Crashing a lot!

AMD Athlon XP 2200 1.8 Ghz
VIA KM266 Socket A
Onboard AC'97
Wester Digital 40 GB 5400 RPM HD
640 MB PC2100 RAM
ATI AIW 9600XT

When I'm in the middle of playing a game, my system just randomly turns off. The power on the computer is on, but the monitor is turned off, and nothing responds. Sometimes it reboots. I have read through numerous threads regarding this issue, but nothing has worked so far.

Right now I am awaiting a response from NCSoft Support.

Heres what I have tried:

Reformatting hard drive and reinstalling Windows. (Twice)
Virus Scan
Spyware Removal
Catalyst 5.6 Drivers
Catalyst 4.11 Drivers
Omega Drivers (5.4)
Omega Drivers (5.6)
DNA Drivers (5.4)
Turning off Fast Write
Updated latest drivers for network, audio, and chipset
Changing AGP Aperture Size
Running everything on lowest details
Ending all non-System processes
Cooling down everything below 60 degrees
Restoring BIOS Defaults
Changed Page file to 0 and to very high
Tested a few other games to see if the same problem persists, which it doesn't
Service Pack 1 and 2
memtest86 for 10 hours, no errors
Disabling Secondary display drivers
Running only the 512 MB stick of RAM
Running only the 128 MB stick of RAM
Defragmenting hard drive
Checked hard drive for errors
Running with the "-nosound" parameter
Removing my router

I'm fairly sure this is not a hardware problem since my other games seem to run fine.

Help?

Update: I fixed it! The Omega Drivers 2.5.90 (Catalyst 4.11) worked!

Uninstall Cat 5.6 drivers and reinstall Cat 4.11 instead. These are more stable for your series of ATI card.

Cat 5 drivers are really only for the later X800 series cards anyway, and have no real benefit in making the performance or stability any better than Cat 4.11 does already. Plus, Cat 4.11 is a good basis to find if youi have anything wrong with your system.

You can get them from www.guru3d.com and use the Driver Cleaner that can also be located here too, after you have uninstalled the Cat 5.6 drivers.

I have an ATI 9600 series on my friends PC and have installed 4.5 which were the drivers that came with the card. So far, I have yet to see these problems reoccur on this machine, which are the same as you have just mentioned.

I have done a full XP rebuild after a clean format of the harddrive and installed the minimum of software and drivers needed to get the machine up and running.

I would also check what version of the VIA drivers you have installed on your system. There are currently two versions. Ones for the older Mobo's and ones for the Newer mobo's. From the look of your mobo, I would think you need the older drivers but I could be wrong. The older drivers are more stable on older systems and the new ones, again, have no real benefit in giving performance increases, or any inhancements or stability if installed on the wrong system. If anything, having the wrong drivers could cause you more problems.

Double check the VIA website and download the drivers they recommend.

Hope this helps you out.

I had the exact same problem as you. I fixed it by upgrading my power supply.

I had/have a similar problem as you do. I emailed ArenaNet and they told me to upgrade my motherboard chipset drivers (did) and disable fast write (which I hadn't).

So far I have yet to see a freeze to black screen. Although it was random before (time and location) so I am hoping that disabling fast write solved the job.

I tried Dirkeis' and Inferno2k's methods, thanks but I still have that problem. Any other suggestions?

ok.. i had the same problems ever since beta and just thought it was a buggy GQ code, but check your RAM timings mine was something off whack like 2.5 - 3 - 3 -8 and and moved it to 3 - 3 - 3 - 8 and havent had any problems yet. use cpuid.com's "cpuz" program to get started.. im assuming you get a 'faulty cpu/memory' message? and sometimes just a 'send this error to arenanet' message? what exactly is happening?
hope i help ^_^ GL

-=[bump]=-

I'm experiencing something similar to this... my system is:

P4 2.6c (OC'ed to 3.3ghz, but currently stock for the sake of fixing this problem)
9800 Pro (OC'ed to 432/378, again, currently stock for troubleshooting)
DFI PS83-BL, Intel 865PE chipset (latest drivers)
Fortron 350w PSU
1gb Corsair XMS pc3200 (default BIOS clock speed and timings)
Win XP Pro SP2

My problem differs a little bit from the OP's. I start playing, and usually about 10-30 min into gameplay, the screen will go black, and when it comes back, I get some crazy kind of graphic corruption. It's typically a freeze frame, with a funky kind of plaid looking pattern, or vertical stripes. The pattern isn't an RGB pattern... the coloration consists of the same colors that were on the screen before the crash.

