Curse

Conderoga · Mar 04, 2009, 04:18 AM // 04:18

Alright. I've finally given up and begun to ask for help. My computer won't play guild wars and I'm not exactly sure why not. It used to play if flawlessly when I had Windows XP, but now it always crashes in vista and with my new hardware.

These crashes occur ONLY while I'm playing guild wars, and consist of the computer suddenly restarting usually right after the game renders a world, directly after a loading screen.

I have pretty much determined that my problem does not come from overheating, or voltage problems, or hardware inadequacy (haha), and I'm reasonably sure it's not an old driver problem.

My computer specs:

-Windows Vista Ultimate SP 1
-2 Gb DDR2 RAM
-AMD 64 6000+ (each core at 3.1GHz, not overclocked)
-NVidea 9800 GT OC w/ 512 Mb onboard memory
-more than enough sata hard drive space

I know that this is a guild wars only problem because I can run Call of Duty: World at War Multiplayer with 4x AA and all high settings at about 85fps without any crashes. Granted the GPU heats up a bit, considerably more than it does while playing Guild Wars.

Things I've tried:

-Updating graphics drivers
-Full virus scans
-Running in compatibility mode
-Installing from discs instead of downloader
-Searching the forum before posting (OMG WTF)
-Turning off the "automatic restart" setting in the "startup and recovery" System properties (Still doesn't give me a BSOD)
-Searching the event log for any errors, none present
-Cleaning the registry
-Defragmenting the hard drive

Any help would be much appreciated =(

Pleikki · Mar 04, 2009, 05:32 AM // 05:32

hmm, ive had similar problems with some games, but usually it worked after running in compatibility mod or changing Settings on my screen. ie. resolution fresrest rate.

But shouldnt restart Whole computer due that. Tried run gw in window or someting?

obsidian ectoplasm · Mar 04, 2009, 06:28 AM // 06:28

I think I used to have something similier,

like Pleikki said It seemed to stop when I changed resolution

sorry that I can not tell you anything more

|the antichrist| · Mar 04, 2009, 07:41 AM // 07:41

i've had the same problems with vista, on my laptop, on some games my comp would just suddenly crash, and on some games, nothing would happon at all. after a lot of time trying to find the problem, it turned out that it was my comp that was for some reason overheating o.O i dunno if this is the prob with you. but this never happond when i had xp.

Conderoga · Mar 04, 2009, 01:17 PM // 13:17

Hmm it just doesn't make sense to me that it would have overheating problems on a game thats so much less graphically demanding than my other games, which leads me to think that it's a Guild Wars thing.

Elder III · Mar 05, 2009, 12:09 AM // 00:09

that is the 9800 GT not the 9800GTX by any chance? The reason I ask is that many people have had a problem with the 9800GTX on Vista when playing GW.

Does it restart as soon as you try to click the GW icon or does it let you loggin first?

Conderoga · Mar 05, 2009, 12:48 AM // 00:48

It is in fact a 9800 GT, (BFG 9800 GT OC)

And it does not crash on startup, or at character select, but after I log in and begin to play. It will run fine in the cities, but whenever I exit a city, right after it loads I see the map for about a second before the computer restarts, with a black screen and no BSOD.

The good Ghost · Mar 05, 2009, 09:30 AM // 09:30

I want another shrine

Underclock your card and it will most propably run well.
The Problem is according to the speculations of others (i think its more something deus ex machina) that gw causes your hardware to engage at 100% level. The PSU doesn`t deliver it and the machine goes down.

So underclock the card by lets say 200Mhz and it will run fine... or play windowmode resolution 100*100px.

And if it works build me a shrine

Cimoa · Mar 05, 2009, 05:09 PM // 17:09

Everytime windows crashes it creates a crash dump file, read them with the free tools Microsoft provides and you will find out where your problem is.

Conderoga · Mar 06, 2009, 12:26 AM // 00:26

Ghost, do you have any recommendation oh how to go about underclocking my card? And if it works, I will build you a shrine lol
...
Nevermind, I lowered the clock settings on the card 200MHz and recieved the same crash as usual. Thanks for the assistance though.

Cimoa ill look into the crash dump thing now.

The good Ghost · Mar 06, 2009, 05:55 AM // 05:55

Well, then we have to do a further analysis. (and if you find a clue in crash dump please post since i am not familiar to that but eager to learn).

does the crash always occur? or only in some outposts?
Did you try to do windowedmode on the smallest resolution possible? (50*50px for example)
i turned down my shaderclock 400Mhz to make it work, maybe 200 wasn`t enough.

Other direction... did you try to use OLDER drivers allready? e.g. the oldest one available on NVIDIA for the card?
Good luck for now

papryk · Mar 06, 2009, 02:21 PM // 14:21

underclock the core/shaders/memory of your GPU and try to run GW

moriz · Mar 06, 2009, 04:09 PM // 16:09

all underclocking will tell you is that your card is defective. it shouldn't have problems running at its default clock anyways.

btw, the forceware driver 169 series had always worked well for guildwars. give that a try if you want. however, you'll lose performance for some of the newer games, as well as lose cuda and phyx support entirely.

Conderoga · Mar 08, 2009, 06:15 PM // 18:15

I think I'll just have to say screw GW, I'd like to keep running my other games at the levels that I got this card for....

moriz · Mar 08, 2009, 09:43 PM // 21:43

keep in mind that GW is especially picky in terms of hardware stability, so it will start crashing well before other games will. however, if there is hardware stability issues, your other games will eventually begin to crash also, since hardware problems tends to get worse over time if left alone.

Conderoga · Mar 08, 2009, 09:55 PM // 21:55

Do you happen to know anything about the crash dump files that windows makes? Like how to find them and how to read the to get the details of the crash?

moriz · Mar 08, 2009, 10:10 PM // 22:10

where to find them i'm not sure. however, i'm pretty sure a quick google search will give you what you need.