I'm giving up on guild wars

That's it I've had enough. I just cannot get this game to work without crashing.

First it would freeze and the screen would corrupt. So I removed the overclock from my card and left the side of my case open. That solved that.

Then it started to black screen of death on me. The screen would go black, the monitor would go into stand by and I would have to turn my pc off using the off button.

So I added a fan blowing into my case. I unplugged my pc from the multiplug I was using before and gave it it's own plug socket. I opened port 6112 on my router, disabled windows firewall and turned off my virus scanner incase it interfered. I even went into msconfig and turned off as many of the microsoft services as I could and still keep my pc running.

Now my pc black screens on me but the monitor doesn't shut down and I can still type and log out ( although I can't see jack).

I love this game to bits but I can't stand it crashing all the time. I've done the fort ranik mission 3 times now, each time my pc crashes before I can finish it.

If anyone has any suggestions I would be estatically greatful to hear them. My pc stats are:
Windows XP SP2
AMD Athlon 64 3400
1 Gb RAM
200 GB HD
300 W PSU
ATI Radeon 9800 SE 128-bit,256 MB Graphics card. cooled with a Zalman VF700-CU
Direct X 9
750 kb/s internet connection run through a lynksys dsl router.
I have the latest drivers for my video card and my motherboard

The only thing I can think of is that my psu is not powerful enough but I can't justify dropping £50 or more getting a new one if there is a chance my pc still won't work.

The only thing that i can think of is that the ATI Radeon SE is bad. SE is a crapped up card of the original. Get a Sapphire ATI Radeon X300 128 mb. Its about $66 at Newegg.com

Yeah this sure does sound like a bad video card and not the game. It sounds like something in your computer is messed up, and chances are it's the card. I run the ATI 9250, a cheap 256Mb PCI card with no problems on a system that is vastly inferior to yours.

What I'd suggest is cleaning the inside of your case (which it sounds like you've done), and reinstall the video card with it's original CD drivers and give that a try. ATI always says to never upgrade the drivers unless you experience problems. Alot of folks just get the latest and greatest, but until I encounter a problem, I'll always use my original driver.

Good luck man, but I wouldn't give up on the game unless you don't like it specifically, because it sounds like you've got problems besides the game. The people on this forum are great and helped me get through my glitches. It will work out.

If you've got any sort of onboard graphics, you may want to enable that and see if it helps some. It will at least give you some idea of if it was your card.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the 9800 is a VERY HOT card. ATI's usually are hotter running than nVidia, but the 9800 cooks.

I think that either your card is bad or your PSU is insufficient/failing. Do you have a friend that would loan you a known-good, higher wattage PSU to try out? Borrowing a different video card wouldn't hurt, either, except you need to be careful that a card with lower current draw might "solve" a PSU problem, not a card problem.

Try Svenn suggestions. They are the first things to do, one of those are probley the problem.

Replace the video card with a buddies first and see what happens. (Perhaps a couple just incase.) Then try the PSU.

a) Your PSU is too low for the stuff you have running in your system (AMD 64 cpu, 200gig hd, 1 gig of ram consume a lot of power, and so does that 9800se).

b) You are running your video card overclocked, which might also be reponsible for the problems you're having.

Thanks for your prompt replies.
I was having a similar problem with most other games especially Warhammer 40000 dawn of war but upgrading my GPU cooler to a zalman seemed to sort this out. Oh and when I said I added a fan I meant a bloody big desk fan blowing onto the graphics card.

I'll see if I can borrow another PSU and graphics card. I won't be easy since most of my friends are technophobes who would have to open up their pcs.

If i decide to buy one, what size psu would you reccomend and what make? Preferably nothing too expensive.

How do I enable the onboard graphics? Do all motherboards necessarily have them?

I'll try reinstalling my old video card drivers.

A 400 PSU it seems is running the game pretty well. (If you can, go for a 500 from a decent company so you can keep using it over the next few years at least.)

Not all video cards have an onboard graphic engine. Quite a few are just typical VGA poop.

Nothing too expensive? Well then this is probably the best bet for you: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153006
It's on sale until tomorrow, so you probably still have time if you're planning on upgrading the psu. I think its regular price is like $45.

oh should have mentioned I live in the uk so I can't order from newegg

Try looking here: http://www.thermaltake.com/where/uk/uk%20index.htm

I've decided to order this PSU since I couldn't get the model you suggested.

http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/...roductid=16915

Looks like I'm gonna have to give up alcohol for a bit to pay for it. Ah well I'm sure my liver will be pleased.

That's a good power supply. Good luck, and come back to let us know how things go once you have it up and running.

If you're willing to spend £45 on a new PSU, I would seriously recommend an Akasa Paxpower2. The 400w version is £46.94 with VAT at this site and has dual 12v rails.

I just bought one of these myself, it's amazing how quiet it is compared to a dual-fan PSU, and it runs very cool.

too late i already ordered the other one. Thanks anyway.

