Need help with crash/freeze problem please

Hey everyone. I know there have been several other threads concerning this topic (which I have looked through) but unfortunately they have not helped my problem. I should note that I have posted this message on a couple of other boards.

Recently I purchased Guild Wars, and I found that it will randomly crash to the desktop (w/ error report), or freeze on me (which I have to press alt-F4 to get out of), usually within 15 mins to 30 mins of playing.

Here are my system specs:
-MSI 648 Max Series Motherboard w/ 533MHz Front Side Bus (Model: MS-6585 with the latest BIOS drivers)
-400 Watt power supply
-Pentium IV 2.4GHz Processor
-512MB PC333/2700 DDR-RAM (with CPU/DRAM frequency locked at 1:1 ratio of 133MHz in BIOS)
-40GB Hard Drive (Brand unknown)
-Integrated Sound Card (AC 97)
-Sapphire ATI Radeon 9500 Pro video card (with Catalyst 5.6 ATI Reference drivers)
-DVD-ROM Drive (I think it's an LG brand)
-HP DVD Writer (model dvd420i)
-Windows XP Professional (with Service Pack 2)

Here is what one of my crash reports have shown:
*--> Crash <--*
Exception: c0000005
Memory at address 006f3908 could not be written
App: Gw.exe
ProgramId: 1
Build: 10973
When: 6/11/2005 21:58:46
Flags: 0

Here's what I have tried so far that have not worked:
- Played with my sound card disabled
- Played with (advaced) graphics settings at their lowest (though I still kept the resolution at 1024x768)
- Played with my computer case open, and having a fan blowing air inside
- Upped my DRAM voltage from 2.5v to 2.8v (which is my max voltage)

On a side note, prior to getting Guild Wars I have been playing other games with nowhere near as many problems. In fact, I've recently played Counter-Strike: Source on my comp for hours on end with little to no problems at all. Any help concerning this problem would much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Well i don't have a solution, but i must add that i get similar problems on my system. The only thing we have in common is the soundcard though. I've also looked at my dumps and same error.

What happens with me to be precise:

1. Sometimes in the middle of play the game would just freeze, only way out is to kill the game [note: does not crash to desktop itself].

2. Thing that happens most: Whenever i zone the game will freeze with the loading screen sitting at "100%".

In both instances i'm still CONNECTED, if i play in windowed mode i can see there's still data being send/received as if i'm standing in an area.

My system:

Aopen XCube SiS661FX Intel Motherboad
Sound : Realtec AC 97 Integrated
Graphics : Nvidia FX 5200 with latest drivers 71.89
Windows XP SP2
512 MB Ram

As for heating and such, i can play Farcry,Chronicles of Riddick, Vampire Bloodlines and Need for Speed : Underground II [all heavy graphical games] without any problems on the same system.

Irony is, Guildwars works fine on my Laptop using a graphics card that is not supported [Intel Extreme Integrated]...

I can't kill my process... I have to hard reboot my computer. GW hates us... wee.

Cartman83 & silvertemplar,

Ok. Without knowing everything you guys have done, do you get any other problems, even the slightest thing happen with any other games other than GW?

Also, Cartman, try going back to Cat 4.11 for your card and see if this has any impact on performance. Remember to use Driver Cleaner before you reinstall the drivers. Both can be obtained from www.guru3d.com.

Silver, try going back to an older version of the drivers, maybe the 61.78/98. Not sure which it is now, but you can also get those from the same place.

Another option worth trying, there are some GW.tmp files located in the Guildwars folder and the Windows/Prefetch folder.
Someone else on here, did a clean up and the program he used deleted these files. This seemed to resolve all his problems on that machine. I don't advise deleting these files, as I have no idea what they do or whether they are recreated. However, just copy them to another location and then delete them.

Gives these things a go and see what happens.

the tmp file recreates.... I had a cleaner that just wiped every .tmp file on my computer before... it comes back...

my problem still isn't fixed yet... who knows....

