Restart Problems (exclusive to GW)

how about, have a bunch of stuff in the background (if u have 1gb of ram or more)...so some of the "bad memory" is used, and then only the good part gets used by GW?

I have about 32 processes....usually i have only 26 or 27...seems to work great when i dont close anything.

i tryed switching out both memory sticks no worky

burning<<<

Hi guys, I don't know if it's the exact same problem but when I play after a while my screen goes black and my machine hangs, it's as if the graphics card dies. I tried most of the regular things to get GW to work to no avail. I now seem to have found the thing that works for me, turn off the post processing effects in the advanced graphics setup. I need to test this more but I haven't crashed once when that was disabled.

It seems like different things work for different people, but this worked for me and I haven't heard it discussed much yet, it's at least worth a try. Maybe GW is touchy around slightly flaky hardware, I didn't think my machine was flaky, I don't have issues elsewhere but it could be.

hi everyone
well I too have this problem
first day I got the game I'd installed it and it was freezing and rebooting
then I was unable to get windows working ! it said that a file was missing and I needed win cd to repair, but didn't work...someone told me I may had a virus so uninstall/installed windows everything, etc, but no difference..
that was ok, but next day I tried to play mvp 2005 and guess what. the same noise, freezing and rebooting !!!never had problems in any games , and now that, and this have to be related...
scanned everything, defrag, memory test....

I only want to know how and why this is happening

my Pc is athlon 1800xp
ati radeon 8500 (cataclyst)

Well, I managed to play GW without crashing all week-end. As I reported earlier, I had no problems in Post-Searing. My Pre-Searing characters were crashing intermittently.

The last 2 tweeks were to upgrade my VIA chipsets drivers and I cleaned out my fans and heatsinks..dropped the temp 10 degrees. Personally, I think the VIA upgrade worked (generic fo rall via chipsets, try www.viaarena.com), even though it wasn't specifically for my old chipset.

Note to self: Get rid of stock fan/heatsink.

Radical, so you're saying that your beta-char was the cause?
I updated my Audigy drivers today and still crashing, just ran a deeeep Ad-aware and doing a full virus scan now. After this I only have one option left: Slide the sound acceleration down.

I checked my system to see if my RAM was different brands, which they are (both are 512, one is Centon the other is Crucial). Tried removing one of them, crash two minutes in. Replaced it with the other one, crash two minutes in. Tried them both in the other RAM slot: crash two minutes in.

Tech Support hasn't gotten back to me in three days now... starting to wonder if I just paid $70 for a collector's edition game that I can't play.

Well, I have installed Windows XP SP2, done the driver cleaning and installed the newest drivers, bought a new video card that isn't getting as hot, and guess what?

It STILL freezes on me.

This is just getting silly - it seems obvious that SOMETHING they did between the beta and retail caused this problem for most, if not all, of us. Why on earth would you change something major AFTER the beta? Kinda makes all that testing invalid...

you know what, my GW actually runs when my computer is OC'ed, and doesn't run right when its not OC'ed...thats odd..

i think its cuz the FSB is higher and my mobo doesn't have AGP/PCI locks on them, so the SATA connecters are giving more bandwidth (but not too much more)...to the HD's....

but thats just a guess...

I'm getting horrible problems with crashing in guild wars every 20 minutes can anyone help me? I've already contacted support and they've asked for a daigdx.txt or something and so far nothing after that.
computer:
Mother Board: Soyo Dragon KTX
Sound Card: Sound Blast 2 ZS
Video Card: Radeon 9800 XT
RAM: 2.00 GB (DDR)
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 3000+
Doing the following has not worked:
Installing latest video drivers
Installing latest sound drivers
reinstalling game (both via CD and Via 'reinstall' option under the controll pannel
adjusting the VR ram
'cooling' computer (lowering temperature)
using different hard drive, then installing game on hard-drive.
Scanning for viruses/adware
defragging hard-drive
restarting computer
switching moniters
adjusting grahics(IE switching to lowest settings, turning down grahpics)
adjusting resolution
turning off sound via command (-nosound)
adjusting sound settings via control pannel

You're the first person to absolutely dictate the same problem I'm having. Fortunately, I have to agree with the "GW Fault"... because I'm on an NVidia card.

I think I've managed to get the game running stabely on machine now. I found that turning off post processing in GWs advanced graphics menu solved my problem. I don't know why really but so far it seems to have worked at least, I haven't crashed out once after disabling it. Anyway it's another thing to try out.

I would suggest doing this, if your mobo is VIA chipset-based... it seems to have worked for me 0_o

Hello, I just wanted to add my voice to this thread. When playing GW, after a few hours sounds start to cut out, then graphics go weird with squares where the pointer, or a weapon (for example) should be. Finally, it reboots/BSOD (depending on what I've set XP to do). I have the latest drivers for everything, completely updated Windows XP with SP2 and the little updates they give. Other games like HL2, Doom3, FM2005 run fine. Tech Support never even bothered to reply to me.

