Constant freezes/crashes

So I was going to start playing GW again after some time off, so I redownloaded it and went to play, Ascalon City loads up and I can run around for about 30 seconds - 1 minute, and then the game completely freezes. Ctrl + Alt + Del doesn't work, no mouse, no sound, nothing. I have to completely unplug my computer and restart.

I have played the game just fine before with the setup I have, but I have installed numerous updates from Windows Automatic Update program, and I have gone from Vista to Vista w/ SP1. Also I just downloaded Nvidias newest forceware driver just the other day, and an updated driver for my soundcard.

So here's some info:

System:
CPU: Intel (R) Pentium (R) D CPU 3.0 GHz
Ram: 2.0 GB
Video Card: Evga Nvidia 8800 GTS
Video Card Driver: 175.16
Sound Card: SoundBlaster X-fi XtremeGamer
Sound Card Driver: 2.15.0006
Motherboard: ECS RC410-M (generic Compaq motherboard)
OS: Windows Vista 32-bit with SP1 (I've also tried running it in the Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode.

320 Gig WD HD with plenty of free space as well.

Like I said used to play fine before all of the updates I installed. Loads fine everything looks ok, but then it freezes. Also if I open it up and play for a few seconds but close it out before it freezes windows media player will randomly open up after I've closed out of GW every time.

Any help is highly appreciated.

I've had this before , or something similliar.

When was the last time that you've cleaned your PC from the inside?
Because dust was my reason for GW freezing.

It's been..............a long time, in fact I bought a thing of canned air last weekend to do so, but probably won't get a chance to take it all apart and blow it out and reassemble it until saturday. But I don't see how that would effect just one game?

Try a driver rollback. I've had issues with nVidia betas - in fact, the latest one I'm using is the current WHQL but downloaded from Windows Updates rather than nVidia.

Yeah, I was considering that anyways as for some reason the newest driver won't let me put my monitor in anything about 1024.

It might be the switch ''-mce'' At the end of your Guild Wars target line causing that to come up after you shut off Guild Wars.

''-mce : Start the client with Windows Media Center compatibility, switching the game to full screen and restarts Media Center (if available) after the client is closed.''

If you find this switch in your Guild Wars target, try removing it?

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -mce

to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars\Gw.exe"

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Switches

Ta.

Cool, thanks all, seems to run fine now and I don't have to close out of windows media player everytime lol.

Ah, I see - 175.16 IS the latest WHQL version, released 3 days ago. Still, a driver rollback would still be my best guess. If it doesn't work, you haven't lost anything, hey?

What fixed it, did you Rollback drivers? Or did the -mce switch suggestion fix the whole problem?

Cheers either way.

Oh yeah - and I'm not touching the new drivers mine work just fine.

Yeah the driver rollback fixed it. It is a WHQL, but I had some other issues like I mentioned above with it apart from the game crash.

The -mce deal I don't think was "causing" the crash, just an annoyance after exiting the game if it didn't crash, but it was still very helpful thank you.

Awesome, I figured it was a driver issue, I was going to suggest that but Snog was way ahead on it, glad you got it sorted out. I'm not even surprised that the new drivers caused this problem - Nvidia has been shady lately for some reason.

I'll wait to hear more good/bad reports before I think about getting them, because right now I have no problems; ''Don't fix it if it isn't broken.''

Yeah this is the first time I've had a problem with this card/driver, and I've had it since a little after they released the 8800s, so for the most part I've been pretty happy with it. It may have been the combination of going to Service pack 1 and the driver as well, but I'd rather roll back the driver than Service pack 1.

Service pack 1 is fine, in fact I heard that installing SP1 could mess up some drivers - and you'd have to reinstall them.

So really I'd advise not to roll back SP1, that would be a bad idea hehe, good thing you didn't.

And I believe I have the same card as you, the 320mb 8800 GTS.

I've got the 640 MB one, went all out and blew my whole tax return on my computer that year lol.

Nice, well the newer 8800's surely do trump the old ones, but at least you have the 640mb.

I got the 320mb for very cheap, that's why I went with it, although I do loathe the 320mb size.. at least it was an upgrade from my 256mb 8600GT though.

Yeah I had like a really old crappy Geforce card. I could play most stuff on low setting, but it just wasn't cutting it anymore. Next I just need to get a new motherboard and processor.

Yay, I solved one

So many issues with nVidia drivers over the years - this is the first new WHQL since December, IIRC.

Yeah I think 169 something was the last one.

I am on Vista and SP1, I lock up on occasion, so I disabled a bunch of start up programs and now I haven't locked up for days. Some were Roxio stuff (Roxio Suite, CD burning and such) and I turned off the Windows Desktop Manager Service (Aero), but recently turned that back on with no issues. So I'll start enabling things 1 at a time in the start up and see which is causing the issue. Latest nvidia (non-beta) is 175.16 and came out on May 13th and works great with Guild Wars. Haven't had an nvidia issue with drivers in the 3 years I've been playing Guild Wars.

Hmm, thanks for the reminder - I keep meaning to disable that Roxio startup crap.

I'm going to try the new 175.16 when I get home, purely because I do have occasional graphical issues. My finger will be hovering on that rollback button though!

/hijack
Anyone know why GW animations will SOMETIMES stop working? Every so often, animations like waterfalls, campfires and suchlike just appear as static images. It's random - sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. I'm also noticing a lot more pop-up since I upgraded to a 22" monitor - think that may be because the image is so much clearer that it's making it more noticeable?
/un-hijack (sorry)