I will admit that crashing to my desktop does happen to a couple of my other games, but it is no where near as prevelant as in GW. I will give your solution a try. Thanks for the help

I'm glad I found this thread. The problems indicated in the first 2 posts are exactly what I have been experiencing. I've seen many posts about crashing issues, but a lot have experienced strange pixles followed by their computer crashing. Mine have only been the following (just like the first 2 posters):

-Crashing to desktop with a Guildwars Error message, allowing me to send an error report. This occurs at random places in the game, i.e. not in a specific zone, or while doing a specific action (most common problem by far...usually after about 15 minutes of play)
-The game freezing (at this point I see a Windows mouse cursor appear in place of the Guildwars cursor) and I have to alt-f4 to get out.
-The "Loading" screen freezing up. (this has only happened a couple of times)

Just about every bit of advice I've heard to fix the problem (to myself and others) is along the lines of "your RAM is probably different brands/you don't have enough RAM, you need a faster processor, you need a faster vid card, etc." I am having this problem on 2 different computers. They are an athlon 2400 with a radeon 9800 pro and an athlon 2600 with a radeon 9700 pro. They both have a gig of RAM (same brand on the sticks). They both are running most current drivers for vid card, sound card, etc. I don't have ANY problems running other games (including, but not limited to Doom 3, Everquest2, City of Heroes).

At the very least, it's nice to see that I'm not the only one with this specific issue. Hopefully someone will have a fix of some sort soon, as it is pretty frustrating trying to play.

I too have been experiencing the crash /freeze problem since the June 8th update. It seems to only crash or freeze when I am in an instanced area with a group or henchmen, and not while I am in a town. Is it just a coincedence or has anyone else noticed that too?
I hope they get it squared away soon, because it is a really good game, but I cant play!

You know...now that you mention it, I left GW on while I was in a town for a good half hour or more today and it didn't crash at all. Most of the time when I go afk, it is in a town and I don't really remember coming back to my computer with GW having crashed. It does seem to be only when I'm in an instanced zone.

I dont really know where the problem is, but can help to find it. If the game freezes when zoning at instanced areas the causes can be:

1. Some network problem: the game hangs when trying to update the server inventory, or when tries to get all the info about the players in the town. Please try to determine if the zoning hangs occur when between areas or between area to town.

2. Some soundcard problem: older AC97 integrated chips are known to be problematic. Note that behind the "AC97" brand are lots of chips, ranging from stereo to 7.1 sound. Please try to disable AC97 in BIOS and play for a while. When killing mobs the sound works a lot more than when in town, than can make the chip hang when instanced.

3. Some graphical problem: Drivers, drivers, drivers. I've seen lots of driver issues, and in the majority of times its the cause. Try with different versions (start from the newest to the oldest). Also the graphic card gets much more stress when instanced: sparkles, explosions, flares, etc.

When you have a problem with computers, sadly (I know by experience) the only way too many times is try and retry (modifiying only one of the factors) until you reach the solution.

If any have more info feel free to PM me, this thread is a bit mess with 5~6 people having their issues

That is some good advice there, and a lot of people do need to keep retrying, especially with driver's. With the ATI 9xxx series cards, I always recommend trying the Cat 4.11 drivers as they seem to be more compatible with those cards, and help to find it there is an issue with the latest drivers causing problems with the latest games.
I say the same thing with the older Nvidia cards. Earlier Geforce Drivers can sometimes get things working in GW even if other games appear to be working properly.
Not sure why this happens. The only conclusion I can come to, is GW has some feature in it, that is affecting something else on the machine and causes a few issues for the older cards.
Remember to use the Driver Cleaner inbetween the uninstall and reinstall. This will help clean out any files that are not needed.

Both files can be obtained from www.guru3d.com

With regards to PM'ing you personally, that is not the idea of these threads. If you look at a lot of threads, there are lots of people posting in them. It's down to people to read the threads and sort out the info for themselves.
Any IT Techie should be able to keep up with this sort of style, as most IT deskside support areas i know off, have more than one persons info in one support case.
Bear in mind though, we are not paid and don't work for ANet. THis is a free service by gamers for gamers.

The whole idea is to keep the information flowing in these threads whether there is more than one person in it or not. If they keep pm'ing you, then the rest of us that try and help are wasting our time and theres in trying to help them.

So people, keep posting here with anything you have tried and any other issues you may have found or possible solutions. This will help us and will help those who come across this thread.

OK I have basically the same system and the exact same problems you have.
The difference in our systems is I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4800 SE, and don't use the built in sound card.
One time I got a different error that said my system hardware was failing. That was exciting.


