Cause to BSOD's: Temperature Related.

I did not have this 100% cpu usage problem until a recent update by NCsoft.
(sys: specs)
Asus A7V8X-X
AMD 2500+
G4 Ti4400 128MB
1024 Gig Ram 400MHz
...
....

To all those who are having problems here, just on the off chance, are you all running some sort of ATI 9xxx series Graphics card??

I just want to see if there is a trend here. If so, then this is more important than over heating problems, as there are more and more people with 9xxx series cards who are having problems and the motherboards are all different.

Let me know here, and we'll all see if this is part of the problem.

If so, then i would suggest everyone goes back to there original Graphics Drivers that came with the card before doing any graphics updates, and see how it runs from that point.
If it runs, run it for a few days, if it doesn't run at all, then upgrade a step until the game does start to run as the game may need a certain level of driver to perform properly.

Ok, i know the X800 is some sort of rehash of the 9800, but there is more tech in the X800 that is being utilised compared to 9xxx series.

I am wondering if the Graphics drivers are causing problems on older cards compared to X800 and above.

This is an Issue with GW or also could be due to windows XP patch. I am not quite sure which one. The problem is 100% CPU Usage not a GPU problem. If you have no idea what the problem is then do not reply!.

This is stating that only the CPU is the problem. What are your facts?

From what people are experiencing, it could be related to several things. GPU, Heat, Power, Drivers or even the game. If it was CPU there would be a lot more people experiencing problems and more often than not quite possibly on the same spec machines.

As such, my friends PC has similar problems and it's not CPU related. This has adequate cooling and has also been swapped out for a new processor. It has similarity's to other machines. ATI 9xxx series GPU, Nforce 2, and it's MSI not Asus. Power is fine too as I've tested that already.
As far as what i have descovered so far, it's quite possibly a driver issue, as a lot of ATI 9xxx users are running the latest drivers and some even mentioned this only started since some of the latest drivers were installed.

So, before stating a fact, get them right and then Post.

If you read my post again: it does not state that CPU is the problem but rather it says it is a problem with GW or Windows XP patch causing CPU to run at 100% when graphical applications are run. Also as someone had pointed out by looking at the pattern that the problem exists on ASUS motherboards.

Just to confirm people that are having this 100% cpu usage, please post your system specs: --> Mobo, CPU, GPU, Windows Version (please include service pack information), and DirectX version.

I think it's more than just Mobo that is the cause of the problems. There are MSI and a few others here. The highest dominating factor here, is ATI 9xxx series cards, and older NVida type cards.

It almost leads me to believe something major has been added to the Graphics system that has affected the way these older cards act with the newer drivers and the newer DX9 features. May be it's these that are causing the GPU's to overheat while the cards are trying there best to make something work that doesn;t actually exist.

Again, all speculation, but driver changes has been resolving some of these issues while ANet looks for a solution.

Dirk, i do not want to get into an argument with you, The Fact is GPU is not being overheated. IT IS THE CPU THAT IS BEING OVERHEATED DUE TO 100% USAGE. Changing GPU dirvers will not effect.

How many posts have you read on this Forum at the moment?

At the moment, most problems are being caused by drivers of some sort. There is the odd Heat and PSU related problem, but drivers seem to be key at the moment. This can very well affect the CPU if there is a hiccup in whatever ANet has done with the latest updates, and maybe the CPU is compensating for this hiccup.

Fine by me if you want to keep looking at the CPU, but there are various Hardware Specs going on here, not just Asus and I'm not just taking my info from this one thread. I am going by atleast a dozen or more threads that I have been posting on, and Drivers are helping people resolve there problems.

And I run an Asus Board to, currently one of the ones that is being seen more often than not, the A7N8X Deluxe. And I don't have a problem. The only reason i can think of, I'm running an ATI X800 and not an ATI 9xxx series card, which seem to be a major model that are experiencing problems.

