Guildwars freezing my whole computer

guildwars has been freezing my whole computer for the past couple of months and ive done so much to try to fix it, tried reinstalling multiple times, tried installin to a different folder, tried updating drivers, even have a fan running to help keep the inner temperature cool and almost a constant 30%c, and i think its my Windows 7 sp1 but i dunno if a OS could affect the game this bad. I mean it went from freezing after 2hrs to freezing everytime i open the guildwars login screen. someone got any ideas?

Check if it's only GW or another game does so, too. Pick a modern 3d game for best results.
If something like STALKER freezes your computer after 30~60 minutes, it most probably means your video card is dead.

ive been playing alot of free 2 play games and they all run just fine, Forsaken world is actually a pretty high game and i can run it in high quality all day easily

If this started happening after u upgraded to service pack 1... you may want to update your drivers, if you tried this recently....try the last driver version that worked correctly.....and always uninstall drivers before installing new ones... installing over old ones can cause issues... and some computer specifications would be helpful... otherwise its just shots in the dark... also you could try running gw in windows XP compatibility mode.... you also might want to check windows update for any ".NET" updates.

Does it only freeze GW and not lock up your whole pc (can you ALT-CTRL-DEL and shut down GW)?

Long shot, but are you running any separate software firewall-type program? I remember a long time ago, a game I had would freeze on connection because I was running Zone Alarm.

But I would suggest reinstalling the newest driver for your graphics card, if you haven't already done so. Also, may want to try a previous version of the driver (one that you know worked for sure) in case it's an issue with a newer driver release being buggy.

i need a program so i can give you all my specs if you guys have one itd help, and it locks up the whole computer i have to shutdown and restart the computer.

Uhm... I think there are programs, but i don't use any to recommend to you... if you don't know what is inside your computer... you can right click on computer in the start menu then go to properties, that will give us your CPU and ram... then go to device manage and then display adapters to view your video card... also the model of the cpu (if not custom built) would be helpful... and if you don't know whats inside your comp.... how did you go about updating your drivers?

PCwizard is a pretty good freeware program for specs that I've used in the past.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/pc-wizard.html

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.20GHz, i have 2g of Ram, and a windows 7 sp1 64bit OS, my display adaptor is the ATI Radeon HD 3600 series video card sorry it took so long i got busy around the house

The only three things i can think to recommend to you is.

Go here

http://support.amd.com/us/psearch/Pa...ds=&items=2 0

1.)Download the most recent driver and catalyst control center.
Un-Install your current driver. Do this by going to control panel, Find the driver package in add/remove programs. Usually named "AMD vision control center", "Catalysis Control Center", or "AMD/ATI display adapter"... Select express uninstall all AMD software... Restart the computer and install the driver you just downloaded.

2.) Update your audio driver, this driver can also cause lockups... you will either have to go to your sound card manufacture site if your using one, your motherboard manufacture site if you custom built your pc, or your PC manufactured if you bought it from dell, gateway, ect ect.

3.) If one and two don't work, Run guild wars in XP compatibility mode. Do this by going to your gw.exe folder, right clicking on gw.exe go to properties -> then compatibility, and select WinXP service pack 2 compatibility.

If all this still fails you might want to test your memory is bad or if your video card is over heating.... You can use http://www.memtest.org/ for a tool to test your memory ONLY IF YOU FEEL KNOWLEDGEABLE ENOUGH to do so... you can also monitor your GPUs temp using AMD Vision Control Center make sure its not ur GPU overheating. It could also be your PSU going out if your using a computer thats a few years old.... also if you have your computer plugged strait into the wall or in a cheap surge protector... micro surges in your house like the AC or fridge kicking on... even a vacuum cleaner can cause the power to drop low enough to mess up your computer processes causing it to lock up during power intensive processes....good luck, hope you find a solution

okay wait step 1, i uninstall the driver? isnt that bad or does it matter?

No its not bad and yes it does matter, you always want to uninstall display drivers before installing new ones... installing over them is known to cause errors.

ah okay so i just uninstall the AMD catalyst install manager thing right?

should be an option that says express remove all AMD software after u find it in the add/remove programs. You want to get rid of the control center and the driver.

Just don't uninstall anything related to the motherboard chipset drivers, in case your motherboard has an AMD chipset. I think that shows up in the uninstaller also if you do have one, right?

