Restart Problems (exclusive to GW)

I'm having the same random restart problem. I'm running a pentium 4, win xp sp2, harmon/kardon speakers, Nvidia GeForce FX 64 mb graphics card, 512 RAM, all in a laptop widescreen system. Runs SWG and others just fine. Sometimes I can play for hours, sometimes half an hour, but eventually I'm getting kicked. I didn't have this problem at all until a few days ago, and I bought Guild Wars the week it was officially released. It seems to happen outside areas that are 'busy', like leaving a crowded city, and it crashes in the wilderness there. It's happened three times today to me, after an hour and a half at a quest, and I've seen/heard it hit team members four times also. Wouldn't be so bad if it didn't make you lose your quest.

I've updated the graphics drivers, reloaded the game, defragged the computer, checked the memory, and was about to lower the sound. I doubt this will fix it, however, as I've been researching similar problems on the boards.

Specifically, the effects are thus: I will be playing, the screen will freeze. Sometimes the computer goes from the frozen screen to black to Windows Startup screen.

Sometimes the screen has little blocks all over it, sort of like what an old DOS hex-editor used to look like, greenish-bluish-purplish. THIS kind of concerned me. Then it goes from that to frozen, or black. Ctrl-alt-delete makes the thing restart instead of taking me back to windows, even if only pressed once. My system more than meets the recommended requirements.

I even added a room fan to hit the bottom/back of my laptop where the three fans are, and it still kicked me, the computer felt much cooler than it sometimes does, so I doubt it's heat.

Could anyone tell me what that hex-editor screen might mean, or what it is? Haven't seen that before with any other program, and it is only happening when I'm running Guild Wars.

Thanks.

btw, I think the company will fix it. Another thread reported about half of the people playing guild wars and reading these boards are having this problem. Here's to hoping!

I am a technician with a degree in electronic engineering. I know how to troubleshoot, i do it for a living.

AGAIN:
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?


This problem isnt due to hardware, this is a problem with the game. THE ONLY PIECE OF SOFTWARE ON MY PC THAT CAUSES CRASHES IS GW!!! What more do you need?? If it is a hardware conflict its a problem with the way the GW SOFTWARE is using it. OK. If I have to completely reconfig my sys to run this title I will do without. There are literally hundreds of games that run fine on my system, but because this one game doesnt run it MUST be my comp right? I dont think so. Occam's Razor my friend.

As for a magic fix, its called a PATCH and NCsoft needs to get one out pronto.

I agree.

I just thought I'd throw my two cents in here...
while using GW I have seen almost every kind of crash/restart possible.
-game freezes
-game freezes, with mouse cursor but nothing can be done
-game freezes with insane noise
-game freezes and loops current sound
-game freezes with beeping noise
-the magic blue screen
-black screen
-quits to windows, with a window for arenanet to report the problem
-quits to windows, with a window telling me that an error has occured, and a button to report the problem to microsoft
-game quits to windows
-good old fashioned computer restart

oh and new one I discovered today
-game freezes, all the interface and characters disappear, leaving me with only a windows mouse cursor on a nice background of the empty landscape

Whether its my computer or not, the fact is that EVERYTHING else works for me, and I should not have to mess around with my computer/memory settings/whatever else just so one game works. Ultima 9, the hardest game to run in existence, even runs perfectly on my computer.

I really hope they fix it because I think this game is awesome, when I can play it for more than half an hour.

If only troubleshooting were so simple. By your same logic, the game runs perfectly fine on the vast majority of systems out there, so then by those accounts it HAS TO BE YOUR SYSTEM!!!! Perhaps helping to figure out what exactly on your system is tripping it up would be far more productive than ranting about a magic patch conjured out of thin air. You have yet to outline what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far. What configuration changes have you made to your system? What software have you installed/uninstalled since just before the game launched? What in-game changes have you made? Try actively working to fix the problem or figure out exactly where the problem lies. Generalizing it to "just be the fault of the game" isn't going to cut it if you can't get any more specific about what the game is tripping on. I'm sure if ArenaNet knew what was tripping it, they'd have your problem fixed by now.

The problem has been discovered in the "BSOC caused by heat" thread (not exact name of it but its near the top) GW causes the computer to overheat and it auto-shuts down so your stuff isnt fried. I took off the cover of the CPU and put a fan on full blast infront of it and guess what? no crash!

the original poster even put up some tests he ran and you can clearly see that the CPU was going up 1 degree celsieus about everymin. You do the math and at 100 mins thats over 100 degree celsieus...which is the boiling point btw.

