Curse

rud5ie · Mar 22, 2006, 03:07 AM // 03:07

This is going to be a long post, so please bear with me. I am including as much detail as possible in attempt to pin down the problem/solution.

My roommate recently put together a new computer, and I inherited his old motherboard, processor, and graphics card (asus A7N deluxe motherboard, AMD 2800+ processor (not 64 bit), and an ATI 9600 pro video card). This combination worked great with guild wars for several years with his hard drive, but we had some problems with installation of my old hard drive. My hard drive came from a Fry's prebuilt computer, one of the $300 variety, and I am pretty sure the windows version was propriatary, and it would not boot properly. My roommate took the hard drive that was working with the motherboard/processor/graphics card to put into his new computer, of course. We bought a new hard drive for me and installed windows xp onto that (fresh from the MS store) and made my old hard drive the slave (it still has windows installed on it).

The support team at arenanet did some update where they tweaked how the game responded to something in the start menu (I don't remember the details exactly), and I think this was when I started having problems (though, the computer wasn't put together before this update was posted, and I had been playing on a different computer).

Sometimes the game would freeze and I would have to restart, sometimes the game would just crash (GW.exe window pops up with error report) and I could start the game again immediately, and sometimes the computer would simply reboot itself on its own.

I originally thought this was a problem with the graphics card, as I have had problems with ATI cards in the past. I bought a new GeForce 7800 gs card, and installed it. Experienced the same problems. I then realized that my power supply was likely not up to snuff for the new video card (it wants 400 watts, turns out my power supply was only 350). Thinking this would solve the problem, I got a new 500 watt power supply.

Still had the same 3 types of crashes. Checking the BIOS after one of the system reboots, I saw to my dismay that my processor was running at nearly 70C - back to Fry's to get a new CPU fan.

Now I have all the hardware worked out, everything should be golden, but I am still getting GW.exe crashes (no longer experiencing game freezes or system reboots, thankfully). Today I got a crash about a minute after sitting at the character selection screen where the game brought up a website claiming that my hardware was malfunctioning, then later in the afternoon the game crashed twice - once after about 3 minutes in full screen mode, then again after about an hour in windowed mode (on the last level of pve tombs, grr).

I am about ready to smash my computer. I don't know if you guys have any suggestions on what to try, but I am pretty sure I have exhausted all possible hardware issues and narrowed it down to a software issue. The hard drive is practically new and has been defragged. I have the latest nvidia drivers, which were updated March 17th. I have a zone alarm firewall, which I sometimes leave on and sometimes turn off while playing (doesn't seem to make a difference), and I regularly scan the hard drives for malware (all it finds are cookies). I'm out of ideas.

I have attached a screen shot of what one of the GW.exe errors looks like, in case you are not familiar with it. I have also included the text of the error log, because a couple of times when the game crashed, it would not email the error report either. This was before I got a new power supply and processor fan.

Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions or ideas.

rud5ie · Mar 22, 2006, 03:14 AM // 03:14

Oops, I neglected to mention that I have 2 x 512 sticks of RAM, though I don't think that will matter?

Luchaire · Mar 22, 2006, 03:40 AM // 03:40

I was recently getting the same sort of crash, with the same "hardware malfunction" warning pop-up. Turned out in my case to be a bad stick of RAM (brand new, but faulty, thank goodness for newegg's quick-n-easy return policy).

Aera · Mar 22, 2006, 08:54 AM // 08:54

A guildie of mine crashes a lot too, unfortunately this all remains a mystery as well.

I may have read it wrong but you've still got everything attached to the A7N which is a pretty new motherboard and may not support all fuctions from the new stuff you've bought and causes errors.

Oh I also suggest using Firefox instead of IExplorer, fast, light and no annoying spyware ( www.getfirefox.com )

EternalTempest · Mar 22, 2006, 11:46 AM // 11:46

Some shots in the dark that may help (but can't hurt)

Grab Feb version of DirectX - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Grab the newest Nvidia Driver (Newer then what you have)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_84.21.html
(Edit) Opps - you have done that, my bad

Install the latest motherboard driver - Nforce 1/2
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_5.10.html

Then install the latest sound card - Nforce audio driver
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_...2_win2kxp.html

Also make sure you have the most current bios
Not sure if you have the A7N8X or A7N8X-E Deluxe

Have windows cd in your cd-drive - Start -> Run -> SFC /scannow
(This will check all your core windows file and restore them)

Very good call about the power supply, you did need to upgrade that.

Grab Memtest86+ and scan you ram for error's
http://www.memtest.org/

rud5ie · Sep 08, 2006, 05:19 PM // 17:19

A very late update - I ended up replacing the entire computer, piece by piece, and after several months of frustration with trying to figure out what was wrong, once everything was replaced it has been working beautifully.

Thanks for your advice and help everyone

cannonfodder · Sep 08, 2006, 06:40 PM // 18:40

Glad you sorted it m8, sometimes pulling to bits and putting back together again works, how it beats me, but it works.

If it is ok with you I will close this thread

PM me and i'll reopen it if you would like me too

cannonfodder