The problem started after I installed the Cat 5.6 drivers and Battlefield 2. Before that, it had been running flawlessly. With the Cat 5.6 drivers, I did notice a substantial performance increase over my older drivers (I believe they were Cat 5.2's).

Since I've run into this problem, I've rolled back to Omega 5.4's, set all my clocks back to default speeds, and double checked that my AGP aperature is set to 128 (matching the amount of onboard RAM on the video card).

All my voltages look normal, my temperatures aren't out of wack either. So I'm thinknig it's a driver issue. I haven't rolled back to the 5.2's yet, but I was interested if any of you may be able to see something that I haven't yet... or have tried something different than I have to fix the problem.

Thanks in advance.

Im running stock 5.4 drivers on a similar (9600) setup from ati, with no graphic anomalies. Although it might still be some sort of conflict or corruption between upgraded and downgraded version if the drivers where not removed correctly before hand.

How long have you had your video card over clocked ?

The type of problem you seem to be describing to me almost sounds like a gpu lock up, a video hardware failure of some kind. Usually when they go, they go, its not a slow grind to the end. Atleast in my experience anyway, that has been the case.

Is it isolated to Guild wars and Guild wars alone ? Does it fail at some point while using other taxing applications or games ?

Btw If im not mistaken your graphic aperature should be double your own board video ram.

Im trying the 5.6 drivers right now, they do seem to run a bit faster

I've had that video card for about a year and 3 mo's. It's been OC'ed about 90% of the time. I have pushed it pretty hard, for benching purposes, but have always lowered it back to reasonably sane levels.

This problem is exclusive to GW. Ever time I change drivers, I uninstall, and use Driver Cleaner 3 to get the rest of it out. I've tested it in other games. BF2 runs great... but I'll try more games when I get home. I think I still have Far Cry, WoW and HL2 installed... I'll try those later and see what happens. But so far, I've only noticed the problem in GW... so it seems to me that this is most likely a driver conflict. I've even thought of reinstalling GW after a fresh defrag to see if that helps things along.

Thanks for the thoughts... keep 'em coming...

Well, I have been running guild wars for about 40 minutes with the 5.6 Cat drivers in District one of Ascalon and Lions Arch. As well as atleast one quest. No graphic problems, no freezes, no crashes.

Hrmmm. I'll need to do some more testing as soon as I have more time. I've found that the majority of the time, it happens in missions... but I'll have to run quests w/ henchies in the explorable areas. The past couple days, I've experienced the problem right toward the end of the missions I've been in.

It's good to see that ppl aren't getting issues btwn Cat 5.6 and GW... I really liked those drivers. Contrary to the above poster, I did see a noticable increase in performance between 5.2 and 5.6... and when I rolled back to 5.4, I noticed a drop in performance from the 5.6.

Tonight, I'm going to roll back to the 5.2's and do a defrag and fresh reinstall of GW. I'll report back anything new I can find out.

I updated all the methods I've tried.

GW Tech Support Team suggested that I had faulty RAM They told me to go do a memtest and get back to them. I have been reading all of these posts concerning the errors and freezes, which I am also experiencing.

I have tried many of the methods suggested including rolling my cat drivers back and the same thing still happens.

What I can't understand is how every other program on my computer seems to work fine with my so called "faulty 1 gig of corsair ram", on my 2 week old computer, yet Guild Wars comes in and can't hang.

