Freeze or lag?

This occurred for three months are so already. My Guild Wars would just freeze, and I can't move. But everything else around Guild Wars is perfectly fine. After 3 - 180 seconds, I can do perhaps one or two actions, before it freezes for another 3 - 180 seconds (sometimes eve more). However, every time I come back, I have a red dot with a lightning symbol, or sometimes just a red dot. I play on windows mode.

My Computer Specs are:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T8300 2.40 GHz (2 CPUS)
2014MB RAM
DirectX 10
Video Card: NVidia Quadro NVS 140M

Sometimes, it doesn't occur for a few days. While, sometimes it freezes every day or every 3 hours! The only solution I can find so far, is restarting, but even when I do that sometimes, it freezes again after 30 - 300 minutes.

Thanks,
Steve

Run Guild Wars on 1 core, go to the Task Manager (either press Ctrl+Alt+Del or right click the Taskbar and click Task Manager) then go to Processes, right click on Gw.exe and click Set Affinity... and make sure only 1 box is checked, unfortunatly you'll have to do this each time you start Guild Wars unless you use a 3rd party program to save the settings.

When GW freezes is the music still playing? If you answered yes to that its lag,if no theres a problem which someone else can sort out.

Yes I can still hear the music still playing. But then it stops after a while.

Correct me if I am wrong but I think the lightning bolt indicates a background download is happening.

According to Arena Net, yes a lightning bolt indicates a background download.

However I believe Arena Net is wrong because when you're downloading files while playing the game it shows the amount of KB downloaded, the download speed, ect. So I think the lightning bolt indicates a lag spike.

Ok I am curious, You have 2 gigs of ram and are running dx10. If this is a vista machine you need more ram. If it is an xp machine you are running dx9.

(DX10 does not and will not ever exsist for xp)

What is your means of connecting to the internet? Dial-up, DSL, Cable, Fiber, Cell?

Are you connecting to a wireless router, is it secured with a wep/wpa key? Are other people using the connection?

You should download spybot S&D, adaware se, and ccleaner if you have not. They are all free to use. Google will help you find them.

You can also try using international districts, they seem less laggy most of the time.

I use Vista, DSL, yes it is secured. My vent works quite well even when I am frozen on GW. I have tried spybot. Well, it happens a lot of times in guild halls and gvg (which I am in most of the time I am on gw).

What is your Internet Connection? If you are on wireless or "mobile broadband" you could have problems like that... at least I experience the same thing when I'm connecting through my cell phone provider.

If vent works, its lag.

I am on wireless. However, if it is lag, how do I fix it?

Ecch, Lag :/

There are so many causes and cures. If it's the usual ANet lag, there is nothing you can do. If it's your DSL, get them to run a line check. If it's the wireless, try repositioning the wireless router/antennae or making it a paper hat (no joke), if it is at all possible, forget wireless and trail a nice solid length of CAT5 between your router and PC.

Oh, and click on the thingie below, let it test your system and post the results so we can see what your speed is like.

Making it a paper hat? o.O

CAT6a > CAT5

@Snograt

Here is my speed

It isn't lag, it's frame reprocessing. Revert to an older driver from nVidia. You have an older Quadro card, which does loop frame processing. The newer drivers didn't function well with older Quadro cards.

You can find older drivers here:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

CAT5 cables are still perfectly acceptable. Not too much hardware utilizes the 1000 speeds yet of the 10/100/1000.

Agree with above - and there's nothing wrong with your speed (would be described in Britain as "Up to 2 Mb download!!) - and your ping is fine.

(And I always recommend CAT5 because it's cheap, common and does enough for the job at hand )

Not sure if you can do this on vista, but on XP I changed the virtual memory from default and gave it a little more room...from 768mb to like 3-4gb more room since your processes/programs run from this memory. Helped soo much!

Also would recommend doing the -image command once or twice a month.

----

I would also recommend buying more ram for your vista machine and using this site to determine if you can: http://www.crucial.com . They have all kinds of memory at a rather good price. Also, you *CAN* upgrade ram on a laptop too, so don't let that fool you. You need 4gb with Vista. It's too demanding graphics wise.

Sounds very similar to what i've been experiencing for the past 3 or 4 months.I've gone through all the forum posts and believe me i've tried everything.It happens on 2 pc's and a laptop with xp cleanly installed,new router and i've even had BT out to replace the cable outside my house.Been in contact with my isp (Demon uk) and explained everything and so far they say its nothing to do with them and theres nothing they can do about it if the gaming server has issues.

Now the strange thing with me is it goes away as regular as clockwork just after midnight on a friday and comes back monday morning.If there was something wrong my end surely it would be doing it 24/7.I've asked my isp several times if they are traffic shaping or something and they have never actually said if they are or aren't.It would be interesting to see a list of GW users isp's that shows those that have regular lag issues and those that don't because i am beginning to wonder if certain isp's have issues with GW traffic.

I've been having huge lag problems lately too. In fact, I lagged out and dc'd 3 times while doing the Deep last night with my guild.

Well you might want to explain the paper hat thingy, but cantenna's really do a great job, and they are extremely cheap.

The paper hat basically functions as a dish, it focuses the wifi rays in a certain direction. Simular to how a flash light focuses it's light rays forward rather than in every direction, this creates a stronger bundle of rays.

Plus when people see your router, it will be stylin' with a paper hat. Every router wants one.

I am also surprised that none of you have posted what Anti-Virus/Firewall you are using, that may be a big role in this - it could be messing with Guild Wars.

As for Wifi - I said screw it on my main computer, I bought a 50 foot cat 5/6 (forgot) cable and ran it from my room, through the hall, and into the router. It sounds funny but I don't really care - I don't look at it much and I'm moving soon anyway.

I would agree with you there john im also with demon UK

and have noticed exactly the same issues you have mentioned there, lag spikes consistently midweek but from 11pm fri eve till 7am mon morning runs without a worry. For me it also began about 4 months ago.

I have spoken to both demon and arenanet and both claim that its not their fault. Tho im deffinatly beginning to have my suspicions now that it could be demon doing some form of traffic shaping to aid their buisness customers.

I'm with Demon too and had a similar thing, connection would drop two or three times in a row perhaps more at weekends, tried new modems, rewired internal phone lines.

I called BT out, no fault - moaned at Demon to be told "not our fault" (by that nice Colin in New Delhi!). Eventually threatened to move my account unless the DSlam was checked at the exchange - suddenly a fault was found by BT and fixed. Now the line is giving me about 4Mb and I'm over 3km from the exchange - wow! However I still get some lag at weekends.

BUT my friend in Scotland who is also with Demon, suffers the same as you i.e. weekdays are rubbish and laggy - weekends not so bad (again despite new wiring and new modem) and has moaned at Demon and had the good folk at Anet help to no avail. The problem got noticeably worse for her during the Euro competition and the route log from the GW Diag option gave an IP that belonged to a Net TV company somewhere before Anets links.

It's worth remembering that Demon also provide the BB service for Sky TV I believe and I suspect that two things are happening...
A. their network runs out of bandwidth at certain times and tries to balance using alternative routes which are also busy
B. BT is currently upgrading their exchanges to ADSL2+ and so some lines are being shunted on to older DSLams to accomodate the change and they cant cope (hence my line zooming up to 4Mb).

Try talking to Demon again, if you have had BT out ask them to record in their logs what the engineer did (BT Wholesale can also see those logs obviating the "well its the line mate" problems) and insist that Demon request BT Wholesale to check the equipment at your exchange. They will give dire warnings of a 'call out charge' - but as BT will show, they have said your line is ok and your modem is working, the only place the fault can be is the exchange!