Curse

nechronius · May 12, 2005, 09:27 PM // 21:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Northern

I am having the same problem too. It seems if its the first time I play the game I can go for about 1-2 hours before the problem occurs. If I do a hard reset after the video fails and start the game again, the problem will re-occur after about 30 mins.

So far I've tried updating my video drivers but it didn't seem to make any difference.
I'm going to try updating my motherboard drivers and leaving the case door of my tower and see if it makes any difference.

Specs:
AMD Barton 1.8 ghz
ATI Radeon 9600 128mb
Soltek 75FRN-L Motherboard

Sounds like a thermal problem to me.

Under normal conditions your cpu or video card aren't heavily stressed, therefore don't generate a lot of heat and don't need as much cooling.

So you fire up the game and start playing. Now either one or both of these are being stressed and things heat up until failure.

When you power cycle the box or shut down the game the componentry has a chance to cool down a few degrees, but not to the state it was at before you started playing.

You fire up again and now you have a smaller "cushion" of temperature before you experience the same problem.

Try opening up your case and positioning a good fan to blow directly onto the works. Make sure as many parts are covered as possible. See if you can play the game any longer. If you can play a whole session without issues (hours, or whatever it might be), then you've determined the nature of your problem.

A lot of people tend to neglect the little fans that connect to their cpu, video card, or chipsets until there is a problem. It's always good to periodically check these things to make sure they spin freely. Having a ventilation fan isn't necessarily going to cut it if one of these little fans seize because those little fans are doing a very specific job. If a normal ventilation fan was sufficient to keep everything cool, you wouldn't see so many fans on cpu or video heatsinks.

serapha · May 13, 2005, 03:25 AM // 03:25

I just got the game today, and after playing for a few hours I had my video stop working. The display went out, and my monitor went into suspend mode. I had to manually restart the system. I haven't been back in since to test it though, so as yet I'm not sure what the cause is.

My system is only about 1.5 to 2 months old -- a Gigabyte nForce4 motherboard with an AMD 64 (Winchester), 1GB (512x2 in dual channel) Corsair PC3200 RAM (at 2-2-2-6), EVGA GeForce 6600GT 128MB PCI-E, OCZ PowerStream 520W PSU, running on Windows XP Home (SP1).

I built this system because my last couple systems had various problems that I made sure to correct on this one. I avoided the VIA chipset (personal dislike), and I made sure to get quality components, rather than going for budget. My last computer had random lockups and reboots due to using cheap motherboard (an ECS) and a generic power supply.

This last point is what I've noticed that almost everyone seems to overlook: the power supply unit. These days you can't just get away with using the generic PSU that came with your old computer case. They're made with lower quality components that don't deliver a constant steady amount of power as they heat up... and that means all the high quality hardware in your system that needs power isn't getting fed enough. The problems I was having when I discovered this is that my +12V rail on the PSU was only giving me 10.4 to 11.9 volts during idle, and since most of the major hardware runs off that (CPU and graphics especially) I'd get frequent lockups or reboots during high load situations.

I don't have any real heat problems now. I specifically worked out a case that gave me very good airflow with multiple case fans, and made sure to have as even amount of intake as exhaust as I could. But from things I've been reading, it seems like the "70" (71.xx) series of Nvidia Forceware drivers tend to cause some graphics cards to run hotter than earlier drivers did, sometimes by as much as 10 C.

So find out what PSU you're using (do some research to find out if yours is a good or bad unit, on places like www.devhardware.com for example), and make sure that your system has good airflow. Lots of fans blowing air in isn't always the best, it just means there's no where for the hot air to leave through and it turns your system into a giant dust repository. And check to see how fragmented the hard drive is, that can lead to headaches.

MaglorD · May 13, 2005, 03:39 AM // 03:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by serapha

I built this system because my last couple systems had various problems that I made sure to correct on this one. I avoided the VIA chipset (personal dislike), and I made sure to get quality components, rather than going for budget. My last computer had random lockups and reboots due to using cheap motherboard (an ECS) and a generic power supply.

Irony here is I am running on Via and the game is extremely stable here. I can play for hours on end and never get a single crash.

DavidBeoulve · Jun 05, 2005, 12:27 PM // 12:27

Gigabyte Motherboard (7VRXP if memory serves)
1 gig of DDR-RAM (running at 233 mhz)
ATI RADEON 256mb (8550 or 9550, friend gave it to me)
Latest drivers for the videocard
updated all drivers for the motherboard
still crash every god damned day.

Black screen, PC reboots.

If I'm lucky, Guild Wars quits out and wants to deliver an error message.

A friend at work said that it might be the Gigabyte Motherboard, that a lot of those are having problems?

Zerimski · Jun 05, 2005, 02:31 PM // 14:31

I've been having the same problem. The first time I played, it was fine and I ran it for about an hour and a half before I went off to do other things. Now every time I play it, it freezes my machine after about 10-15 minutes.

After reading a few other threads on here, I cleaned the dust out of my computer, left the side off and run GW in a window while monitoring the temp of my gfx card (GeForce 5700u, with latest Forceware drivers) on the side. Within a couple of minutes it had risen to 90 degrees C, from ~58 when I started playing. So I think I've found my problem...

Mercurial · Jun 05, 2005, 02:57 PM // 14:57

I've encountered similar problems with my BFG 6800GT/OC- they told me to go into BIOS and set the "AGP Fast Write" to Disable. That helps a lot while playing single player, but I still get crashes (though not as often) while playing with my friends over Teamspeak. For my MSI Neo Platinum motherboard the feature was listed under "Advanced Chipset Settings", or some-such. He said it was more 6xxx-specific, but it might be worth a shot for you guys.

dsexile · Dec 26, 2005, 07:04 AM // 07:04

ive got the same problems with guildwars....and it only started happening to me after they did the shiverpeak expansion....it started to glitch and then everything was in zoom-in mode. later on i hadnt played guild wars for a while, and when i went in, i started a new character, and it kept freezing in the catacombs, then it started freezing everywhere else....in my opinion, i think it may have something to do with the fac that guildwars is on a one server system...even though it has different districts, it has only one server that everyone plays on...which at times it really packed, ive been kicked off a few times when i started playing guildwars for no reason...just walking around, and poof, disconnected...but anyways, i know its not my RAM thats the problem cuz i can run WoW no problem as long as i dont use messengers or other programs along with it....but even with guildwars, i dropped my virus scanner and spyware scanner before i logged on, and after five minutes even at the log in screen, the whole computer froze....i really hope that its just a problem with areanet and not guildwars itself...that would not be good, anyways, i hope someone finds out whats going on with this thing, so the rest of us that are getting dropped and kicked off can keep playing...i want to be able to see how the assassin profession is like