System specs

Amd3200+ 2.01 ghz
1 gig corsair RAM
80 gig HD
3 cooling fans
gigabyte k8triton board [nvidia nforce3]
ati 9600xt 256mb video card
Windows XP sp2

I ran memory test and it did come back with an error. Now before everyone jumps off and goes oh well there is your problem... Why is GW the only program affected by this?

Also, the program asks that all applications be closed when you do the test but doesn't mention what processes should/shouldn't be running. Maybe I am an idiot...Any ideas?

Well, I'm not sure how GW does in relation to other games in terms of demand on memory specifically. You may want to try to stress test your ram with other games like BF1942, BF Vietnam, or BF2. I know all of those games are VERY memory intensive (considering the massive, detailed maps). Try to test it with another MMO game if you have access to one.

I'll give you all an update on my situation. I did a defrag on both my system and my data partitions of my HDD last night, and let it run overnight (it had been a while, so my data partition took a LONG time to defrag). This morning, I rolled back to the 4.11's. Now that I think about it, the 4.11's may have been what I was originally running, since the last time I remember updating my drivers was back in early January... and I don't recall seeing much info on a 4.12 or 5.1 Cat release... it's very likely I was running on the 4.11 release.

After the defrag, fresh install of the 4.11 driver set, I fired up GW and ran a quick mission solo with my 20 E/Me. I ran through the Fort Ranik mission solo... as that mission had caused a lockup before when running through with a group using my 9 Mo/Me and my 10 W/N. I'm going to test again more thoroughly when I get home. I'll work on playing through several early missions with my Monk and henchies to test out this new driver version. But my first preliminary test passed. I'll keep you all posted of any further updates I have.

Kool beans. I still find it out of place that my system dosn't seem to be having issues with the 5.6 drivers and your does. I guess we can chalk it up to some sort of hardware level interaction or something or nother.

Just to give you a run down here

1gb of ram
3700+ AMD 64
Radeon 9600 64mb
Regular old Ac97 sound onboard

Thanks for all your suggestions, I fixed it by installing the Omega 2.5.90 (Catalyst 4.11) Drivers.

I fixed my problem by taking out one of my RAM sticks. I have been able to play flawlessly on highest settings without making any other changes since then.

I would recommend anyone trying it. It took my less than 5 minutes to figure out whether it was the problem or not and I have been messing with drivers, operating systems, and frustrations for 2 weeks.

Now I am enjoying the game

Hey YJ2K2,

I am having the same problems as you and have tried pretty much all the same things you have. I was wondering where abouts did you get those drivers from, the link to them on Omega's website isnt working. Any chance I could get you to zip them and email them to me. let me know if you can and I will give you my email address

Silentmind

I have been having this same problem(s), and it seems to be getting worse. I've tried pretty much everything i know how to do. Reinstalled drivers, installed new ones, rolled back to old ones, changed my display settings, some settings in BIOS. Hell, even all the in-game settings.

I should probably list the actual problems (It switches between these problems, usually a different one each time...These occur randomly, never a set time, but always in Guild Wars):

Restarts: The computer will just restart itself.
Freeze: All in the name, everything will just freeze completely, totally.
Vertical Purple Lines: My screen will go black and show me vertical purple lines.
Other Vertical Lines: Possibly the same as above, but these lines are different colours...
Shutdown: This has only happened once, my computer just shutdown.
Mode Not Supported: This, now this aggrivates me more than a group of River Skale in dresses. The screen will go black and a message will appear in the usual format my monitor-specific messages do, and says 'Mode Not Supported'. If that is referring to my 1024x768 resolution, then that is utter b******* as i have run my computer at that res for over a year and a half..

All of these problems, and nothing i've done has helped. Can you guys help me? I'm nothing special when it comes to hardware/any type of problem..

My system specs are as followed:

System Model: Advent 2000 Series
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (128MB, AGP 8x) (ForceWare Driver version 77.72, Video BIOS version 4.34.20.22)
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Processor (2.0GHz, OC'd? I don't know...)
512MB PC2700 DDR RAM
220W PSU
Windows XP Home SP2
DirectX 9.0c
Fans: A Fan/Heatsink combo for the CPU..