First off, i'm not trying to defend anyone. I don't know anyone here personally..so why would I? Also, I have no idea what the problem(s) are or how to fix them, all I know is that there are problems.

Ok, that said, unless you have read the entire board, you don't know what this person has tried, asked, specs posted, etc. So you wouldn't be able to tell him that he "hasn't" posted anything. Just as you say, "Generalizing it that he hasn't posted any information", isn't going to cut it (or in this case, provide any type of help what so ever). I would be pissed to if someone kept jumping in telling me to do something that I might have already done 50x's all the while nothing provided fixes my problem. I'm not saying that he has, or hasn't, I am saying that unless you "know", you "don't know". Easily said.

I personally find it extremely irritating when people just jump into the mix and state "facts", which aren't facts, but just some rambling babble that provides no assistance. Maybe you should take your own advise and, "Try actively working to fix the problem".

The facts stand, there are problems. People with crappy parts are having problems. Even people with friggin' awesome computers are having problems. That is, in my opinion, where I get confused.

How the hell can someone with all the best parts still have the same problems as the person with the crap? I believe that is what this person is trying to relay.

my opin

Crashes can be caused by all sorts of things, memory, power supplies, motherboards, over heating, failing componants, driver problems, corrupted files, and in some cases bugs in the game.

If you run all sorts of games and none crash but guild wars, that doesnt mean its a problem with guild wars nessecarily.

It's possible because of software and configuration. A lot of instability is due to system configuration, video drivers etc etc etc. You can have the best hardware in the world but if it's poorly configured, it will still be unstable. Some game engines, such as Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic engine or Sacred, are more prone to instability, so it could also be the game coding. However, among the rpgs I've played, GW is right on top and beats out the rest for stability on my system.

So youre telling me Omega, that a system that runs all other software installed on it flawlessly, but crashes when running a particular program. Has a hardware problem? We are not talking about the program crashing, we're talking about the whole SYSTEM crashing. Dont you think that symptom would have shown up sooner? And if it was GW that caused the faulty part to go over the edge, dont you think it would still crash when running other, much more taxing software? seems to me its GW causing the crashes not the hardware.

If GW cant handle a certian type of hardware and using them together will cause a system crash, its up to the software developer to come up with a solution for the CUSTOMER who paid MONEY for the game. Not the other way around. Therefore, I am not going to jump through hoops and rip apart my system to play this game when everything else runs fine on it. Especially after reading the posts of people who have reinstalled Windows, replaced Vid cards and RAM, and are still experiencing crashes. I am going to play the 15 other games I have installed that DONT CRASH, wait for NCsoft to fix the problem, and If I represent too small a percentage of the paying consumer to make a difference and NCsoft doesnt deem it necessary to come out with a fix, it will be the last $50 they ever see from me.

With so many types of PC hardware, I truly doubt any software can run flawlessly on all types of hardware. I suppose that's why M$ invented the xbox so developers don't have to test the myriad combinations of hardware out there. Even so, some developers still release buggy games on the xbox...

Imho of course....

That could be true yes...but I think the point that Mojofilter is making is that if the GW game can bring even the most kickbutt, tweaked out, expensive system, to a computer stopping blue screen halt...well than the problem has to lie 'somewhere' in the coding of the game....Otherwise how can so many people with so many machines all be having the 'exact same' problem?

Look I can understand that not all games will work on all systems....but usually the bugs that arise from that are minor or the game simply refuses to function...but nothing on the possible system damaging scale that this one seems to be.

Imho...I really do hope that they fix it...I'd love to play with all the awsome people here...^^

That's similar to my kinds of crashes. I've also heard alot about the inventory crashes. In the end it is most likey not tied ot any class or skill but general memory everyone uses. My brother is fairly certin isnt a memory writing/over righting/retrival issue. I just wish these issues weren't so hard to track down, and depending on thier nature fix.

As to why some systems may not have the problem, it seems most of the problems may start in video or sound memory. People with certain hardware, certain drivers, or certain configurations with windows updated to a certiain point and running a certain way may be able ot better handle the memory issues. (my guess I havent mentioned this to my brother so take it with a grain of salt)

because it's not a bug that effects every system and every instalation AND one that cannot be repodiuced on demand I'm afraid a patch may not be able ot come quickly. The best thing we can do to speedit along is send Crash information tot eh developers. As soon as you notice one thing go goofy begin paying intamit attention to what you do as it gets worse, if there's a trend in that data it will help them know where to look. Chances are the orriginal corruptions are invisable to us and we only get glitches when the game has aready begun destabalizing, but the more info the programmers have the better. You can't truely swamp thier mailboxes with this, Im sure they can do a keyword search in the Inbox to try and see what inforation is presenting most.

