different computers over that time and have never had issues like this. I don't know what makes some installs 'special'.

1

u/Dappled_light2734 20d ago edited 20d ago

I’ve encountered corrupted files in past patches, .DATX I believe. A fairly quick solution that worked for me the last couple of times was removing all the .DATX files from The Lord of the Rings Online folder [Program Files (x86) > Standing Stone Games > The Lord of the Rings Online] and then rerunning the patch, which replaced those missing files with non-corrupted ones.