I've tried:
- Reinstalling windows (got all updates)
- Running graphics at minimum everything
- Takeing off the side of the case
- cleaned out the case (yay)
- Used multiple older versions of the NVidia drivers.
- Used new NVidia drivers.
- Used Omega drivers.
I really don't think its the drivers, although one set made some people appear as big white boxes, and that was fun.
- Ran Memtest for three or four hours (maybe it wasn't long enough, I didn't let the program actually come to a stop, cause it looked like it was looping)
- sighed heavily
- Used msconfig to turn off all startup programs, and turn off all services that were not microsoft.

Things that I think are a problem
- Ran Prime95's torture test, the Max heat, Max Power consumption test:
Sadness... Crashes within or just above 1 minute
- Ran MBM5 to watch motherboard while above test ran.
the -12.00V number became larger that the +12.00V number.. that can't be good right?

Going to do:
- Disable sound card in bios
- run game with motherboard monitor on to see if the -12 voltage spike hits in the high/low section after the game crashes

So... yep.. thats what I've done. The crashing is and always remains very random, sometimes I can play for an hour or two and not crash at all (thats about as long as I ever play). Then other times it crashes within five minutes.
So I'm thinking new power supply, but wanted other advice.
Insert Advice.

I have no idea with regards to power supplies and consumptions. I'm not an electrician. Although, I do have several PSU's lying around that are good and will be testing these out on my friends PC who is also having various crash issues.

With regards to drivers and stuff. Not always but on some occasions it can and is driver issues that are casuing problems. When you have just a conflict or corrupt file, then a clean reinstall of XP can solve most problems.

However, as you have shown, you have tried a lot, so I would go with a hardware issue. It may even be memory that is your problem.
You haven't said anything about trying BIOS settings or changing them. Could be a Bios config setting is incorrect for you type of hardware. Another thing I will be trying out with my friends PC if the PSU doesn't resolve anything.

Just some ideas.

The Third Seal....You have a 400w power supply and your system crashes within a minute running Prime95's torture test?

Just wanted to make a correction to my previous statement...I do remember one time that I was in town, talking to a quest npc, and the game crashed. Though it definately does it more in instanced zones, I guess it's not only in them.

Was this meant to be a cryptic question or comment?

lol

he quoted the stats of the person above him and said "i have the same thing" so I was hoping he overlooked the 400w power supply....and actually has a 300w psu or something. If his computer is crashing minutes into a prime 95 tortue test....his psu is fuxed.

Old power supply was 380 I think.
New power supply installed (450)
Still crashes.
RAM will be replaced next.

If you feel that Guild Wars support is telling you to buy new hardware and you do and it is not helping please send an email to me: [email protected]

If you are getting the run around. If your game is not working please email me.

Thanks,

I recently sent an email about my problem to NC Soft tech support, and I got this response from them:

The error message you are getting mentions "Exception: c0000005." This code is normally associated with a memory problem. Because of this I would suggest you try the following two steps.
1) Your page file may be set too small.
Go to your START > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Virtual memory > Change. Then select "Custom size" and then set your Initial size to 2048 and your Max to 4096. Hit the SET button and then just OK > Apply > OK > Apply > OK and re-boot your system.
2) You may have a bad stick of RAM. I would suggest you remove one and see if that resolves the issue. If not then swap them. You will need to replace the one causing the error.

If this does not resolve your issue please let us know.
Thank you.
The Guild Wars Support Team

I tried increasing my page file to 2048MB-4096MB, and the game still crashed about 35 minutes in, but it gave me this error:

*--> Crash <--*
Assertion: accessKey (0x67726d64) != rec->accessKey (0x67706d64), recObject (0x15f274f8)
Handle.cpp(228)
App: Gw.exe
ProgramId: 1
Build: 11069
When: 6/17/2005 00:45:14
Flags: 0

I noticed that this error does not have "Memory at address ... could not be written" in it, unlike all my previous errors. Perhaps my memory problem is solved...although the fact that my game still crashed means something else is wrong . I'll send those tech support guys another email and see what they say about this new error.

I got this reply back from NC Soft tech support about the error I just posted:

I don't think the memory issue was solved. I think this is just a different error produced by the same problem.