Just another side note to consider. My friend has a 9800se and it works perfectly fine. However, he has never overclocked it. You should be aware that over clocking any part of your system without really Good kooling that ensure the levels stay at a constant safe level, can destory hardware. In fact I hear that plain just overclocking in general can by very bad for hardware over the long term even if its maintained properly. By over clocking you are putting strain on systems that were not really designed to handle the clock speeds and data rates you have set.

It sounds like a burnt up video card as well as maybe a psu problem. Once you crunch up a card it can do alot of strange things, that seem to be unrelated at all to what you are doing or have done.

two things to consider:

psu is weak and should be upgraded

Test your video card by downloading ATI Tool and running the tests. If you get artifacting then you know it's a video card problem, it may run fine for a while overclocked but when it goes, it goes quickly. For ati tool you'll need to let it run for several minutes and hopefully you won't see any errors

That card (9800se) is more than adequate to play GW, it seems as though the PSU isn't good enough for the specs...

Definitely switch out the PSU. 300w just won't cut it anymore. I'm probably currently (haha) pulling more out of my cheap 350w than I should be:
AMD Athlon64 3200+
GeForce FX5900XT
2 HDDs
1 CD-RW
3 fans (1x120mm, 2x80mm)

I'm thinking my crash issues are caused by power dips during high loads on my video (fog, emitters, lots of sprites during battle, etc.)
I'm about to spend a bit of dough on the Antec True430 on Newegg.

Try this suggestion
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...84&postcount=9
If your computer still restarts, then it's PSU. If you see a "Blue Screen of Death", then your PSU should be ok. Looking at your specs, i can say that there may be a chance that the problem is with your PSU. Especially so if it's some chinese noname crap.

lower the rez on your monitor

i have a true power 380 and a truepower 430 both of which have served me well

except the voltage on the first 380 was out of regulation limits but was replaced very quickly with no hassel

My new 480w psu should be arriving tomorow or thursday so I'll install that and see how it goes.

Strictly speaking I never really overclocked my card. I never altered the memory or core (speed/current??) I just softmodded it to re-enable a crippled feature (pixel pipelines) that is available on the normal 9800. I made sure to install a better GPU cooler before I did this.

I really hope a new PSU works since the regular crashes are becoming infuriating. I had to attempt the fort ranik mission 3 times before I managed to finish it without my pc crashing. One time I was seconds away from completing it when it died on me.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 is a major bug, it probably causes also some problems, i suggest you to forget that and downgrade to Service Pack 1.

I wish you had posted this earlier. My friend has exactly the same problem but on a machine that is lower spec but still running 300Watt PSU. I have tried everything because all sorts of things happened to the machine. The major issue was with the 9800 that was installed to begin with.

First time it happened, it was the card itself. Luckily, the company that the PC was bought from, came straight out and replaced the card. The initial problem vanished. This was where the PC would lock up or reboot and then the screen would freeze up.

I then had to rebuild XP due to excessive crashing and the machine not rebooting and loading properly. Probably corrupt files.
Then playing GW or another couple of games on this machine, the same problem as mentioned by the initial poster occurred with all of them.
Another issue arose too, the machine seemed to work perfectly ok when at my house on my network. However, plug it back into my friends network and similar problems would arise again, game crashed part way through a mission. Strange it never crashed while in town??

There are only 3 things left that i can now try. Replace the PSU for one bigger than 300. It may already be 350. Will recheck that. The latest ATI drivers are causing problems and don't really benefit the older 9800 compared to the latest X800's. Or it's the network Cable Router somehow kicking the PC over.(Don't think it's the case, but does seem to happen when reconnected to this PC)

The machine is running XP SP2, 512mb, 80gig HDD, 2400+ AMD, 9800, se or Pro. Will have to recheck that too.
Currently running the PC with minimum software and drivers installed to try and tie down to as small amount of things as poss.

Only reason i never changed the PSU. I have a 340 in my PC with an X800 Pro, and the whole tower is full of hardware, HDD's, backup units, etc , plus a lot of other devices hooked up to USB etc, so everything is causing a small drain on the PSU, and i run a 2400+ myself. I have not yet hit one problem with this machine on anything i run and i have run some intense games on this machine.

I will keep an eye on this Post and look forward to hearing if your PSU resolves the problem. If so, i will get onto the PC Company and ask for increased PSU supply for my friend.

Gotta love those 3 year on site warranty's.

Not quite sure i agree with this one. SP2 does have bugs in it, don't think it causes major problems with running latest game software though.

If anything, it's either Power Related as mentioned above or New Graphics Drivers trying to run effectively on older graphics cards, with the latest games.

As per my Post above, i went back to the original drivers that came with the Card. Will see how they go.

I still say that it's either the power supply being low, or something with the card (after it was modded).

Just for kicks, you can check this site out: http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_sup...or.php?cmd=AMD . It will calculate how much watts your computer needs. Keep in mind that the result isn't the power supply capacity, but the amount of power that the supply can pump out at any given time. Chances are that the 300w psu can't do over 220-250.