I started getting these problems last 2 betas. I actually change almost everything in my computer with no result. Only happends in Guild Wars.

Here is what i use

P4 3.0 Ghz Northwood @ 3.7 Ghz
Abit ai7
2 x 512 Mb corsair 400 Mhz ddr
SB 4.1 Digital
Radeon 9800 pro
Western Digital 160 Gb sata
Antec true blue 480 W

Changed
Motherboard to asus pc800 875p e/deluxe
Gfx leadtek 6800 retail
sound 5.1 live!
harddrive to 2 samsung 80 Gb in raid
Aspire 520 W

only thing I havnt changed is the memory but I checked them with memtest over night and no errors.
I been running it in orginal speeds and even clocked down.
Dosnt matter if I run everything in full graphic and x4 aa or everything in the lowest.

Sound goes first then white boxes and finally shutdown. Often I can manage to stay in the game for 10 min by alt tab out and go back in.

here is the log from GW directory even thought its only a few of the crashes.

http://thefatsoldier.no-ip.com/sig/arenanet.log


Im running a swedish fansite and i get questions about this every week, sadly i cant help them, and I dont want to advice them to go buy a new computer since that dosnt seem to help. When 2 in my guild went from fx5200 to nvidia 6600 and a 6800GT ultra they started to get problem on their amd systems.

The thing is, a lot of these people were running fine prior to the changes made to the retail version.

Exactly the same for me. Sounds missing and white boxes around the pointer. But I noticed and additional change. My desktop resolution gets locked at the game's resolution and i can't revert it permanently without a reboot.
Changing to windowed mode prevents the crash although the sound bugs remain.

Many people stated that their game just ran fine until one of the patches. It seems to me that NCSoft/ArenaNet did some really really buggy "optimization" to the game code that causes conflicts with a lot of graphics/sound/mainboard(?) drivers now.

Some people seem to think that overheating is the ultimate answer for all GW reboot problems o_O. My problem isn't temperature related at all.
I even cleaned my whole case, all fans and the cpu heat sink this morning, but the problem persists. When it occurs my PC is running just fine at 45° CPU and 30 ° board temperature. Graphics card ... dunno, maybe this one is overheating but i seriously doubt it. I got 5 case fans creating a nice front to back airflow

Me too.

I was wrong about the VIA drivers working, by the way.

I very highly doubt it's an overheat. Why would the overheat not have occured before the March BWE? How is it that a quick restart (3 minutes of not playing GW at best) cools down whatever component that is supposedly overheating to completely reset the crash timer?

Well... it is the fault of the game, If a computer meets the min req then the game should be alble to run with no crashes. Plain and simple.. but this isnt the case with many of us for some reason.

I had the problems with the game to. My computer restarted suddenly while i was playing, and sometimes i got the error-message "Memory to the adress 000000 could not be read". The problem was definately heat. Now i am playing with a summer fan sraight into an open cabinet. Now i dont have the problem at all any more. I checked the temprature when i had problems and it showed 64°C. Now it is below 50 It worked with other games like Half life 2 and Doom 3, but not in Guild Wars. I think this game produces a lot of heat! . So to you that keep having this error message: go in Bios to check tmprature!!

So the last thing GW Tech Support suggested to me was to replace my power supply... they said something in my system wasn't getting enough power, which I said was complete crap because if it wasn't getting enough power it wouldn't run beautifully when it actually did.

Anyway.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt and bought a 400W power supply. Hooked it all up, plugged my PCI slot fan and HD in on one rail and plugged the video card on it's own dedicated rail.

Ten minutes in, game crashes on me.

Five more tries about 10 minutes each time. No change whatsoever.

So now I'm officially out of ideas and even more convinced that it's a client problem.

Really sad ... they would let you replace every single component in your system before admitting there possibly could be a problem with the client.

Well I went into it knowing it wouldn't work... I just did it to appease them. Now they can't deny it.

Let's see how they word the next "Thank you for keeping us updated with your problem" email.

Just tried running the game at 800x600 with everything off again for kicks. Got 15 minutes out of it, but still crashed.

