To put this into perspective, I've been happily playing GW for around a year to year and a half. Most of that time I had no problems at all. A few months ago I started having a few freezes, way way into a quest, maybe after playing an hour or more. Happened maybe 3-4 times. A few weeks ago the game started freezing up on me almost immediately, before even getting into a mission or quest, just running around an outpost. As a result, the game is no longer playable.
When the game freezes, the cursor still moves. But I can't do anything, in the game or out. Three finger salute won't even work; I have to power the computer down or force a reboot with the reset button.
On very rare occasions when I've been able to abort the game by clicking on the X in upper right, the system is unusable. If I get any response at all I get bizarre error messages about DLLs and insufficient quota, and CPU usage appears to be pegged at or near 100%.
I've tried running VIA hardware monitor; CPU/system does not appear to be overheating.
I have made no hardware changes during this period, except for replacing a dead CD-ROM drive maybe a month ago.
I have no problems with any other game or other program.
System configuration:
Windows 2000 Pro, SP4
Abit KT-7A motherboard
Award BIOS 2.00PG
AMD Athlon CPU, 1.2GHz
1GB memory
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 video
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 sound
I was running NVIDIA drivers 93.71, tried downgrading to 91.47, no change. Tried grabbing the latest soundblaster drivers, no change. Tried setting the FX 5200 to high performance, no change. Tried adjusting down the hardware acceleration on the video card, no improvement (but the cursor did start showing funny redraw problems). Tried setting all game graphics options to the very lowest settings, no change. Tried turning off all sounds, no change.
Tried swapping in my wife's computer's GeForce FX 5200 (she plays GW too, with no problem) into my computer. No change.
I used to have a lot of fun playing this game...