So, I'm not arguing just stating the facts of what I have read on this Forum.

my cpu has had 100% since my first beta

and every computer sold is expected to be able to handle a full load

its not as though there were a warning saying using this product to its fullest potential is not recommended

2100+ cpu
asus budget board
3/4 gig mixed value ram
6600GT card
wd drives
sp2
latest direct x

edit

my temps go from 38c up to 43 c

My pc is 5 years old, the cooling fan is half broken, the pc is in the highest room running nonstop, really hot in here sometimes, never ever had such a problem with guild wars.

Has anyone had the symptoms of the game's graphics getting corrupted (missing textures, seeing through walls, severe frame hit) then having the game not necessarily crash to the BSOD but going totally BLUE (but still running, just impossible to see)? Then, when I click back to the desktop my Resolution is 800X600, 16 color and not way to switch it back until I reboot. Sometimes when rebooting I get the BSOD upun reboot, however, which I've never seen before...

I have a AMD 3000 running on an Asus mobo (go figure) and a GeForce 6800 vid card and EVERYTHING else I run games-wise runs basically flawlessly... Think that it might be a related issue?

Thanks for posting tis and emailing tech support- I just tried it and it would not let me complete the form due to a DB error.

Well for me I have a new PC, I got maybe a month ago. Gigabyte board with P4 3.0ghz w HT. I have a Saphirre ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w/ 256 MB, and 1GB PC 3200 RAM. I have problems with overheating (VGA and CPU get to about oh 55C) but this is running any game on my PC. I recently purchased new Fan/Heatsink for CPU and VGA, and four 2900 RPM fans. I havnt gotten them yet, but the point is, that ive been able to play Guild Wars for as long as I feel like without getting any errors, and once it reaches about 55-56C it stays there. I dont play much though, just cause I am worried about hurting something, so once I get my new cooling gear, (oh yeah, and arctic silver paste) ill let you know how things run.

Interesting to hear some of this stuff though, ill have to keep it in mind when Im developing, so I dont run into the same problems.

Don't worry about the heat at that level. My X800pro runs up to 54c and I don't experience any problems with heat whatsoever.

The over heating problems people are talking about, is when the game starts to crash or graphics go glitchy, or the PC locks up etc.

If you don't have any of these, then I suggest you play on and enjoy yourself.
If you are having difficulties with graphics and game crashing, due to you running an ATI 9xxx series card, I suggest you go back to Cat 4.11 graphics drivers, but run the Driver Cleaner program you can obtain from www.guru3d.com along with cat 4.11.

Uninstall your current drivers, reboot, run cleaner, reboot, run the cat 4.11 installer.

Obviously you only need to do this if you have problems.

hello all im really cheesed of with guild wars as my card temp gos thru the roof .
i have a gigabyte motherboard and a ati 9600xt and 3ghz pc memory 1gig . i have never ever had a game that whats to blow up my pc whats going on and what are they doing about this .as i never had it till they updated i cant play more than 5min now ggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.and bye the way i dont see that i have to pay money for more fans all my other games run well doom3 half life2

It's odd cause the game worked fine when the Beta was going around. Once this game became retail, I started having blackout issues.

This is GW's fault, and I am not about to spend money on a card JUST to play GW. NCsoft better fix this problem.

Are you overclocking? If so, the clock settings might be set too high. Try lowering them a little. You're getting visual artifacts and errors and this is usually the problem.

55 degrees is a bit high but not that bad. I'd say anything over ~65-70 would be where it starts to get too high.

As for me, I have a ASUS K8V-SE Deluxe Mobo (VIA K8T800 chipset), an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU, and a Nvidia 6800GT. No problems here for overheating. My temperatures are ~40-45 degrees idle and 50-55 degrees at full load. This is with both CPU and GPU overclocked and with 3 fans + heatsink.

This is normal, Guildwars Uses an automated priority thread. Guild wars only uses a normal priority when it is running fullscreen and is the target window. It utilizes a low setting when minimized or when it is not the target window, this is designed to allow you to use application and software while guild wars continues to run in the background. Fairly simple software dynamics. Guild wars will only get a 90% cpu ussage rating in a low priority mode when it is the only application requesting cpu usage.

