Computer restarts while playing

I just got the game today and about 20 minutes into playing my computer randomly restarted. This has not happened with any other fullscreen games I have played (SWG, WoW, MVP Baseball). Then I defragged my HD, removed spyware, and cleaned out my registry, and then after about 20 mins it restarted again.

System specs:
AMD Athlon 2500+ Mobile @ 2.4GHz
1 GB RAM
120GB SATA HD
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
ABIT NF7-S2G mobo
Onboard sound

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

try underclocking your cpu a little and see if it still does it

PSU problem. GW sucks the juice out of it big time to keep your system running the game.

What is the wattage of your PSU? If you have another that is more powerful test it out or borrow one from a friend.

Hi all
I used to have a problem with my computer freezing up while playing GW and after a short while it would restart. This happened about 4 times. I run the game on an older computer 1,06 Ghz with a (get this!!) limited edition GeForce 2 graphics card and only 640mb SD ram. I eliminated the restart problem as these periodically occurred when opening multiple windows. The restart problem came after some game updates. Now when I play and if it freezes/lags when opening a new window i.e. [i]nventory I press it again and after 1½ secs I am back in the game. No sweat No prob!
On the other hand my friend has a MAJOR prob with the newer GW updates. He has a kickass machine, loads of RAM and a brandnew (very expensive) videocard. His Comp restarts as soon as he logs into the game. NCSOFT has been contacted and they have tried to solve his problems but so far with little luck. His PSU is not faulty and not insufficient, checked the power with an independant PSU for the videocard, driver updates and rollbacks, reinstalling the entire comp, loads of test programs have been running on his comp to determine the fault/error. Keep in mind that this fault (rebooting at log-in) started when GW had a larger update about 2 months ago. Does anybody have a suggestion to what the problem might be or where the problem lies?!? By the way he has no problems playing other games!

make sure your video card drivers are the most up-to-date. i used to have this problem when i first got the game, but updating the vid card drivers solved it.

Sound like the Memory Stick to me, RAM ...
If you have another computer that run smooth GW , swap the RAM see the problem go away .
Had that problem to me and my friend. I thought it was power supply.
Turned out , Bad RAM.

There are 2 possibilities fr your problem.

#1 - your RAm is incompatible. This is only the case though if you are using 2 different types of memory togetehr. For instance you can be using PC3200 all around, but one could be PNY and the other Corsair. There is incompatibility between the RAM here. Try d/l and running Memtest to see if this is the problem. -- of course you coudl just have bad ram all together...

#2 - It could be your GPU. Make sure your motherboard is using an ATI chipset/drivers and not Nvidia chipset/drivers. This is a common problem that many people have who try ot run ATI graphics cards on Nvidia Chipset otherboards. It will work, but you need ot make sure tht you have the latest nForce or ATI system drivers. (not the graphics driver, that doesn't really matter )

While you might be able to run WoW and other games like it w/out problem, GW uses alot more "basic" resources than these games do. It doesn't ull as much on the GPU as much as those others do. It's why you experience alot of lag in the game at times and when trying to go back to windows as well. GW really needs about 4gigs of RAM to make your system not lag like crap

One of those is your issue though, so don't be jumping aound thinking it's 50 different things

Ok,

1, Mixing and matching RAM will NOT cause any issues unless it is faulty or the slots are damaged.

2, Using an ATI card on an nforce motherboard will not have any problems, when his board was released there was only nvidia Via and SIS that were the main chipsets, only recently has ATI come ont the scene.

3, 4gig why waste money, GW will run perfectly with 512, though most have 1gig these days. Most lag is ISP or game server issues, and anything less than 512 of ram will increase loading times.

No I am not trying to flame you or put you down, but lets not confuse the guy

It sounds to me like an overheating issue, have you checked your Temps?, also I would recommend downloading direct x, chipset and graphics drivers first. You could try setting you chip back to stock, but that chip was made for overclocking, and you have the board to do it, what is the make of your memory?, I'm thinking it may not be up to the clock speeds,(try giving a little extra volts)

I would check the RAM, most likely in restart issues it's memory problems. In some systems there is a fail safe in the BIOS to shut down the computer in case of overheating CPU temps, but not restart it. You could check the temps also. If everything is set correctly, you could try re-seating your RAM into the memory bank. First turn off the computer, unplug everything and simply take the RAM out and insert it back in, make sure it's securely in there. You could also run a program called memtest86 to see if your RAM is failing or not.

Lol, ^ I love this guy. Thanks for saying everything I was intending to say ^_^

Restarting sounds like power / heat.

Btw, 4 gigs is complete and utter overkilll. Not only will they default to 2t (4 x 1GB), but also no game to date or really anything outside of video / image editing on a large scale comes close to using that much memory. I'm playing GW right now on 2GB and it + all the other things I have open at once are barely using 1.5GB. Thats running, Windows + StyleXP, WMP, Photoshop, 5 or 6 system monitoring softwares / utilities, and various other random things that I have open at any given time.

1st thing I would try is make sure that your mother board drivers are update, www.nvidia.com.
GW is kinda intense on the computer. Normally when you have an issue where you just randomly restart, I think video card first in my experience.

http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ this goes great with your 9700 pro, this will also monitor your video card temps, using the sensors on the video card. You can also have it log your temps. When/If your computer restarts, you can then go look back at the log and see just how high the temps are. ATi Tool is a real nice program, I run it on both my 9700 pro and my x800xl. Your vid card should run around 50-52 celcius on idle, and up to 75-80. Anything higher than 85 raise an eyebrow cause thats toooo hot lol.

