Subject: Repeated pack file corruption after updates, unacceptable experience

Every time the game updates, I receive a pack file corruption error. For this single update, I had to run PackCheck.exe twice in a row. What’s worse, there is no certainty that the error will not occur again.
Each full scan takes around 30 minutes. Running the repair tool over and over is a massive waste of time. The total time spent on repeated repairs is even longer than re-downloading the entire game client.
I have launched the tool as administrator, disabled antivirus software and Windows Defender real-time protection, and made sure there is plenty of free disk space. None of these actions solved the recurring problem.
This issue has severely damaged the gaming experience. You need to investigate why pack files keep getting corrupted after updates and deliver a thorough fix. The current situation is completely awful.

A company cannot remotely deliver a fix to files repeatedly being corrupted on your computer. If there was a bug in their software it would affect a significant proportion of the community, and this forum would be a mess. Instead, of the hundreds of thousands who play... you have a problem.

Step one is to check your drive for bad sectors.

I truly wish this were a problem with my hard drive. I play many other games on the same drive, and none of them have ever had this kind of issue during updates. Yet Path of Exile 2 keeps forcing me to run PackCheck over and over… I’ve already deleted the client and redownloaded it completely, hoping this will finally stop the errors. This whole experience has been incredibly frustrating.

GGG has more people playing PoE 2 without this issue than you have seemingly-unaffected games installed locally. The two sample sizes do not even begin to compare.

Have you actually tested the drive for errors, or are you just assuming?

Every league, I hope to update the game and be ready to play right at launch. To make that happen, I upgraded to a higher-spec PC four months ago, and my hard drive is still relatively new. All other software and files on it work perfectly, so I don’t want to waste time running diagnostics just to confirm if a drive I’ve only used for a few months is faulty. Comparing it with other games on the same drive—like Diablo 4—I’ve never run into similar errors or forced repeated repairs during updates. Maybe it’s just bad luck with this game, but that doesn’t matter anymore.
It’s already been over an hour since launch, and I’m still stuck troubleshooting the client. At this point, it feels no different from waiting an entire day or more. This has been such a frustrating start to the league. I just hope the fully redownloaded client won’t throw errors again.

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Lizebei#1505 wrote:

I don’t want to waste time running diagnostics just to confirm if a drive I’ve only used for a few months is faulty.

But that's an argument in favour of running diagnostics.

Not having used it for long means it has undergone less incidental testing. Drives can and do ship with bad sectors, and if you've hardly used it then you'd have no way of knowing if that happened.