Blue Screen of Death Issue...

Okay, my friend bought Guild Wars yesterday, and has been playing it with me.
He kept running into a problem though...

everytime he'd go to a Merchant to sell stuff off, his comp would blue screen on him & shut down.

So he turned all the graphics settings down in the game...to the point where it looks pretty crappy now, but allows him to play for around an hour or so before blue screening him out.

He's thinking it might be not a good enough vid card, so he might buy a new one this week.

Any idea what the problem could be?

Also, I'm running mine on a Toshiba laptop with the stock nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 card it came with and it runs just fine...even with the graphics setting on "Best Quality".

Should I tell him to get that card? I've had many ppl tell me its an awful one, but through Guild Wars, Halo, CS, & Ultimate Baseball Online, I've never had any problems with it.

Thx in advance.

Get the most up to date video driver here - http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Update your Direct X - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

And the Geforce FX < Ati 95xx Series at that time.

I do run fine with the 5700 Ultra but there are much better cards out there.

I would also un-install and re-install guildwars.

Depending on what you his budget is, go for Nvidia 6600 or higher or Ati 9800 or higher (Xseries) if possible.

Is he running a box or a laptop? It seems awfully coincidental that it can go for about an hour each time before it goes crazy. The first thing that comes to my mind is that some internal components may be overheating, and that at about an hour, the temperatures are high enough that the computer shuts itself down. A laptop would be especially susceptible to this as they tend to have much worse ventilation/cooling than a box, not to mention all the guts are crammed together.

No, I may have not clarified well enough...

My laptop is the one running the geforce go5200.
I've never updated any drivers or anything for it, though i've had it about 2 years...so if you think it'd be wise to update them anyway, I will.
Mine is running fine though.

His is a box...and its a Dell. That's about all I know at this point...he's in class now, so I dont have a way to ask him which vid card his came with. Its a pretty new dell though.

At first when we'd play, he would blue screen EVERY time he went to the merchant to sell.
After knocking his graphics down to the bone, he can usually go to the merchant...but after a while, it eventually will bluescreen him again (not always at the merchant anymore...occasionally elsewhere during the middle of a quest ).

Thanks for the replies too, btw.

i had similar problems with mine. it wasn't bluescreening but it would just completely freeze. i knew my problem, it was a driver issue between my vid card and o/s. i just went and built a custom pc with new processor, vid card, and o/s with no problems as of yet. your friend's problem sounds like the integrated vid card over-heating. just have him update the gfx and it should fix it. or better ventilation. up to him.

What was the BSOD message?

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR EQUAL? or something similar? Because that is most definitely the drivers.