It shouldn't because its windows 7 provides them one of there features to ensure that drivers work in 7... if it does AMD installer will re-install it when he installs the new package.

well i reinstalled now i should run GWs as a admin and offer the please let it work feast to any and all gods lmao

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should i try updating BIOs my version is 1/9/2008

No, You usually don't want to do that unless something is desperately wrong because one... its only one game... and two its risky... there no better way to brick your computer if you don't know what your doing. If you have set special setting in BIOS like over clocking, you will want to set them back to default for the purposes of troubleshooting

Did it not work? have you tried changing compatibility to XP SP 2?

ya i tried that to, nothin is working and no of my other friends are havin this problem, i mean ive even used the NCsoft launcher and it doesnt work, i should just reformat this harddrive and get a hacked copy of windows XP to use or something i guess

How does it lock up... freeze with black screen or still image?... does the sound run on a short loop or can you still hear the game sound going?

it is freezing with a image of whatever i was doing in GWs and there is no sound

in that case try the audio driver... it could be hanging because it is not responding.... also you can create a guild wars short cut and put "-image" behind the target field in properties (no quotes) then launch gw with that short cut (remove -image when you want to start the game normally)... this will download all the data in guild wars so your not downloading it as you play... will re-leave some stress of the hard drive... you may want to run disk derangement before you do this in your accessories folder... make sure u close all programs before doing so.

still freezing sadly looks like i cant play unless i get a old windows xp and reformat the harddrive for it or just quite trying =/

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unless....could it be my microsoft framework maybe?

https://forum.guildwars.com/forum/fo...3650-AGP-Issue

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/g...t10300668.html

http://www.modacity.net/forums/showt...-and-me/page3&

Doing a Google search on your card series and guild wars seems to be a well known issue... unfortunately it seems nobody found a confirmed fix.... some of these threads may have some options you might want to look into. good luck.

or maybe one of the installed updates making it worse?

Laptop or desktop?

Do you play any other games that require some video processing? Most likely this will happen with any game, so it's not just GW, right?

It's your drivers, hardware, mulittasking, a virus/malware, or all of the above.

Did you change OS? From xp to win7? 2 gigs of ram could be a problem if you are multitasking/have stuff running in the back ground.

Basics for even if you don't have problems.. yet.

Clean out dust. You mentioned it froze before after a couple of hours. It could be that win7 is using a bit more of your cpu/gpu and that you cooler(s) are clogged with dust. Blow out all your coolers. Youtube for how to do it to either a laptop or desktop. Just make sure the power is off completely before doing it. Coolers generally don't go bad, but fans do. Make sure they are all running correctly. If you have a desktop, add a fan and aim it at your video card. Leave door open. This will generally make it run cooler and you can watch for bad fans. If a lot of dust comes out, that is probably a good part of the problem.

Turn off as much junk as you can. Messenger, updates, and any bloatware that might have come with your computer. That stuff uses up resources/ram and even if it's not a problem, will make your computer a bit faster if not running.

Download/update and run malwarebytes in safe mode.

Download/update and run anti virus sw like ms security essentials.

Download/update all relevant drivers.

Download and run Memtest to test your memory.

Check hard drive for bad sectors. Probably not this, but might as well check everything.

Add ram if you can. You want at least 4 gigs nowadays. Slickdeals is a good place to search for computer deals/stuff like that.

You could have a bad power supply. Either way, dont forget to blow that out too.

There can be a bit more simple thing : Are you using TeamSpeak3 Client ? because it sometimes happen that if you run gw after ts3 it will freeze pc.

still having the same issue regardless of what i do, and so im thinkin about downgrading to winxp

This is exactly what I was thinking, especially with win7. You'll need more down the road anyway. Hope you get it fixed.

Has gw ever been running ok on your current win7 64bit setup? If so, what have you changed since that time?

I am running gw with win7 64bit (with the sp1) with a 4870 ati card with no issues. My other pc is running the same os but with a 4850 and I have also ran it with a 3870. It shouldn't be an os issue unless something happened during the update.

Maybe try reinstalling the curent directx if you haven't already.

already did all that, only thing ive done is updated whih if thats the problem i dont know which update

Last thing I can suggest doing is uninstalling the radeon driver and reinstalling an older version. I think I am still running 11.7 on my machine. Worth a shot. Good luck.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...w_vista64.aspx

if it's not the software/drivers, it's probably heat. open it up add a fan or 2 and run it.

Seriously, lock ups like that are harbingers of video card's death.
When it locks up, try pressing mouse buttons rapidly, while randomly moving the mouse in all directions. Hold mouse buttons and move it rapidly. Do you hear a beeping from the computer? (You might not because of hardware specs, but if you do, point for me). Does the cursor change its position, jumps from one point to another, after about a minute or more?

It does sound like driver issue - im using a tricore amd system with catalyst and win 7 32bit - ive had no problems at all.
I would do the following - go into dos ( command prompt ) and go to the drive that has gw on it ( usually c drive ) and type in chkdsk c: /r - the c: refers to drive so if it was on d you`d type chkdsk d: /r
It should give a message that the drive is in use - either select to disconnect the drive and scan or set a scan for reboot ( usually the latter ).
It will scan the drive and check for bad clusters and correct indexes - sometimes a big problem can be the indexes and that can cause system freezes.
Any signs of my system acting up i always chkdsk it - its always best to be safe and cover all bases than get caught out.

Also, pay a visit to the event log, somewhere in the control panel, in administration tools (it's there in XP at least, google's your friend). Check for errors and warnings. Check if anything happened when you computer froze.
25 plat on you finding at least one infinite loop there.

And, don't forget to clean the dust out of your PC and make sure all fans are working.

Win7 also has this an probably vista too - something i forgot