There, now I've done all things asked of me by the GW staff and more, but still major crashes.
Only disabling post processing left (of all things in this thread).
Wish me luck!

No more GW for me...
WoW here I come.

Well...thats too bad you people get the Blue Screen of Death...I have not got it yet...It could possibly be computer conflicts with your graphics card and etc...The only thing I could suggest is to completely re-do your computer and dont add in unnessessary components and etc...bah im not in the mood for thinking...sorry

Been there, done that

I second Tals Description, exactly what I see on my machine.

This might help:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745

Im having a similar problem. I just put together a new system. Now,when I try and install gw, i get a bsod before arena net even downloades the files to begin the installation. Then it reboots my computer. WHat can I do. (The bsod goes away really quickly, so i cant quite catch what its saying

Haven't been around for a little while, work and real life have both kept me too busy for here and even for Guild Wars. Just as a reminder to those of you still having problems, here's my post from earlier about common troubleshooting steps:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...5&postcount=88

I've seen a lot of people in this thread end up fixing their problems by doing something I mentioned there, so I know I was at least on the right track. Hell, I was even able to fix my own problem by following my own advice (game crashing after about an hour, spiking temps, etc.). Just some good suggestions to try before hitting up tech support.

P.S. My apologies to those earlier who I ended up arguing with. If you're still having problems, try posting a run-down of everything you've tried and I'll see what I can pull out of my rear.

Sorry, but I have a P4 with an Abit mobo W/ VIA chipset, Geforce6800GT, and 1GB of MSI RAM, and I am still getting random reboots/hard-shutdowns. This is not a problem with my system!!! Do not suggest it is. This doesnt happen unless I am playing GW. I repeat, THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN WITH ANY OTHER SOFTWARE/GAME!

And A lot of ppl have NOT fixed their problem, even with the suggestions posted here.

My sys will run anything out there without a hitch, Doom3 on ultra setting, HL2 cranked, BFV set to max, etc... If this game cant run on my sys its the games fault not my comp. PERIOD.

The developers need to acknowledge the problem, and fix it quickly. I paid $50 for this game and at this point its not even playable.

Today's patch notes show both fixes for rare crashes and also increased hardware compatibility.

Hopefully this patch will assist those of us suffering from crashes, and I'd be particularly interested to know if the improved hardware compatibility involves a fix for the problem of having an Nvidia graphics card and Audigy 2 sound card combination as my main machine does, with regular crashes, whereas my second machine has an Nvidia graphics card and Audigy 1 sound card and hasn't crashed...yet !

Well, I tried tried mine again last night after the patch...nothing changed. I posted this in another thread..but i'll post it here too.

<<<my post in another thread>>>

I am having similar problems as everyone else it seems. (note right now, i'm at work so I don't have my exact specs w/ me atm)

I have 2 copies of GW. One on my PC, and one on my wifes. My PC works fine, never had a problem with it. My wifes always crashes.

I know that both PC's one stick of 512ram. I think mine is SD..and hers is DDR.

My wifes mobo is newer than mine. I don't have the specs on the mobo's right now.

My processor is P3 900 something. I think hers is a Intel Pentium 4 2.6 gig or something like that.

Mine is home built, her grandparents bought hers from (I think it was Dell or Compaq or something).

I think my Vid Card is a radeon 7000 128 or somewhere around there. Hers is an onboard factory one, Intel 82865G.

I have an 80gig HD...and hers has a 40gig HD.

I can get my wifes PC to run GW's...but I believe I have isolated "when" it crashes. I can run around, fight, talk to NPC's, and zone to different places...however there is some lag.

But, when it crashes is when I open the inventory and try to move an item more than 1 space over...or double click an item to equip it. If I move the item only 1 space over, then it just jumbles the images a little bit, then I close the inventory and re-open it and it looks normal again.

Furthermore, I have almost the exact same PC at work. The only noticible differences between her PC and my work PC is that my work has an ACPI Multiprocessor PC and hers has a Uniprocessor PC and my work PC has a Intel Pentium 4 2.8 gig. I don't have any problems what so ever running GW's on my work PC...all the while running several other programs in the background and switching back and forth all the time.

My wifes PC & mine are connected to DSL via a router. Mine has a direct connection (wired) and hers is a wireless.

Whenever the problem occurs, it's always either a complete shutdown/restart...or the black screen of death and then I have to manually restart the PC.

I have already defrag'd her PC...which did need it. I used to have 1 stick of 256 & 1 stick of 512 in hers, but I took the 256 out...still no change. All drivers are up to date. She is running SP2 I believe.

