Curse

LionusPrime · Jan 28, 2007, 07:28 PM // 19:28

I've been playing Guild Wars 18 months on the same computer, and i've had no problems whatsoever up until today.
Was playing through Vizunah Square as my new mesmer and suddenly, the game's video stops. I tend to run windowed mode so I can chat to people and change songs on WinAmp, and I noticed everything else was still working. Guild wars audio was still running. About 10 seconds later, the music stopped and WinAmp froze, then after that, Guild Wars audio started chopping. Seeing as i'm after the highest tier of the Survivor track on my mesmer, I hard reset my PC at this point without waiting to see if it was just some kind of processor spike.
I reboot my PC and let Windows check for drive consistency, then I load up guild wars again, and to test it, warp to Kaineng ED1. About 30 seconds later, Guild Wars video freezes, 10 seconds after that, WinAmp freezes, and shortly after that, audio stops and I lose mouse and keyboard control. I leave it for 20 minutes, then decide it's not going to recover of it's own accord.
I restarted my PC via a hard reset again, then went about taking steps to try to stop it.
Things I have already tried include:

1. Processor temp. Opened guild wars and left it at the select character screen for 30 mins, then checked processor temp with Sandra. 45 degrees.
2. Dust bunnies on heatsink. I open my PC up and blow the dust out with compressed air weekly.
3. Defragged the Gw.dat file, defragged my hard disk, scanned for viruses/spyware/adware, ran RegClean to fix up my registry, and repaired my Windows installation.
4. My display drivers and DirectX are fully up to date.

An exerpt from my DxDiag results, with useless information deleted:

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System Information
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Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.1GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 372MB used, 2090MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Music Tab: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.
---------------
Display Devices
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Card name: RADEON X850 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: ATI RADEON X850 XT AGP (0x4B49)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Display Memory: 256.0 MB

All the things i've listed above haven't helped. I am quite distressed, as everything else runs just fine - I played through the first two levels of FEAR with everything set to maximum with quite a low FPS (50%<20) and some stutterring on loading, but with no crashes and I safely exited to desktop with no problems afterwards - and I am worried that I am going to have a similar problem to a friend of mine where Guild Wars, for whatever reason, simply stops liking my PC, and won't work until I replace various components.

Any help or anyone who has solved a similar problem in the past offerring advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

LP

Markaedw · Jan 28, 2007, 07:39 PM // 19:39

Unfortunately all I can offer you is sympathy, I have to play GW on my laptop.

GW-45 minutes
Oblivion-4 hours

never figured it out either.

************
You might try this thread

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10107680

The OP has found that if the DDR is set for 400 GW doesn't work, so he underclocked to 333 and it worked, yoou should look into that.

mojave mango juice · Jan 28, 2007, 07:40 PM // 19:40

It does that when I try to play on my mom's computer, her graphics card was the issue.

LionusPrime · Jan 28, 2007, 08:07 PM // 20:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojave mango juice

It does that when I try to play on my mom's computer, her graphics card was the issue.

I know it isn't the graphics card, the Radeon x850 I use is more than adequate to run Guild Wars on max settings at 100%>30 FPS (and it has done so for the last year or so, ever since I upgraded from an FX 5700), and i've just reinstalled the latest drivers for it after trying a rollback of 1 version, 2 versions and 3 versions, all to no avail.
This issue confuses me; I have no idea how Guild Wars can suddenly throw a hissy fit unprovoked when no other games or applications are giving me any grief...