They haven't suggested that to me yet. They keep telling me to run driver cleaner and fresh install my drivers, but that is because I get a different tech support person each time responding, and I have noticed they sometimes don't read what is going on and realize that my last dxdiag file I uploaded is not cutting edge up-to-date and that I have already done the same thing just a day prior thanks to the last response.

I am beginning to think they are out of ideas in my case, as the suggestion to run the game with -noshaders actually gave me an all-new error and that was the last suggestion I got that wasn't already in this thread and attempted.

*sigh*

Alright, I have the same problem with the BSOD, and I too have had some correspondence with Support. Sent them a dxdiag, etc. just like everyone else here on the board....I have seen it being said that this is a temp. issue related problem not a client side issue. As with everyone else, I have tried multiple things to get it to work, and none of my other titles experience the same problems..ie, Doom3, HL2, etc. I dont get a restart most of the time, that has happened only once. Most times it just goes to a black screen, sometimes with a quick sound loop, sometimes not. I have 6 fans in my computer, including the iceberg cooler installed on my videocard with accompanying memory heatsinks not normally included out of the box to provide extra cooling. There has been some talk about this being amd, or nvidea, or heat related. Well, I have a Pent.4, an ATI 9800 pro 128, and my core temp from BIOS was 41c before gaming, and after the last blackout it was 47.....hardly a significant move at all. Doom3 pops it up to 51. These are temps running games that I see some people posting as their PRE gaming temps... I'm sure there are some temp related issues out there, there always are, but I think the biggest problem is not going to be fixed without a patch....so I guess we'll suffer through until then. If anyone has any ideas I'm all ears.

Buzz

That's exactly what i'd say, too. I have no overheating issues for sure.
And i'd really like to know how those tech support guys explain the fact that a lot of people got their "overheating problems" right after one of the patches ...

some facts for my problem :
- white box around mouse pointer and missing sounds right before BSOD
- my desktop resolution gets locked at the game resolution before the BSOD occurs
- game doesn't crash when i switch to windowed mode when these "crash indicators" appear
- gw.exe running in low priority mode
- board and cpu temperature normal when before it crashes

Game crashes on me too! I went for around 5 hours after i got my new graphic card then one day it just started crashing! I definatly think its a problem with the game.

I crashed last night(as usual), and I got redirected to a webpage on the GW support site telling me that I had one of four problems with my hardware that was causing the game to crash.

1. Bad memory
2. Heat
3. Over Clocked
4. Power Supply

It specifically states that there is nothing wrong with the game and it can ONLY be a problem with the users hardware.

What is NCSoft doing with their code that makes this game so "CPU intensive"? The page claims that the software runs alogrithms to verify the system running it isnt malfunctioning, and if it gets an error it will shut down. Is this common? Can I turn it off? If the reason this game runs at 100% cpu is because its verifying my sys for the millionth time in 5 min is it really necessary? Are there any other games that use this method of error checking?

I would have given up on this by now, but I paid 50 bucks for this game and I at least want to get my money's worth out of it. :/


BTW, this page i was redirected to gives me the distinct impression that the support team is washing its hands of this mess and if it works for you great, if not youre S.O.L.

Lucky you.....collectors edition here....$79.99...but my players, when I'm able to play, have this special "DIVINE AURA", which, btw, I cant tell from the other players...

Try 'er again tonite and see what happens.

I have a similar problem mainly in Co-Op missions. One thing I tried that lessened the problems is to uninstall the game and stream the whole game rather than install fomr the CD's this wya you can be sure of getting hte latest files. It cut the crashing in half.

However I went fomr getting th bug report screen to the BSOD.

I have never gotten directed to this site. My comp doesn't really survive enough to go to a website. The funny part is I have done the following for each:

bad memory - ran memcheck, turned up fine for all of it. I also tried just one stick at a time, and I really doubt all 3 have an error that memcheck doesn't detect.

2. heat - when it froze up I was running at 40C. I have an older system that doesn't get that hot and the case is open.

3. overclocked - nope

4. power supply - they sent me to a website to compute my power needs. It turned up at 298 watts and I have a 300 watt supply, so I took out a stick of memory, my dvd-rom, and a stick of RAM, freeing up over 30 watts and still crashed.


They keep replying to me within a day and I keep doing everything they ask, but really it is all pointing to some incompatibility with my system, which at this point I think must be either a strange conflict with my ECS motherboard or my netgear wireless network card.

Could you by any chance post the link where you got the PSU thing?