Software that does utilizes a 100% cpu load are not out of the normal. In fact many many applications do use 100% load at one time or another. I work in Maya an industry standard application designed for 3d Development and rendering of models and animation. During render times my system can see a 100% cpu load for periods as long as 48 hours for 30 seconds of animated footage. The systems I currently use are bought off the shelf, one has an nforce chipset, both are made by gateway. Out of the 3 years of use not once has a 100% cpu load caused a hardware failure or BSOD.

The major factor here is cooling and hardware interaction. Either at a low level or a user level. The points made about Asus boards and temprature varriances seem to imply a problem with the main boards firmware and/or cpu throttle control, as well as cooling. If that is the case Guildwars usage or thread processing could be a contributing factor to the problem, but may not in my opinion be the primary cause of the underlying problems.

For no reason should your systems cpu core temprature systematically increase exponentially by the minute, if your system is properly cooled and the cpu is properly throttled. In no case can software alone be the contributing factor to a heat related situation. Over heating is the result of a hardware failure. All Systems are made and designed to handle a full system load for extended periods of time. That does not mean that the hardware is flawless nor the code that the hardware is running is flawless either. It means that a 100% system load alone does not indicate a problem.

If you are seeing high tempratures and increasing tempratures, you should first check to make sure that your system has ample air flow. Make sure that if its in a desk there are ample spaces for it to breath. If it is on carpet imediately shutdown your system and find a way to lift it off the carpet. In no circumstances should your system sit directly on carpet, it clogs up airflow, in in many instances on prefae systems completely blocks the designed airflow through the front lower vents. Make sure the back of the system isn't in direct contact with a wall, blocking the rear venting systems. The cpu Alone is not the only contributing factor to heat. In fact If you have poor air flow you are recirculating old hot air inside your case ! Increasing the potential for high core tempratures across all your hardware including mission critical compents like the cpu, the memory, the hard disk. In fact many people even forget that Disk drives need just as mush cooling as any other portion of the system. Hot core tempratures can also mean Hot internal case tempratures which effect every single component. It can even cause your hard disk to fail and corrupt data.


*shrugs*

thats my 0.02 anyway.

When I first started the game, I couldn't believe the rise in temperature (about 25 celcius). Opened up my system and got an old fan down by it to help things out. Reduced it a little, but now every so often I completely remove the heatsink and fan and dust it out. Just today I did that and the temperature dropped 14 celcius.

I use a Radeon 9800, and as some of you posted, 9xxx seem to cause the most problems.

Another obvious solution is to make sure you don't have any spyware running in the background as it can take up usage. It could just be a combination of dust bunnies, background programs, or other things you just don't know about.

The game does make your cpu temp rise. I was playing guild wars the other day just fine but after awhile, some things would run slow like holding down backspace to delete some words would take like 5 times longer then normal. I finnaly exited the game but right when I did, my computer restarted. Yes my cpu is overclocked but ive played half life 2 then doom 3 right after it without any problems. Just with guild wars.

I have been having these same issues ever since I got GW. At first I had a 9600 pro which ran the BWEs and Alpha events flawlessly. After about 30min sometimes longer, I will get a black screen then instant reboot. Now I got the Radeon x700 card, and GW will not even run with this card. I have been in contact with NC Interactive for over a week on the X700 and no solutions. I decided to put my 9600 back in and I still get the Black SOD. I have be in contact with NC Interactive for over 2 months on this issue, still have yet to resolve it.

Here are the specs:

Athalon XP3000+
1gb DDR
Asus Mobo
4" fan to replace the factory rear fan
(2) 3.5" swivel fan
Exhaust fan

Heat is averaging around 31 C, when GW is running around 38 C. Also no dust in my system, clean it frequently.