You may have a bad stick of RAM. I would suggest you remove one and see if that resolves the issue. If not then swap them. You will need to replace the one causing the error.

I think that is what you should do next. I am sorry the pagefile didn't fix it and I know this answer stinks but this is what we have for now.

Thank you.
The Guild Wars Support Team

I actually have only one RAM chip in my computer right now. I was able to borrow a stick of RAM from a friend and switch out the RAM that I own, but the game still crashes on me. I tested both RAM sticks with memtest86 for hours, and no errors popped up. But who knows, maybe there is the remote possibility that both RAM chips are faulty (though I really doubt it). I heard from other people that it's possible that my video card memory could be causing this problem. What do you guys think?

Does your friend have a graphics card you can borrow? If so, swapping this out could be worth a try also.

Remember to uninstall the drivers before removing the card. Swap over the cards and once booted up, run the driver cleaner program to get rid of any driver files that may still be lurking on your machine.
Then install the drivers for your friends card.

Driver cleaner can be obtained from www.guru3d.com.

One other thing that is worth looking into is your BIOS settings. Do you overclock at all? If so, declock your hardware. If you don't then set your BIOS to it's safest defaults and test again.

I think I fixed mine.
New RAM didn't fix it, new power supply didn't fix it either.

Went into BIOS, changed a setting called
"DRAM CAS# Latency"
It was on auto I think, so I changed it to 2.5T (cause my stick of RAM said CL2.5 on it, go figure)
Then I changed "Timing setting mode" to "safe"
Since then it hasn't crashed, played about two hours with full everything on.

Cartman, its worth a try as we both have the MSI 648 Max Series Motherboard.

Its under adv. chipset features in the BIOS

They told me to turn my graphics card to minimum. I did the rest myself with the help of web boards. Like this one.
The RAM and power supply are returnable.
I find your post kinda scarry actually.

My 2 cents. That error is a generic M.S. memory error. That usually means A:memory B:Memory location. A: could be bad memory, wrong settings in the Bios (voltage, latency etc..) B: is where drivers can come in. If they step on the wrong memory area, crash! The application crashing is probably GW.exe which is obvious.
Also look in event viewer to see if there is any info and computer management for any conflicts or issues.

Hey Third Seal. I tried out that solution of yours (it was suggested to me also by someone else) but unfortunately my comp still crashed.

Also, thinking that my video card is the problem, I switched out my Radeon 9500 Pro with a friend's Radeon 9700 Pro. My friend also plays GW, and he has had no problems with the game. Well, about 20 mins into the game, the monitor turned off (but the comp was still on), and my comp stopped responding. I tried playing again, and the same thing happened a second time, also 20 mins into the game.

I was thinking to do this either at the end of July or August, but now I am for sure going to do it. I think the only way to solve my comp's problem is to just gut it and replace most of its parts.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, but I think that there's just something completely screwed up with my comp that only a complete overhaul can fix.

For folks with ATI cards, try using the generic drivers that came with the installation CD. ATI even says not to upgrade to the latest drivers unless you are having problems. I run my 9250 with the drivers straight from the box with zero problems.

I tried the drivers on the installation CD that came with my computer, but the game still crashed unfortunately. I personally don't think it is a software problem in my comp that is causing these crashes (though I could be wrong). I have a feeling that there could be a conflict with some hardware on my comp (perhaps with my mobo and my video card).

Please don't sue Anet. We don't need a parasitic lawyer inflating the price of future expansions. Take your business elsewhere.

I'll give that a try tonight. That seems to be the most consistant information for a fix. Also, it would make sense, since this problem is happening on 2 of my computers. The only big similarity between the two is that I'm running the latest 5.6 Catalyst drivers.

I haven't tired that yet. I will give it a shot.

Update:

So I uninstalled my Cat 5.6 ATI drivers last night and then installed the 4.11's. I played GW for a good 3 hours or so and it didn't crash to desktop once. I don't want to get too excited about it just yet, but it would appear that the vid drivers could have been the problem. However, as I feared the "Catalyst Control Center" is giving me an error when Windows starts up (a problem that installing the 5.6 drivers fixed). But oh well, I'd rather have a little error box when I start up the computer than not be able to play games.

