Curse

Tango57 · Oct 25, 2010, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Hello all,

I'm kinda scrathing my head on this one. Every so often, which could be anywhere from 15 mins to 2 hours, I will get an all Black, Brown, Tan screen while playing. What is a bit odd is that I can't Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the taskman to kill the process\game. Windows (v7-32 preminum) has pretty much went out to lunch and requires a power reset or reset button.

I've updated just about every component I can think of, BIOS, video drivers, sound drivers, Motherboard chipset. I've re-install the intel Utilities to monitor my CPU and motherboard heat. I've also re-installed the game from DVD. Full system virus scans and Spyware scans (all clean)

So far, the only diffrence all the updates have made, is that now instead of the system just hanging, it tends to reboot itself.

Oddly enough, I've run lopping test of 3dmark06 and Vantange and played games like Sims3 and WoW for many hours and not a single crash or hang.

My next test was to copy my GW folder over to another system (also a Windows 7, but 64bit). it seems to play a little but longer (though it was always random) and I started getting crashes again.

Currently I'm not getting any alerts or error codes. Is there any verbose logging or other settings I can change that might give me a better ideal of what's causing the hangs ?

Thanks

Nothing is overclocked

System Specs are
Intel E8400 CPU
Intel P43TP mobo
4GB of ram (granted on 3.25GB in use)
onboard realtek sound
Nvidia 9800GTX video card (260.89 drivers)
windows 7-32bit. All current windows updates applied

2nd System Spec

A HP E9100t PC
Intel Q8300 CPU
6GB of ram
Onboard realtek soundcard
Windows 7-64bit
Nvidia 8800GTs video card

Chrisworld · Oct 25, 2010, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Wow, I'm even stumped with this one, mostly because TWO different systems are crashing with just GW, and the one system you even reinstalled a new copy from the install DVD's and that system runs other games without a problem.

I'm going to go and think about this for a bit to myself, and if I can help, I'll post what I think is going on.

Tango57 · Oct 25, 2010, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Thanks for mulling over it.

As I looked in another thread, I see where if the GW.dat file gets a little whacky, things could go south. So just for good measure,I'm re-installing on the original system from the webdown load and letting it pull the files down

I guess it would make sense if the GW.dat is whacked out that copying it to another system would be the same. Just odd it doesn't seem to crash in the same places.

Just as a point of reference, The video card idles around 146 F. The Ntune monitor defaults to alerting at 194F. I set it down to 174F. So far the hottest it has gotten is 165F and that was running Futuremarks Vantage benchmarks. With GW running even at max settings it's only getting to around 154F

Same for the CPU, it's idling around 80F and gets up to about 110F under the CPU stress test

KZaske · Oct 26, 2010, 12:47 AM // 00:47

So many questions, so little time...

Do you have directsong installed? Do you use the -image command to refresh and update your dat file? What about your monitor, any trouble with it at all? What model of monitor are you using? When sitting at desktop how much of your system memory is free?
Do you have the Nvidia 3D sub-system installed? (this has been known to cause many different issues with pre-fermi video cards and on comupters running distro projectes like seti or [email protected]).

I am focusing on the first machine because if the dat got wacked, the question is how did it get that way.

Edit: thanks for putting enough info about your computers to actually be able to consider the issue at hand.

Kronk_Shaan · Oct 26, 2010, 03:07 AM // 03:07

I'm not sure if this is the same trouble I was having two weeks ago, but google the nvlddmkm.sys problem. Lots of people blaming drivers, Microsoft and DirectX, but the problem is actually a 3D rendering problem with the video card (I HAD an 8800GT). Over time it locks up more and more often, till eventually GW will no longer run. All of the tests I ran using every driver available (including the beta ones) across multiple platforms (XP, Vista and Win7 - just kept reinstalling OS and problem was still there) said all of the tests were fine. All other games run, except GW.

Long story short, a section of the video card got fried and is no longer running stable. Finally reached the point where I couldn't even get the login screen to come up without my computer locking up. Finally broke down and replaced the card. Problem solved.

ASUS P5N-D
Wolfdale E8400 Chipset
Nvidia 8800 GT (replaced with a GTS 450)
4 GB RAM

I wish you luck on this quest.

Quaker · Oct 26, 2010, 01:38 PM // 13:38

I would say that the above post (and/or overheating) is closest to the mark.

EDIT - Note: Just because operating temperatures are within normal range, does not mean that "heating" is not a factor. In the electronic repair biz there is a thing known as a "thermal fault". It's a fault that shows up when a device goes through a temperature change.

Lol Im Etc · Oct 26, 2010, 09:45 PM // 21:45

As stated previously, it's probably a corrupt .dat or some other file. The question is how the file got corrupted.

I only skimmed your post, but from what I read:

1) Your CPU and GPU temps are well within safe range
2) If you can run benchmarks without issues you're not overheating

SO:

A) If you installed your Guild Wars from a disc every time, it's possible the disc itself is flawed and therefore you have a flawed installation.

B) If you installed your Guild Wars from the internet every time, maybe it's a corrupt registry entry, or your video driver is flawed for some reason in rendering Guild Wars, although if it's the newest driver that probably isn't the case.

I'm leaning towards A), but if it's B) then there's a larger problem than just your Guild Wars installation.

Tango57 · Oct 27, 2010, 02:25 AM // 02:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by KZaske

So many questions, so little time...

Do you have directsong installed? Do you use the -image command to refresh and update your dat file? What about your monitor, any trouble with it at all? What model of monitor are you using? When sitting at desktop how much of your system memory is free?
Do you have the Nvidia 3D sub-system installed? (this has been known to cause many different issues with pre-fermi video cards and on comupters running distro projectes like seti or [email protected]).
.

No ideal what Directsong is, so I'm going to say no. No to the -image command, again don't know anything about that.

Monitor is a Samsung Viewsonic 2253BW, No issues at all with it. System Memory usage is at 28%, so 70% free memory at idle. I have the standard Nvidia driver installed, not sure what you're calling the 3D subsystem. If it comes with the base drivers than I probably do. I don't do any of the Folding at home things.

Also thanks to others for responding. Here is a current upate.

I opted to delete off my exisiting Guild Wars install and since it was a different way to skin the cat, I downloaded the game from the web. No crashes the last 2 days, which is about 8 hours worth of playing.

Prior to and after the latest install. I've run chkdsk /f on the drive and Windows 7 currently does a defrag every week (not while I'm playing). I have a dedicate 200GB games and MP3 drive. I have a games partition for 120GB WoW, Sims3 and Guild Wars are the only games installed on it. So it's about 90GB free. I never really used the MP3 partition. Windows isn't reporting any disk errors.

If the game doesn't start acting up again, I'll write it off to a bad install DVD. If it does, then guess I'm back to what's whacking out the GW.DAT file.

Thanks again for the replies.