Curse

TEB Elite · Feb 16, 2008, 07:29 PM // 19:29

Check event log:

Control panel > administrative tools > event viewer > check all three categories immediately after, or during the time you run gw for errors. Double click them, and copy/paste the information here.

Memtest results should be your first priority.

Any other problems with other games, apps, or anything unusual?

LivingDeadGrrl · Feb 16, 2008, 10:48 PM // 22:48

The only other game that sis and I tried was Anarchy Online - our thinking was that since I can get F.E.A.R. to run on my system, perhaps another online game would show similar results, and it did, system locked up.

Sis (who is posting as rotielover) had me check the event log after the last GW crash, and I believe that it pointed to the crash being a driver issue (nv4_disp that others have had problems with as well).

I still haven't run memtest but I'm about to, at the very least see if that's not the issue. Man.. this is sad.

LivingDeadGrrl · Feb 16, 2008, 11:01 PM // 23:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kusandaa

Wow, I've heard about your problem in-game but didn't know it was that bad, TBH.

I had a similar problem a while back, well my whole PC would cash anytime I'd open a 3D game. HDD formats, connection checks, power supply checks, Memtests, BIOS, Windows updates, video/sound/mobo/whatever-other-thing driver updates... everything was apparently okay. Turned out to be a faulty RAM at first (DESPITE the Memtests), then I had no problems. I had the problem happening again when my video card was about to overheat, which well... caused my WHOLE PC to overheat (thus the new computer I have).

I'd do a Memtest since it COULD be an issue with the RAM, but I'd check for issues with DirectX (although if you formated our HDD, should've been fixed) since it seems only GW crashes for you.

As for VSync, I'm barely aware of it (just that when I took it off it boosted my FPS from 60 to 90, and I barely go below the 80 FPS) or how it works.... but yeah, maybe it's that.

Hey guildie! :-) It's hard to explain all these problems in Guild Chat, but yeah it's been really bad.

Sis is gonna help me look for a utility to check the voltage in a bit, then we'll run memtest, and then perhaps I'll do a bit more praying to the PC Gods to just bless my piece o' junk lol

LivingDeadGrrl · Feb 19, 2008, 03:50 AM // 03:50

Hey! It's me again :-)

So sis and I did a memtest (memtest86) and it passed - three times. Then I pulled out the mobo, and replaced it. Then we couldn't get Windows to start, it was caught in a loop - unmountable_boot_device. Yikes! Reinstalled Windows, and it crashed again. Sis had me run all these commands from the Recovery Console, and we were able to save the drive, yaay!

Finally got everything (at least most things) installed today, started my character in Guild Wars about 3 hours ago, and I'm delighted to say that it's still running!! If it happens to crash again I'll certainly post again, but we're assuming for now that the problem was that the AGP slot on the mobo was failing. From what I've been through, I can say that's a hard one to diagnose!

LivingDeadGrrl · Feb 19, 2008, 01:47 PM // 13:47

I just shut down GW after it ran for 12 hours - problem solved!

iridescentfyre · Feb 19, 2008, 03:54 PM // 15:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by LivingDeadGrrl

I cautiously went into GW, tweaked my settings, and then I noticed the "Wait for Vertical Sync" checkbox. Didn't know what was for so I went online and did some research and decided to uncheck the box.

I've been playing GW for over an hour now.

Now I'm not saying this is the solution for everyone, and maybe as soon as I press "Enter" to post this, my PC will lock up. But I disabled the V-Sync on the video card also, and I'm gonna see how it goes from there.

Worth checking into if your PC is crashing minutes after getting into GW as mine was.

Though it sounds like you've got the issue solved, its probably worth noting that I had very similar crashes to yours for a long, long time—usually freezing up the entire system after maybe +/- an hour of play. Very random, sometimes including video corruption, sometimes restarting my whole PC. No abnormal heating issues, no overclocking, no hardware failure, no crashes in any other games.

Then one day on a whim I turned off Vertical Sync and I've not had that crash again in well over a year.

LivingDeadGrrl · Feb 19, 2008, 09:34 PM // 21:34

I think for a lot of people, VSync could indeed be the issue, and as you can see, I thought it was for me as well, but it turned out not to be.

If I had the same problem happen again, I'd probably take the same steps I've taken now, just in a more timely fashion. I had no idea that it was hardware related, because it only crashed during GW. I'm just very lucky that we were able to pin it down to the AGP slot after checking everything else.