The guys at GW Tech group told me to get a fan for my computer because my MOTHERBOARD is overheating, not my video card.

official Anet statement was that a very large proportion of instability problems were overclocking related.

since GW is more cpu intensive (mine hits 100% from start to finish) than the other games mentioned you cant say it works fine for HL2 so it should work for everything else as well

also for the fun of it my temperature has never gone up more than 3-5 degrees C from GW and no changes have been seen from beta to the present

I think you'll find most graphics or machine intensive programs will push the CPU to 100%. It is just the program using all the resources that are available.

I still think this is an issue with some conflicts in peoples machines.

It could be anything. Hardware not being configured properly, pieces of software not installed right or pieces of software that shouldn't be installed.
Possible spyware, viruses etc that aren't being detected.

Mine hits 100% and I only hit somewhere between 50-58c. Mainly because its so damn hot here in the UK at the moment, and I don't have aircon in the Study. When it wasn't hot, it was running in the high 40's to low 50's.

I would suggest to everyone that uninstalling all unnecessary hardware and drivers and try again. Even a totally clean rebuild of XP with minimum hardware and drivers required to play the game. Not a straight install over XP, but a clean, freshly formatted C: drive.

Resetting the BIOS back to defaults, turn off all overclocking and progress from there.

Ok, you may be able to play other games with your machine overclocked, but if you want to find out if it's running, then I suggest turn off all overclocking first.

I know a lot of people with OC is working, but for those it isn't I would suggest all the above.

After all this is done, if you are still having problems, then you need to look at the hardware itself. Try other kit from friends machines, anything to see if you can get a system running.

I know a lot of people that are having problems aren't techies, but find someone who is and ask for there assistance.

Guys.. experts.. friends? My PC recently completely blacked.. Mechanic wrote it off to overheating.. Since I don't like to open up and cool down for 15 minutes three times a week, besides extra fans, do you have a solution?

Interesting ... i've just updated my graphics card to exactly the same model as yours (XFX GeForce 6600GT) and the same day i got the a program shutdown at the login/character creation screen exactly like yours

Previously i had an Asus 9500 Pro - no problems whatsoever.

I also have a A7N8X (though not the Deluxe version ), 1.5 Gb mem, Athlon 2600+ and a 350W PSU.

Btw, my CPU is water cooled, so it's highly unlikelly i have overheating problems with either the Mb or the CPU.

Watercooling

One or two years ago i had loads of overheating probs (esp in the summer). Adding a case fan (plus a funky setup with an old fan i had around to cool down the memory modules) improved it but didn't completely solved it.

Then i got me a passive watercooling rig on the CPU - average temp went down a lot. I even removed the case fan and the memory fan - still perfect.

On top of that i have an almost silent PC

EDIT: I had some numerial values for temps (before and after watercooling) but it seems they were way off, so i just replaced it with the way i had it memorized (went from very hot to warmish )

With regards to your X700, did you completely remove all the drivers before swapping over the cards and run the Driver Cleaner software inbetween the installs? Obtain it from www.guru3d.com

What exactly were your problems with the X700?

Decided cosmetically I shouldn't have posted the entire report. Sorry guys. If anyone is interested in checking my Everest Report out though, let me know please. I would love to be gaming right now instead of all of the folks that bought the game with me are advancing without me..

NOT INTERESTED IN PLOWING THROUGH THAT

if it is new contact tech support and follow their directions to resolve your problem

Is it possible for RAM to be faulty yet have everything work on my computer [games, adobe premier/photoshop, ect] except Guild Wars? This is what GW tech support suggests. Whos the dummy?

considering that GW puts more strain on cpu and is more memory intensive the answer is yes it could work for the others and not GW

and if you will show me where i called you a dummy i will be happy to apologize.

i did not mean to insult you

I am having the same problem. About 2-4 minutes into the game my screen comes up with coloumns of various colors (tech support called them artifacts). When i opened up my case i found that BOTH fans on my video card were shattered. I called alienware tech support complaining A LOT (very new just got it a week ago). They are sending a new one out for free hope this works. If needed..my specs are the following...

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.2GH
Memory: 1024MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
Also use NVIDIA Drivers 77.72 (tech said to use) Although i've heard place son the forums that other drivers are more useful/efficeint? True or False?