If everything is normal then.....
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ This will monitor your temps, voltages for cpu, and memory etc. Its a great way to figure out whats your compy doing inside.


Voltages & Temps are well then.....
http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/ this is also a great memory test/benchmark, SiSoftware Sandra. Try this run your memory through hell and back with the test on this software.


Mixing ram, can cause your computer to get very unstable. For example, we have 2 slots for your ram, in the first slot we have Corsair pc 3200 (ddr 400) 3.0-4-4-7 timing, 2nd we have Kingston pc 2700 (ddr 333) 2.0-2-2-5....

Now the Clock of the ram 400 & 333 respectively, is not a problem. However, the timings of the ram is a serious issue. If the latency (timings) is out of reach of the other stick of memory, your system will surely suffer. Mainly because the corsair memory in this case has a longer "cycle" than the kingston memory. These Cycles conflict with each other causing your compy to crash.

Some manufacturer's dont have the timing printed on the label...but how do you find out? http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php Another Great program. Tells you everything you need to know, timings of your memory, speed of your CPU.

Hope this helps.

Might wanna also check your power supply. Sometimes when they start overheating due to dust clogging up the fan in the back, or if the fan is no longer spinning there could be problems also. A failing/overheating power supply can cause random restarts as well.

Sorry but that is not entirely true, if as you say you mix 400 & 333, the 400 will default to the lower speed that includes memory timings, well it does on an amd board. Can I ask where you heard this friom because it is wrong, I dont mean this in any derogitory way, but you may have been given misleading info

Before I'd start hacking up the hardware, I'd look for the option that will automatically restart windows if an error occurs, that is hidden somewhere in the System Properties dialogue and disable it (sorry for being that vague, but I have a German version of Windows and I assume it won't help you if I tell you how to get there using German labeling ). That probably won't stop you computer from crashing, but maybe you'll get an error message then, which will tell you what is actually wrong.

What crap are you smoking?

1.) Different modules of RAM will not affect it unless there either faulty on arrival or you broke them. Say you use PC2700 and PC3200, it'll run your PC perfectly fine but put them down to the lowest one, so it'll put the 3200 down to 2700.

2.) nVidia chipset motherboards have absolutely 0% incompatibility issues with ATI Graphic Cards. I've seen many rigs working them perfectly.

3.) 4GB RAM? All I gotta say is LOL. Stop trying to make him waste money, that's a loada bull.

this actually happened on my brothers computer.

What you want to do, is underclock the graphics card or put in extra fans to cool the whole system down.

If you have an ATi gfx card, you can underclock it using ATiTool, it is very simple to use.

oh, btw it restarts because games require a lot from the gfx card, and therefore the graphics card will try to compensate and if your graphics card is not well powered/cooled, then the whole system, as a failsafe measure, will shutdown to protect the hardware from breaking.
indeed, maximum your rig should have, having only guild wars on the HDD, is 1gb. 1gb is plently, 4GB of RAM is a complete waste if you dont have extremely demanding software/if the rest of the rig cannot support it properly and instead just bottlenecks the RAM.

you need to re-read what I said.

"Now the Clock of the ram 400 & 333 respectively, is not a problem."
"However, the timings of the ram is a serious issue."

I'll re-phrase it. you have a ddr 400 in slot 1 timing of 3.0-4-4-7 (I know this is highly unlikely, but this is just an example), slot 2 is ddr 400 timing of 2.0-2-2-5 (typical timing of ram in the ddr 400 flavor). Just because the Clock (ddr 400) is the same doesn't mean that this pc will function correctly. The timings are far too off to work in a stable enviroment.

Now you are correct, if I throw timings out the window, pc 3200 will slow itself down to pc 2700 speeds. But the timings define how the memory sends and recieves the data.

*edit - Re worked it*

Yup, But read what I posted, "the ram timings will also match the lower too"

This is not always true. The memory was developed for a specific timing, with a little bit of leeway. Some memories you will find will not slow down to allow for the slow down enough, hence creating an unstable enviroment. You cant change the timing as easily has you can the clock.

Where do you get your information from, it is wrong. Here is and example.

Take Patriot XBLK it has a stock speed of 200mhz DDR400 with latency timings of 2-2-2-5(dam good memory), if you raise the clock speed to 250mhz DDR500 it will loosen the latency timings to 3-3-3-8. This will always be the rule with ANY memory. It will always default to the lower speed and mirror the latency timings, no if's, no but's. Yes changing the timings can make your PC blue screen, but that happens with any overclocker, and I have been doing this since the days of the 386 chips.

EDIT - changing the memory timings is easily done in the BIOS, not advisable if you don't know what your doing.

Ram!!!

I have a similar problem and Anet reply me this but dont know how to change timings in my computer bios i did not find this frequency.

Hello Eduardo,

According to the Everest report your RAM timings are not set properly.

Your motherboard is set to 3-3-3-7 @ 200MHz

But your RAM only supports:

(3.0-3-3-8 @ 200 MHz)

I suggest going into your BIOS and adjusting the timings and memory bus speed to what is compatible with your RAM.

Could you please try running the Prime95 test again?

Regards,
Guild Wars Technical Support

what im saying is that Chips have thier limits, as to which timings they can run. Just because I can switch a timing in the bios, doesn't necessarily mean that the ram will run comfortably / correctly with that timing. The first thing when building your computer, you want to keep the ram the same. You can really affect the stability of the computer even if you have a little control over the timing.