Please help! I just want to play Guild Wars...

Kaldor Meshekal

I would say your Problem is the "220W PSU" to little power for that type of machine.

you Need 300+

lmfao...220 watts....OMG....I havent seen that small of a PSU since the p2 days...lol Ok sorry for laughing But YES...upgrade that first... NEXT...your ram...AS of this year Games have become memory hogs. Like 1gb of at least pc 3200 runs a computer like normal. 512 is usually close to minimum requirement anymore. That was recommended about a year ago. And last the 5200 is well......its kinda ancient. the card LOOKS like it can handle alot of info...but Im almost sure it only handles about 5MB a sec. which is not alot of data compared to the latest cards. x800's and 6800's which can handle about 20+mb's a sec.

Remember...if you want the computer to play the game half ass...use the minimum requirements...if you want it to play it like a movie...use the recommended.

ps...those forceware drivers...MAKE SURE THEY ARE FOR THE EARLY FX cards...some of the latest drivers run the older cards horribly.

gl,

often times if the computer reboots itself, it could be overheating, power supply issue or bad ram chips.

if you're using win xp, i'd suggest going into the system properties and check out your error reporting. i think there's an option in there so it doesnt automatically reboot your system on a critical error. i'd have to go home before i can elaborate more on it.

Actually 220W isn't THAT bad. My friend's Athlon XP 3000 and 9600 Pro runs fine with it.

220w for an Athlon xp and a 9600 pro is under powered period. You should have no less then 350w stock. While it will yes run just fine, it will tax the power systems and it will cause strange errors and eventaully the death of the the supply itself.

Yeah, i thought it might be the PSU...220W sounds too small. RAM? Thought that was fine, but i suppose i can dish out the minor amount for an extra 512mb chip. Upgrading the GPU too? Oh dear...

All this would be really easy to do, BUT, i have a thin crappy case, not an ATX case. So buying ANY upgrade, means i have to buy a new case, as, for example, a 400W PSU will not actually fit in the case...and any of the new graphics cards (or anything better than a 5200) would not fit either...Arse.

It's probably not difficult to move all of my components to a new atx case...but i've never done it before, never seen it done, and i'm going to mess something up big time. I might have to trawl the 'net for a guide

Oh yeah,

Something i reckon has nothing to do with overheating: Occassionaly my monitor sceen will go black with this message at the centre:

1024x768
Mode Not Supported


Now, yes. It is. For about two years now. Why has it suddenly decided that, ocassionaly, when it feels like it, to not? Is this a case of my graphics card getting confused, or dying, or having a laugh? As my monitor is plugged directly into the gpu i assume it has something to do with that...

This is often related to a hardware failure of some kind or a driver failure of some kind. Most often this is caused by an increase in the expected refresh rate that the monitor supports. Thus to protect itself the monitor will shut itself off and state that the mode is un supported. You might be able to resolve such an issue by using a piece of software to overide the system refresh rates and ensure that the correct ones are used.

However if you find that the software overides do not resolve the problem, then it will require further investigation.

Where'd you pull that garbage from? The 6800 Ultra's GPU runs @ 400 mhz, and the onboard vram runs @ 1100 mhz... that's slightly above 20... hell... even the fx 5200 runs upwards of 250 mhz on the core and 300'ish mhz on the vram. If you're talking about fill rates, etc, you may want to clarify a bit more on what your figures you're presenting actually represent.

Normally don't call ppl out like this... but if you're going to post something as "fact" then plz get them strait... or at least clarify what the hell you're talking about. We're all not psychics, y'know.

I used to be able to override the refresh rates using the Nvidia display settings...but it seems that option has been removed in the 77.72 drivers, unless my eyes are being hawk-like again..

I've had the same problem until I started removing stuff from my computer that I didn't use in a while and those crashes just stopped. I dunno if it's just a coincidince but maybe GW has a hissy fit if the partition it is on isn't less than half-way full.