P.S. where can i get a temp checker thingy for my comp?

Lovi you didn't insult me. I was referring to GW tech support. Now they are telling me to try and rule out an overheating issue by taking off the case and putting a fan up to it and then try playing the game. If that doesn't work I will try using only 1 ram chip and alternate to see if both of them are faulty. This is ridiculous.

if it were not rediculous where would the fun be?

if you want to increase the airflow through your pc without adding a lot of noise you can get a 80mm to 120 mm adapter (bigger fan moves more air at less rpm)

if you have a few inches room at the rear of the case

remove the 80 mm exhaust fan
place the adapter on the outside rear of the case and mount the 120 mm fan to suck out the air.

you get the same efficiency but more air for the same or less noise

run the fan wires through a slot space back into the pc

if you want to get radical get a tornado fan with over 100 CFM and put it on a fanbuss to regulate the speed and noise

There would be some fun in playing this game for more than 5 minutes at a time...

I appreciate the suggestions on airflow. When I get off work I will take a big fan and remove the case and try to keep the temps cool that way [GW Tech Support Suggestion #8,994. I really don't think it is a heat issue though...In game my comp doesn't get hotter than about 86 degrees Fer.

Worth a shot though.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only person having this problem..

I have an X850 XT PE and I can play the game for about 10 minutes, after which Catalyst starts complaining that the card is running above safe temperatures. Even running the game in a window, at about 800x600, no AA and low detail causes massive increases in reported temperatures. The OVERDRIVE section in the Catalyst Control Center reported 90 C at one point, although I don't know whether to believe this. I have already fallen in love with this game, but I'm not going to risk playing it again until this overheating issue is solved..

EDIT: Relevant stats are:

3.46GHz P4 EE
2GB RAM
X850 XT PE
Catalyst 5.6

interesting thread have been having the same problem but have been posting on another forum as well as a lot of other people
the idea of adding more fans or opening up the case and putting a fan in front of it is not an answer I would expect from people who have any knowledge about pcs
Been in contact with GW from the beginning of May and still the problem has not been resolved
Also noticed this thread was posted around the same time I started having problems as well
and no this is not an old machine and have done about everything I can do fix this
in the middle of winter cold enough to freeze your $%^s off still crashes
I really dont think GW after getting the game right with their programming all of a sudden go stuffing it up cant see GW at fault here I am sure they are just as confused about as everyone else.
I really think something else is going on here a couple of lope holes in the graphics cards drivers and GW set up
there is NO quick fix for this just have to wait until GW are able to work it out
which is a shame damn love this game

I have exactly the same problem, and it's definately not overheating for me.

My motherboard is an Nforce 2 based Abit NF7-SV2.0, I've monitored all of the temperatures when in GW and when in idle, and the temps only increase about 2 degrees celcius. I haven't recieved an email acknowledging that problem from support, just something saying to send in my DXDIAG results, which I will do, hopefully they will send me that email; hopefully it means a fix will be out soon, GW is the only game which creates BSOD's for me.

My specs:

Athlon XP 2500+ Overclocked to 2.2GHZ (Tested and safe overclock)
1GB PC3200 DDR RAM (I have 512MB in at the moment, another 512MB stick is coming tomorrow, or Thursday)
Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB
Catalyst 5.1 (Have tried the other versions, including the two latest versions)

I had similar BSOD problems with other games in the past.

Turned out it was a faulty stick of RAM - might be worth checking in to.

The Ram problem might be as a result of overheating in the first place very unlike we are all having ram problems on new systems
But to clear this idea up have ordered another 1G of Ram to try out knowing this will not fix the problem if GW is the reason for the over heating in the first place


Intel Pentium 4, 2800 MHz (14 x 200)
Motherboard Name IBM 819537M
Motherboard Chipset Intel Springdale-G i865G
System Memory 512 MB (DDR SDRAM)
RADEON 9600 SERIES (256 MB)
3D Accelerator ATI Radeon 9600 (RV350)
Whaaaa Broke ma Ram!!