Guild Wars Crashes My Monitor/GFX

Maybe have a closer look on you PSU.
Your PSU need a special Amount of Ampere to run the Graphics card.
The Geforce 9800 GTX+ needs at least 36 Ampere on the whole 12 Volt lines.
When you run a Game, you card switches to 3D mode and at the beginning it needs the whole power.
If your PSU is to weak on the 12 Volt lines, your graphics card shuts down and your computer cant to anything then.
But Note: you dont need 36 Ampere on one line, the whole lines at all need over ~36 ampere.
Dont only add them to each other, cause there is some power lost.
So look up for your PSU and look how much Ampere the whole 12 lines got all in all.

Well, you could try running GW in only one core.

But, if your Vista is up-to-date, that shouldn't be the problem. When I had an Athlon x2 (dual core) and WinXP my GW would randomly lock up with a repeating sound loop. Using ForceCore to make GW run in only one core stopped the lockups. I then upgraded my computer to an Intel quad core and Vista. At first, GW would still lock up, but less often. But nowadays, now that I think of it, it hasn't locked up in a long time. I figure it's because my Vista auto-updates.

So, make sure you have all the latest Vista drivers for everything - sound, mobo, etc., not just video - and make sure Vista is updated.

(P.s. There may have been updates to WinXP, such as SP3, that have cured the problem in XP. But for those who can't update their Windows, ForceCore may help.)

I am having the EXACT same problem with my nvidia 9600 Gt. When I switch to my 7600gt game runs fine. I hope there is a solution for this, I would hate to bottle-neck my system with this old card.

Well, read my Post before.
I think the Problem is your PSU, maybe its to weak, try another one.
Wednesday ill get a new one, then ill let you know if my problem is fixxed then, but a member of the gainward staff told me that solution.

see ya wednesday.

I thought that the PSU might be a problem too, but I can run full graphics on Age of Conan just fine. This is the only game I have problems with, and from reading this post it seems to be the 9000+ nvidias. I hope there is a solution for this.

PC specs

cpu: Intel Q6850 Core 2 extreme
ram: 4 x 2gb Corsair
Video: 2 x nVidia 9800gtx
mobo: XFX nForce 790i ultra sli
PSU: 1kW PC Power & Cooling
OS: Vista Ultimate 64

Zero problems with any other games I play!

Basically I've been fighting with this problem since I built my pc about a year ago.

I update to the latest drivers and I can fudge with display settings until I get GW to run (single gpu or sli, vert sync on/off, split frame rendering, etc), then a 'patch' for GW is released and I'm back to crashing until the next driver update!

I am not having psu issues, I am not having cooling issues. I've had GW running fine after previous nVidia driver updates until a new GW update comes along.

If anyone has and new solutions that haven't been posted yet please share them with me, I am at my wits end!

You may want to step back a few versions of the nVidia driver. Where nVidia drivers are concerned, the latest and greatest is usually not the best.

I tried geforce 175 & 178 for older drivers, and the newest ones (181), no luck with any with sli on or off.

I tried with affinity to 1 cpu with no luck as well.

If anyone has the solution please help me! I really miss playing GW!

Update: I've now also tried compatibility mode for xp with no help. Also, my audio card is the x-fi extreme pci express.

There's your problem...

"...
2 GB Ram
Windows XP Pro SP3
..."

Either update your RAM ... or down-grade your OS..
Could also be caused by a firewall / virus protection / etc.

But I believe on the back of the 9800GTX box it reads a minimum limit of RAM and I think you have too have DDR2.. look into that.. if it's not that it HAS too be the firewall / virus protection / etc.

Edit: Or your motherboard could be going bad.. also could be heated system.. add a fan, etc. good luck..

Good luck,
Mightiest Dagger Dag Z

Update:

I'm at 2hrs and counting in GW. Here is my fix for others to try if they're still having problems. I formatted my Vista partition, reinstalled with Vista 64 w/sp1, and installed ONLY the drivers on windows update that are Vista certified. It worked for me, and luckily windows update had drivers for all my hardware. True the nVidia drivers are a couple steps behind the latest from nVidia, so no physx support yet, but GW WORKS and that's what matters to me!

In short, it had to be driver incompatibility or a corrupt os file.

P.S. Thanks to those who posted. I wanted to try everything else before nuking my os.

Well, I'm back. Everything was running fine, I enjoyed a weeks worth of playing for up to 7 hours at a time, zero crashes. Then the thursday update, and bam! I can't play for more that 1/2 hour without crashing!

I haven't changed or installed anything, the only change was the update!!!! I'm starting to believe in the nVidia conspiracy!

Helllppp!!!

i changed the fcking gainward for an asus 9800 gtx+ dark knight and now i can play GW without any black screen...so the gainward card just fails. thats all.

you sir, have no idea what you are talking about.