HUD disappears in windowed mode

Hi, recently i had to replace my videocard (it's the same model, different brand) and ever since (prolly due to new drivers?) my HUD disappears when i'm on windowed mode and any kind of windows pop-up appears. (like notifications or steam stuff).

I'm on WXP sp3, but with the old vidcard/drivers and exactly the same setup otherwise I never came accros this problem. My vidcard is an ati hd4850

I bumped into a video on youtube that exactly is the problem i'm having (it's not my video). He has the same problem with the same videocard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6FQIrNRXlU

Anyone here has a solution? If i turn post-fx off, then the game hangs instead of the HUD disappearing, and continues when the popups are gone again. Running in fullscreen works fine, but that's not how I (want to) play GW.

Thanks in advance.

I have no idea how to fix this problem but, if I had to recommend anything, I recommend rolling back your GPU driver to see if that (temporarily) fixes it. You can always update your drivers in the future (whenever a new one is released) to see if the problem still persists or if it's gone.

This is just another reason why I prefer nVidia to ATi 100%. ^___^

@OP - my guess is it would be a driver issue. The solution would be to try the latest driver, or, if you have the latest driver, try an older one. Or get a second monitor and play the game full screen on one monitor and have the other stuff open on the second monitor.

That last option is clearly the best way to go :P, but unfortunately i don't have the money .

I updated to the latest driver without better results, so I'm going to have to find an older driver then. Unfortunately I forgot to check what driver I was on when I was on my old vidcard (without problems) and which one I was using just before.

With nVidia, we have folders that allow us to see our previous drivers. Maybe ATi has the same thing?


Try this: Go to 'My Computer', 'Local Disk [C:]', ATi (or whatever your ATi folder is named), go to 'DisplayDriver', locate your previous driver and then reinstall the one before your newest.

Maybe someone else could answer this? Does ATi also have a "driver history" folder in the C: drive that allows you to rollback through there? I'm convinced that if ATi does, then that would be the best option to get back the OP's previous (GW-working) drive.

I have the very same issue. The only recent driver that works semi-correctly is 10.3. You will need to uninstall your current driver, then run a driver clearer in safe mode. Install the 10.3 driver. You will want to make sure you have v-sync turned on in both Guild Wars and in the driver.

Thanks, i'll see if i can find 10.3 :-)

I have been told that the issue is fixed in 10.7, I can not confirm that yet as I have not installed it. Almost scared to install it as I don't know what else they broke. I think my next card may be an nvidia.

Update: the issue has not been fixed in 10.7, in fact it is worse. Back to 10.3 I go.

I came from Catalyst 9.12 . Never saw this bug. Installed 10.7 yesterday with a new video card and now I'm having this bug. Rolling back to 9.12 fixed the problem. Will starting logging personal issues with drivers and update up to 10.3 as necessary.

All drivers can be rolled back in the Windows Device manager....

There was. I also found out that i was using 9.12 before I had my drivers reinstalled by a pcshop that repaired (replaced) my ati card. So I'm installing 9.12 and hope it's fixed soon in up-to-date drivers. The new Install manager by ATI isn't really helpful, i have the feeling i'm forced to install 10.6 again, but we'll see.

(also i hope it might fix starcraft 2 page pool errors, it _could_ maybe work)

---
edit: worked! I installed 9.12 again and now the hud stays on :-).

I was searching guru for a solution other than roll back to version 9 drivers.
But no luck yet.

This is what I have done/ found out.
I was messing around with all the graphic settings in GW and it seems to be a conflict with the in game anti-aliasing with version 10 ati drivers. I set the anti-aliasing to none and the HUD doesn't disappear on me on the secondary monitors anymore. The prime monitor works with GW.exe no problem for me with or without it on.
Ati says XP users need to have ".NET Framework" version 3.0 or greater for version 10 drivers. which I do but, I still get conflicts with GW.exe HUD with anti-aliasing on in game. No other programs seem to have this problem but Guild Wars *shrugs shoulders*

If you really need smooth edges like me. My quick fix was to set the Catalyst Control to smooth out the edges automatically by unchecking "Use application settings" in the "3D" -> "Anti-Aliasing" section. This will smooth edges out on anything that's on screen.

my chipset is 4850
XP-32bit
in case anyone is wondering.

After a few months of 10.4 working fine, I updated to 10.8 as I was assured that the issue had been fixed. Wrong. Now I am going to uninstall and clean all ATI drivers and install 9.12. I hope it works.

Edit: I installed 9.12 the issue was fixed however it broke GWMultiLauncher. I installed 10.3, the issue is still fixed and GWMultiLauncher is still broke. I ended up fixing the issue with MulitLauncher by renaming the INI file and rebuilding it. It appears that the ini file was corrupted as it only showed my second account (copy1), not the primary (copy0).