Also...300w is cutting it close i must say..but as long as your rails hit..your fine i suppose...

wow, nobody's having the problem anymore?

not today...crosses fingers.....

Oh yeah... still having problems though.. Im at about the last straw... I think its time for me to shelf this game and wait to see if they come out with a patch... I run everything else fine and I have passed all the test they have had me run and this is the second system I have tried to play GW on... umm.. something kinda happened to my first chip.. so I had to rebuild... *shrug* the wife bought off on it so.. hehe. Either way... Im past the point of believing something is wrong with my machine... I just wish the Staff at the support center would get past that point too. hehe

When I first installed the game I had random reboots as well. Then when I saw the BSOD with the error message 0x000000c5, I looked up on the MSN database and use vertifier to fix my problem from what they suggested. The program basically enabled Special Pool for my video driver. Ever since then I have had no random reboots whatsoever and the game experience is great. I am not suggesting that everybody will have no problem using vertifier, but it might be something that people should look into that has not mentioned in the forums.

And FYI, I have been playing for at least 12 hours for 2 days now without a single crash. That is definitely better than rebooting every 5 minutes from before.

Can you elaborte please?

Which MSN database?
Which verifier?

thanks.

My brother and I both play the game and while my P4 2,66 Ghz with a 9600 XT video card has no problem whatsoever running the game, my brother is experiencing the same problems mentioned here on a AMD 3500+ with a X850 XT PE. Sometimes the sounds disappears, the mouse pointer becomes corrupted and has a white box around it and eventually the game crashes leaving only a blue screen (not a BSOD, just an empty blue screen). This system is perfectly stable while running any other recent games. There are no overheating problems, nothing has been overclocked, the memory is fine and the power supply isn't the problem either. This is a real annoying problem, and I don't see how it could be caused by anything else but the game itself.

He must be talking about this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=291810&sd=RMVP

First off, hi all! I must say I've been reading this forum since launch and you guys seriously rock!

Ok, I'm posting to say that I too have restart/black screen of death (yes black, as in, the monitor shuts down).

My specs :

P4 2.54 GHz
Asus P4S533-X MoBo v. 1005 beta 004
1 Gig of ram
Soundblaster Audigy
AOpen Aeolus 6600GT v. 71.89
WD 80 Gigs HD
1 DVD-Rom
1 CD-Burner
PSU : Dynex 400W w/ 21A on 12V

I run Guild Wars flawlessly on high settings, 1280x1024, AA 4X, no clipping, no ghosting, no lag.

What usually happens is, after a random amount of play time, either
a. My computer restarts (uncool)
b. Game freezes, can still hear sound, move mouse or talk to friends on ventrilo but, after a minute, monitor shuts down, sounds shuts down, can still hear friends rarely on vent and forced to hard reset.

What I've tried :

- Updating Video drivers
- Changing PSU (had a 300W before)
- Running a temp monitor (in GW : MoBo at approx 45, Video : Don't know, can't monit temp of card in program I have)
- Buying a case fan, pushing air outside the case
- Updating/flashing my mobo's bios
- Verifying the card's cooling system (nothing seems wrong)
- I even runned benchmarks (3d marks) to push my card to the max and it didn't crash

Now, my intentions is to quit work early today and download some more monitoring programs (any suggestions ?) benchmarks (again, suggestions) and any utility to push my specs to the freakin' limits (you guessed it, suggestions ?).

If any of you have any suggestions or commentaries, please feel free! Thanks a lot!

Draikin, i have the problem your brother has, too (sounds + pointer).
However the no text bluescreen seems to be related to a conflict with the ati video card drivers. When running the game in windowed mode when the problems appeared i finally got a non blank bluescreen which stated that the problem was caused by ati3duag.dll (ATI display driver).

Alternatively you can do the following :
In your windows folder there is another folder called minidump. WindowsXP saves information about every bluescreen there. You can order the .dmp files by date and analyze them with the microsoft debugging tools for windows :
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtoo...nstallx86.mspx
The tools include a executable called dumpchk.exe which displays some stuff about the dumpfile, including what probably caused the problem.

I just noticed this yesterday and had no time to try any fixes yet, but i think knowing what might be the problem could help

Thanks for the advice, but I'm afraid I'm not getting any .dmp files at all. There's no log entry of the crash anywhere after rebooting I don't know what causes the "blue screen" but I don't think it has got anything to do with a regular BSOD. It reminds me of crashes/freezes caused by bad memory, but in this case the memory is fine (I checked it with memtest).