Curse

Tekna Crozier · Jun 20, 2005, 11:09 PM // 23:09

At first, whenever I played Guild Wars, it would crash constantly. It wouldn't mess with my computer (ie. Blue screen, etc.) other than occasionaly restarting it. My graphics card is a Radeon 9800 Pro AGP, so its no slouch in the power department, but at first, I thought it was the problem. It ried turning my graphical settings all the way down, but still the crashing persisted. i eventually came to the false conclusion that my computer was overheating, so I popped open my task mananger to see what was drawing enough of my CPU's power (a 3.0 Ghz Intel P4, with HT) to overheat it with GW running. I noticed that a program called svchost was taking up absurd amounts of my processing power. Against my better nature, I disabled it, (Not a very smart thing to do....) thinking it was a virus or spyware program disguised as a system program. Suddenly, my Guild Wars runs fantastic. I have no lag, no crashes, and most of all, no sound. Disabling the svchost completely rids my computer of sound until I reboot it (Note: I'm using onboard sound, so no card drivers). I have never experienced a problem like this in any other game. On a related note, I tried to get some Windows updates, to try and fix my problem, and my Windows updates will no longer install themselves onto my computer, svchost or not.

So this is my great conundrum. I'd be eternally grateful to anybody who can solve my bizarre problem.

andrewd18 · Jun 20, 2005, 11:15 PM // 23:15

SVCHost:
From Microsoft...
svchost.exe is a system process belonging to the Microsoft Windows Operating System which handles processes executed from DLLs. This program is important for the stable and secure running of your computer and should not be terminated.

There was a security bug that took advantage of svchost, but if you're up-to-date on your Windows Updates (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com), then you should be okay. More info on the bug is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../ms04-011.mspx

~~ Andrew D.

Tekna Crozier · Jun 20, 2005, 11:20 PM // 23:20

Aha, I knew it was a bad plan to disable that. (But it gave me Guild Wars

)

As for the update thing, I can't anymore, with no clue as to why. Update that is, it just never succeeds. Next time I see it (the update failure) I'll take some pictures for reference.

EDIT: I added a picture of the end screen for the failed update (I didn't know the restrictions on images were so strict....). I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of it failing in action.

ElRey · Jun 21, 2005, 12:17 AM // 00:17

Boot from the WinXP disc and use System Repair.