What do you guys think?

Use driver cleaner to remove all instances of previous drivers. works for several different audio and video manufacturers

http://www.drivercleaner.net/

Is everyone replying daft? Defrag the HD? Remove old drivers? Check for ad/spyware? Heating issues??

Heres a little Troubleshooting 101 for you:
You have a PC that works fine with all currently installed programs.
You install new software.
Your system crashes for no explicable reason when running newly installed SW.
All other programs run fine.

What could the problem be hmmmmm?

I dont care what you say, I should NOT have to completely reconfig my memory/bios/msconfig/etc... just to run this game. If I have to do that I blame the developers for being sloppy/lazy and not building a quality piece of software. Even if changing those settings does fix some problems, there is still something inherently WRONG with the client code. Making those changes should not be NECESSARY to run the game.

*edit*

On a side note:
I played GW last night and crashed every 5-10 min at least 6 or 7 times before I gave up. I then switched to BFV and played for 2hrs with no problems. I then loaded up Doom3:ROE and played for 45 min, again no problems. While playing I have my Teamspeak and Xfire clients running in the background. I do not crash. I can disable everything but GW and I still crash after 5-10 min regardless.

I am completely convinced this is a problem with GW and nothing else.


*edit #2*

someone posted this just a few mins ago in another "crashing" thread:
__________________________________________________ _______________
Well, GW Tech Support has sent me this:


Quote:
Thanks for updating your ticket regarding your Crash-problems with Guild Wars. We receive an increased amount of tickets regarding this exact problem you are encountering. We already provided the developers with all the necessary information regarding this problem, and they are already working on an appropriate solution.

We will also forward your computer's details in order to provide them with all the information that could help fixing the problem as soon as possible.

We thank you very much for your patience and your understanding.



Sounds promising. At least now they've decided it is a fault in the game.

__________________________________________________ _______________

Lets hope this is the beginning of the end for this particular issue.

Come on update!!!

I'll be trying tonight to see if I can play for more that 45 minutes!

Last night's update was great for me... it made the game run a LOT smoother and prettier. Graphics that were missing before are there now (the little box around the spell casting progress was never there before for me, and I'm noticing little things here and there.

The bad news is, it didn't fix my crashing problem.

This morning's update hasn't helped either.

Good to know they're working on it though.

I agree with that completely....I mean I personally am not as intelligent or as computer savvy as some of the people on this forum and some of these fixes really scare me... I'm running a really good machine with most of the latest drivers (and I dint do all of that fancy driver clean out stuff either...just update it and it works...*shrugs*)...but yet Guild Wars is still sitting in he Box on my desk....If this game is 'that sensitive' and will not run unless your computer is 'just so'....Than it can stay in it's box until I hear a cry of joy from this tech board that everything is all clear.

*I'm sorry if this post was too long and rambling*

So are you saying that no one has fixed their problems? That every single crashing issue is due to sloppy code instead of configuration or hardware problems? Have you ever done tech support in your life? I've already stated before that my suggestions are NOT going to fix everyone's problems. I won't deny that there may be something in the code that is causing the game to trip on certain configs, but placing the blame squarely on the developers is a cop out. If the game works on the vast majority of systems (which I can assure you it does), it would be best to try troubleshooting YOUR system before crying for a magic fix that might not ever come. You are simply naive if you think that there has ever been a piece of software that has not run into problems on certain systems.

I cant read the replys fast enough to read them all before posting, so i hope I havent repeated anything. My brother (who is a game programmer, note: not a designer, not a hobby, but a job at dragonfly game designs who just released a new game Qbicles) Believes he has figured out the problem. He actually did this to one of his early programs in college and FF6 had the same issue in a more isolated manner.

The problem is with memory, or rather what the game does to it. Now in this thread I have seen the 3 sepparate and major bugs, the heat problem, the sound issue, and this graphical crash issue, which for some only happened after today. (there was a new patch today or at least my program did some update to itself before starting.)

My crashes start with minor graphical glitches that get worse and finally I freeze or crash. on a mission with someone the same class as I (elementalist) and a warrior me and the lementalist crashed at exactly hte same moment, while playing a similar mission and casting similar spells, the warrior was unaeffected. This also speaks towards the memory issue I am about to describe as we were both doing very similar things with our programs.

Somewhere along the line guild wars writes memory to the wrong place. This creates a corruption we'll call the corruption cancer, because it works like an infection. Now theres a place in my memory that is corrupted (guild wars tried to write "cat" in the spell list instead of the beasiary fo example)

Now when guildwars accesses my spells it gets cat instead of fireball, this creates another glitch and more corruption. As time moves on memory corruption spreads like cancer until it kills hte program. You can crash when the 1st corruption happens, or you can play until a good portion of hte memory is corupt.