Running that calculator, the results come up stating that I need roughly 350watts of power. I use an Antec True430 power supply whos peak power output is 430watts, so I am good at the moment.

My system running: pentium4-northwood cpu, 4 ddr memory sticks, 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives, 5-6 fans, 2 usb devices, 1 floppy, 1 agp card, 2 pci cards and built in sound. I'm sure there's even more stuff that I forgot to mention.

I suggest people stop bashing Service Pack 2, as they obviously have no idea what they're talking about.

I'm no fan of Microsoft, in fact I have had to tolerate shoddy crap from them for years, but Service Pack 2 for Windows XP is probably the best thing they've done since releasing Windows 2000.

Most problems with Service Pack 2 are with software that has no real support, older games and whatnot, but for newer games it's perfectly fine. If you don't like it, that's fine, but some of us enjoy the extra protection and stability it brings to a well-maintained machine. With all the new security threats out there you should never tell someone to simply downgrade back to Service Pack 1.

I'm wondering if hes gotten in a new ps yet. I had a friend with constant reboot problems, tried everything. Trading in and out different cards, removing and reinstalling fresh directx drivers, messing around with bios settings, various game settings, chipset upgrades the works even completly wiping his system and it all came down to his ps going bad, hasn't had a reboot or crash since.

I am running all that in a BioStar iDeq SSF System w/ a nVidia G3 mobo on a 250w psu...

Then your system will die Eventually and sooner then you would like.

Fwiw, I had a similar issue with a Radeon card on another game a little over a year ago, and thought it was the power supply. But the card itself had overheated and gone bad... I sent it in to ATI, and they replaced it and I've never had the problem since.

Sounds to me, from your description, that something on the video card went out, probably due to heat or overclocking in general, not necessarily o'cing the card itself. That's what happened with mine.

What, there is no problems with service pack 2, the only issues arise with 3rd party software, and as long as sp2 is installed correctly you will have no prolems...

You do realize what you just said right.

As in Third-party software, that Means everything outside of microsoft products including your video card drivers, sound drivers, and everything else not directly suppplied by Microsoft.

Sp2 has its hiccups and there is no question about that. Most of which should have been resolved by now though. Sp2 is by far the largest known update provided by microsoft becuase it effects so many core system components in an attempt to harden security.

This thread caught my eye...

All I have to say is..

You're running all that high powered equipment on a 300 watt power supply? You are brave indeed! ESPECIALLY to overclock your video card!

I would bet money ($20) on that power supply being the culprit. Get yourself an Antec TruePower 380 or higher (430 would be preferable).

I'm afraid those of you betting that a higher PSU would solve the problem have lost your money. The game still crashes even with the 480w psu. I contacted NC interactive support who suggested starting the game with the --nosound command which made jack all difference. I'm waiting for another reply from them.

Looks like its down to the card. How do you go about returning video cards if they are faulty? Obviously I'm not gonna mention I unlocked the extra pixel pipelines.

I have had this exact problem with my ATI Radeon card. Latest drivers, etc., and the game runs all other MMOs I play flawlessly (EQ, EQ2, WoW). Not sure what the deal is. =( I can run the game on my craptastic work computer with built-in video just fine.

Sorry should have elaborated, when SP2 is installed there has to be no 3rd party programs running i.e Antivirus, firewall, anything else you have, thats when problems can arise, also depending on the age of your machine, then get driver updates, bios updates if needed, plus if you have the dreaded intel prescot core then there is an inherent problem in the microcoding on the chip making sp2 installation impossible without bios update and a patch installed from intel....

As I work for Microsoft they hope I should know this

Guys, if you want to argue about SP2, go do it in its own thread.

Original Poster:

Try calling the company to which the card belongs to. Tell them that you tried everything, and the Guild Wars technical support has narrowed it down to the video card and suggested that you give them a call.

Ok. As I have mentioned in other Posts with users experiencing problems with there ATI 9800 series GPU's. Go back to the Original Drivers that came with the Card and see how things go then.
If you still get problems even then, then I'm afraid, you may well have fried your card. If it's still under warranty, you may be lucky and get a replacement. If not, more money has to be spent.

I look forward to seeing if the drivers have any impact with your card, as I have another thread running here, where I am trying to get people to report there issues in the one thread so all can see and read the same resolutions etc.

A lot of people seem to revolve around the Heat and Power issue, which aren't bad and not wrong, but not many try changing the drivers first.
I find if I ever hit a major snag, i go back to basics, with the BIOS and Drivers. It's a long process, but makes elimination much more thorough before people go off and buy new PSU's, Heat Sinks and Fans.

Give it a go, and please add to my other thread for all to see after you have tried it out.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=17277

This is definitely something that needs further investigation as more and more people are experiencing this problem, and most noticeable, they are Older Model ATI cards, and even a few NVidia cards now too of the older variety.