Computer all of a sudden will not run GW

Ok my friend and I got Guild Wars when it first came out, we installed it just fine, and played it for 3 or so months , every day, and neither of us ever had any problems whatsoever. I had three level 20 characters and in that time Guild Wars ran like a dream, then I quit because I was getting sick of the game. But now I want to play it again....

We both have the EXACT same computer, as we got them from a rent to own place, Im serious, our computers are identical. Anyhow, I loaded up Guild Wars, and then though damn, I better get the latest drivers, so I went and got my cards latest drivers, and installed them, I already have directx9.

I swear on my mothers grave Im not lying or screwing around, my friend and I are totally stumped, and Ncsofts tech support basically told me they had no idea how we were able to play for so long, and they cant help me.

I dowloaded the ton of patches that Ive missed out on, and logged on and played. Played for a bout a half hour with NO issues whatsoever, before I went to bed. I was running around in Lions Arch with my 20 N/W, it was full of people, and I had no issues.

The next day I start a new character,Well I got to play for around 10 minutes before the graphics started acting screwy, trees were losing their skins and tuning red, everything was losing their textures, and players were losing their skins. I figure
maybe I had the graphics on higher than my card could handle, so I told
the game to auto detect the best settings, and it did, fixing the
issue.

I already went and downloaded directx9 and the latest driver for my card, so I
restarted my computer, and played again. Same problem with the skins and textures
going all wacky, I told it to auto detect again, and it fixed it, got
to play for around 15 minutes, and then my computer totally froze, it
did this twice. THEN I finally get to play for around twenty minutes and
everything seems to finally work, so then I go into Ascalon and buy a
salvage kit..

I hit I and go into my inventory, and the strangest thing happened.
When I tried to use the salvage kit on all the items I had, literally, the
items were literally jumping around into different slots in my
inventory, like they were just randomly being re arranged in my inventory
without me doing anything, at the same time, it changed the graphics and a
short sword looked like a stick, etc, shortly after the game crashed
again.

Now my computer has no new hardware since I last played, and I am also
playing Worlds of Warcraft and Everquest at this time and neither of
those games are giving me any issues at all. I would really like to play
Guild Wars again, but these problems that I am having are making it
impossible.

Ncsofts support told me that they have NO idea how the hell my friend and I played the game for 3 months with no issues, because my card staight out should not be able to play Guild Wars...Here are the relevent specs..

Intel [R] 82845G extreme graphics, integrated chipset, 64 memory

Intel pentium 4 processor 2.98ghz

512 megs of ram

Compaq desktop computer...

How the hell did I play for 3 months, TWO people play for three months, with NO ISSUES, and now *loud fart noise*. Im very irritated as I really want to play this game, and do not have 100 bucks to blow on a card atm.

Can someone make sense of this apparent fluke? Thanks..Oh and btw, I thought it might just be overheating, but both my fans are running and I opened the shell and turned a bloody fan onto the opening and it still does this crap, but now it just seems to reboot my computer more than crash it or give me graphical errors.

edit** Forgot to say, to the best of my memory, when I irst installed GW I got no error messages. So today I uninstalled the game and reinstalled it, hoping that would help...and I got a message saying my card is not supported by GW, a message I did NOT get the first time I installed the game.....

The reason why is because GW is moving towards DirectX9 rendering cards. Your intel card is very old. Even though you have DX9, your graphics card is not a DX9 gfx card. It is around DX6 or 7. Shelling 40$ for a card would probably fix it.

Thanks...great, thanks A-net, thanks Ncsoft!

At least when Everquest released the luclin expansion, which had better graphics, you could turn them OFF, so people didnt get screwed over.

Ncsoft tech guy told me my last hope was to turn the shaders off, I did, didnt help. New card for me I guess. I love buying a brandnew computer that comes with a SHIT graphics card.

Sorry to hear that man. But with GW moving to Factions, which will use DX9 for better graphics, they are raising the reqs I guess. Also, don't buy a new computer, Build your own, and if you don't know how, look through some more forums. Not only will you be able to customize it to your needs, but you will save a nice 100$

I just want to note here that anyone who is running a graphics card that does not support dx9, will continue to run GW in dx8 as it has done for the last year. We're not removing the dx8 support.

There are other threads in here relating to the integrated graphics card you use. I have the same at home on a temporary PC cos my other one is totally broke, and it runs more or less OK if you download this program called 3danalyse/3danalyze (can't be bothered to look up a link, but it should be easy to find). The game looks like crap and everytime you load it, the textures will have a different "colour scheme", i.e. sometimes it's very dark purpleish, sometimes normal, sometimes bright pink. But it more or less works. I get a blue screen crash maybe once or twice a week, and I play quite a lot.

Since you downloaded "tons of patches", I'm guessing that you upgraded your video card drivers too. Drivers for Intel cards have a lot of problems in GW, so if you remember what driver you used to have you can just search for it and download it again. Check out this sticky for more information and things to try.

I have an Intel card and have had to jump around a lot through drivers. These ones are working fine for me now. It says that the driver will work for 845G chipsets, so you might want to give it a try too. It's dated back to 2004, ack, but, whatever let's me play GW. :/

and if it was recent enough, you could always try loading a System Restore point (if XP).

Try editing your GW shortcut and adding to it:
-dx8

So it's something along the lines of:
"C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -dx8

Althought it seemed like I said that DX9 no support video cards will not support GW:F, I already understood that from a GW FAQ. However, a 64mb Intel Integrated gfx card probably only does DX7, nowadays, all those cards are discountinued, so that's why shelling just 40$ will get you a card good enough to play GW

Intel DirectX compatibility list
Everything back to the 815, at least, supports up to DirectX 9.

*rundown*

Played GW when it first came out, with my friend, we both have the same cpu, never had any issues.

I come back months later, and am having massive graphical errors, and it reboots my computer all the time, try several obvious things like getting new drivers and dx9, still gives me issues.

I go to Ncsofts website and send an email to the tech support giving a detailed rundown on my issue and my computers specs.

They respond telling me that they have NO IDEA how my friend and I played the game AS OUR CARD WAS NEVER MEANT TO SUPPORT GW. /toughluck

So I come here, and I find out that the game is being moved to dx9 , and my card doesnt support dx9 even if I download it.

Then ANOTHER Ncsoft person says, GW isnt losing its dx8 support.

Then someone provides a link saying that my card DOES support up to dx9...........

Is anyone else confused? I feel like this is ring around the rosy, and I still cant play Guild Wars.
Been out of town for a bit, so Ill fiddle around and see if I can get it to work now, if it still doesnt work I dont know what the heck is going on, from what Ive read and been told so far, my computer SHOULD run Guild Wars, despite other things Ive been told, however it WONT. *so confused*

Ok downloaded the driver that Sunai suggested, and I got to play for an hour with no issues, hopefully this means the problems are over and done with. Thanks for all the help, hopefully that driver will help others that are having the same issues as me. *heres hoping I didnt just get lucky for that hour*