Did you run the driver cleaner before reinstalling the older Cat 4.11 drivers. THis will completely uninstall all the drivers and the Control Center software. This should help fix this problem.

I did driver cleaner, got rid of my newest Cat drivers, and installed the 4.11 drivers. I started up GW, and noticed that it was running a bit faster (like a 10...15 FPS boost) and the maps were loading a bit faster. I get into the game and then after 10 minutes, I get the BSOD. I'm still open to other solutions.

Well, those NC Soft tech support guys told me to download a memory testing program at this website http://hcidesign.com/memtest/. After running the test, it apparently found errors in my RAM, which memtest86 did not. And so I went out today and got a new stick of RAM, installed it, and tried playing GW with it (note: only the new RAM was inside my comp). Within 10 minutes the game crashed to the desktop on me. Fortunately the store I bought it from will allow me to return the RAM for a full refund, but I am still completely confused as to what could be causing my errors. Anyone have any ideas?

Heh, that's great. One post, and it's about some lawsuit against NCSoft over some random problems that could be related to a thousand different problems. For every player that's crashing out for no known reason, there are probably 100 or more who have zero problems with the game. Instead of trying to instigate some lawsuit, you could try to read the posts and offer assistance to the people who have issues.

Thanks for the help. I did run driver cleaner after uninstalling the 5.6 drivers. After about 30 seconds or so, it gave me the "finished" message. *shrug*

Sounds about right. As long as you chose the right settings for your card whether it's ATI or Nvidia, it doesn't take long for it to clean out all the files.

I remember having this problem myself as I also run ATI cards. Why it should cause errors I don't know, but the only thing I can remember is something to do with an incompatible driver in the Control Center that isn't working with the drivers you installed.
The only way I remember getting rid of it, was to uninstall the drivers, do a complete clean up of my PC, defrag, clean out all the temp files etc and a check disk and then rerun the install. I had tried it several times, but eventually I got it working.
The only thing I can really think that is causing the problem, is something in the registry and quite possibly the uninstall and reinstall several times fixed it.

As for your situation, trial and error and see how you get on with it.

As far as the control center goes, it's not really necessary to get the card working, only if you require to setup certain DirectX or OpenGL features.

Ok, just to update my previous post regarding the ATI Catalyst Control center.

Something strange has happened lately on my machine and I keep getting errors regarding the Microsoft .Net software. It keeps giving off an error message when I shut down that it can't shut this service down, so I have to cancel it to shutdown.

The only things I have done recently is to update the ATI Drivers, Reinstall the Zone Labs software due to some error with the software starting and Guild Wars Updates. I haven't changed anything else on my machine.

It doesn't cause me any problems in the game, but I was wondering, that as a lot of people are running XP and ATI I know for sure uses this software for there Control Center software, this is what i was thinking.

Uninstall the .Net Framework software, reboot your machine and then try and run Guild Wars and see if you hit any problems with the game then.
If you do, then uninstall the ATI drivers, run the Driver cleaner software and then reinstall your ATI drivers and see if this changes anything.
You may get an error when you boot up that the ATI control center is not working, but don't worry, this won't affect your ability to use the Graphics Drivers, it just doesn't let you access certain aspects of the card due to the way the ATI control center works.

Another option would be to uninstall both pieces of software and just run the Windows Based ATI drivers and see how the game performs or even if any errors occur.

If not of this helps, then I suggest installing the .Net Framework Software and then the update before you install the ATI drivers just in case if affects anything in the Registry on how it performs with the .Net software.

As for Nvidia users, I have no idea if the Forceware uses the .Net Framework software in the same manner as ATI, but it could still be a good idea to uinstall this piece of software to see if it affects anything in game at all.

I know it's possible none of this will work, but it's worth a shot as it's the only other thing I know of other than the OS that is on a lot of machines that are having some sort of Graphics Crash or Machine Lock Up problem.

Lets hope this helps to fix some peoples problems.

I'll be reinstalling my .Net Framework software to see if this stops my errors from occuring on shutdown.

*UPDATE*

The Techies at NCSoft told me that I should install VIA chipset drivers and see if it would solve the problem.

I installed them, restarted my computer, and then attempted to play Guild Wars. I noticed about a 10 - 15 FPS boost, and then after 15 minutes of play, I got the BSOD.