((fun fact: in Final Fantacy 6 this bug happened when you tried to "sketch" a certain monster, this caused the game to try and sketch the 20th spell in your spell menue as a .bmp and thus created corrupt memory. this would crash teh game and reset all kinds of hex variables int eh games memory for some fun and wacky results.))

The programmers are most likely VERY aware of the problem. But because it happens almost randomly, and can hapen anywhere its almost impossible to reproduce reliably and thus study, locate and fix.

To the people withheating problems, that is no fault of hte software. if your PC cannot cool your CPU at it's usage speed that the cooling's fault. CPU heat = CPU usage because heat is a byproduct of the CPU thinking. You can't have heat without the CPU doing something porportional to that heat.

As for hte sound thing, I dont suffer from it and dont know anythign about it.

I believe the memory problem is specifically related to something connected to the video memory as my crashes are always preceded by "cute" graphical errors such as blocked out spells a square mouse, and things turning into cubes and losing thier textures.

So....it'll never be fixed? *sobs*

Its fixable, but they need to locate exactly what is causing this incorrect memory write. To tract the original they may have to go so far as to reexamine all the memory everytime it changes and look for sudden abnormalies. It takes an intricate knowledge of the code (Something thats harder when a team of people developes instead of 1 person like in my bro's case) and Time. Its not a hard fix, but it is a difficult problem to find int he 1st place so they can prefor that fix.

Granted thats an extreme example and I myself am not much of programmer, I only too some classes to comprehend what my brother does and talks about.

Tweezle120:
Wow that's amazing.....have you or your brother emailed Arena and told them about your findings? Perhaps that might help to point them in the right direction. ^^

Don;t worry, knowing what teh problem is is both easy and obvious. If this is the problem, they know.

Are people with the gradual degeneration of graphics folled by crashes or reboots using, or are around fire balls?!

Since Im always around fireballs, and the other elementalist crashed too one thing that can be causeing a video memory problem would be fireballs out of my charecters field of vision. Can all the elementalists or people with that sub class log in and try firing tons of fireballs at enemies that are off camera? (such as those behind you, or infront of you, but hold the Z key to spin the camera 180)

then walk around and see of the glitches begin within 15seconds or so after that battle.

What classes are people having these problems? Its possible any class fighting charr can have this problem since they toss around fire quite alot and the memory write could occur when a party member you can see is hit.


I don't have anything to really back up this theory it just popped into my head to blame the fireballs since my fire storm (the one that rains fire) graphic is always the 1st to glitch closely followed byt he fireball itself. (they may happen at the same time, or even the fireball graphic 1st I wasnt paying attention)

EDIT: Ah ha! I just saw that Firestorm was altered in the last patch. It was altered so that it would go off even if the targetted monster died. This may be causign the memory problem.. except that if it was somethign so obvious I would think the programers would have caught it by now by 1st investigating the recent changes since the bug became prevailent.

Supose you target Charr with firestorm. Charr dies. Charr corpse dissapears really fast or is made a bone horror. How will the game still know where to land the spell?

Maybe (and be warned I dont know what im talking about and have not cosulted my brother) it takes the map co-ordinates of the char into memory as to where the spell will land. and somehting is wrong with this process? it seems that the very 1st graphic to go everytime is that my firestorm icon goes black, and then returns as the cool down timer fills the box.

Everyone, play with firestorm alot, especially try casting it ona creature that will die a while before the spell finishes!

(this could be one of many ways to reproduce a bug, there may be several bugs like this for every class causing similar problems thus making it so hard to fix.)

I am still having the problem and I am an elementalist. I hardly use firestorm, however, so I can't speak to that causing me to crash.

I never have graphical errors before the crash, but I do get little "jitters" - the sound and video skips just a hair (different from lag, in which case the sound doesn't skip). I have turned off the sound card and I crash. I have run prime95 torture test for quite some time and nothing, and I have run memtest and passed. I have bought a new video card (my old one was actually getting hot) and now it isn't hot at all to the touch after I crash.

A memory error would make sense, but then again wouldn't EVERY elementalist have this problem after playing for long enough?

Also I get "jitters" on the menu screen as well, and I have crashed while in a town where no one is casting anything, so I am not so sure this is the real problem.

I am a ranger and I experience this problem. Also, most of my experiences with the crashing have been in town when I open my inventory and try to move something more than 1 slot over or double click an item to auto equip it. I think that's when I mainly get the crash.

OK I will say this, at least for me, that sound blaster audiogy is NOT the problem. I actually took mine out completely to make sure that --nosound was doing its job =]

Either way, I still crashed. I think this kinda proves that in at least my case the SB doesn't have anything to do with it, even though I know I am about to crash when I start "jittering" a lot and the sound cuts out.