Curse

Lord_Santa · Dec 13, 2005, 09:03 PM // 21:03

Hi

I recently invested money in Guild Wars SE, which I must say was above all expectations, truly a great game (at least compared to what is available with no monthly fees)

Unfortanly the game crashes every once in a while, resetting my whole computer.

Now I KNOW this is a common problem, as I've seen other forum topics around the net with the same problem.

The main answer these poor people have gotten is that "the computer is overheated", now excuse my language, but that is bulls***t.

I have well over 20 years of computer experience and have not ONCE during this time had ANY problems WHATSOEVER with overheating.

I am running windows XP with SP2, so the software is in place (I HAVE re-installed windows 3 times already, trying to figure out if THAT is the problem). I HAVE installed the latest ATI Catalyst drivers (since I have a Radeon 9600SE), furthermore I HAVE installed the ATI drivers which came with the graphics-card and I HAVE installed Catalyst 5.5 (which was recommended on the same topic), as well as Omega Drivers.

My computer is not overclocked in ANY way at all. It may have a year or so of age, but considering I have had NONE problems WHATSOEVER with ANY other game, which has been released lately (and I DO keep up with the latest games), I reckon it's the game itself (Guild Wars), causing all this trouble.

I don't want to hear another; "your computer is overheated" answer, because we all know that is not the case.

Now there may be computer-gurus out there with obvious more experience on this particular subject than me, but if so use your expertise finding a solution, instead of repeating the same answer.

I truly enjoy GW and will probably keep on playing, eventhough my computer crashes, which throws me out of adventuring parties, quests, etc. but I DEMAND a STRAIGHT answer or AT LEAST a possible solution, which does not involve "your computer is overheated".

I have turned down all settings to as low as they go, furthermore adjusted in the ATI control panel to make the card choose performance over quality.

My computer specs are:

AMD Athlon 2800+
ATI Radeon 9600SE
250 GB HD (Brand new, got it two days ago, so DON'T use that as an excuse)
512 MB RAM
24Mbit Internet

Give me a reasonable answer, or at least try and find a solution, it shouldn't be that very hard, since there are so many more than me, which have the exact same problem.

dimirpaw · Dec 13, 2005, 11:38 PM // 23:38

All I can think of is, GW is forcing more memory then needed to run and it results in Windows Crashing. Besides that I'm clueless on why it would crash your computer.

pin · Dec 14, 2005, 12:00 AM // 00:00

You didn’t list what kind of motherboard you have, if it has on-board sound then that maybe your problem. I had the same thing happen with another game but not GW. One thing you might try, if you haven’t already, is to turn down hardware acceleration one notch from full. Location in Windows XP: control panel-> advanced (under the speaker settings)->performance tab. I thought I read somewhere that the CMI on-board sound can cause this problem.

Hope that helps.

Lt.Crumpet · Dec 14, 2005, 12:05 AM // 00:05

i dont kno how familiar you are with ATI drivers, but i have an ATI 9600XT 128MB card and it took me a while to figure out that you CANNOT install the control pannel AND the normal drivers. bad things happen. very bad things happen. it sounds like u have installed both of them, wich may be causeing the problem. try uninstalling your drivers and then install either the control panel or the drivers, not both. other than that, all i can think of is turn off your computer every day, but i assume you already do that.
~i

Lord_Santa · Dec 14, 2005, 12:27 AM // 00:27

thanks for the answers guys, I will try and fix around with my audio settings and un-install the control panel... Glad that someone at least had other solutions then the "overheat issue" =)

WolflordUlrik · Dec 14, 2005, 12:39 AM // 00:39

You are dead right. MY geForceFX fan broke so my card overheats in SF and UW (always) and other places (sometimes)
When this happens my computer does not crash, only the game. It puts out a dialogue that tells me that there was an error and it could have been caused by overheating.
That is what happens when you experience overheating. Your computer should never die.

dimirpaw · Dec 14, 2005, 01:04 AM // 01:04

Why don't you buy a cooler? Since your card fan is broken? Or Replace it?

WolflordUlrik · Dec 14, 2005, 01:07 AM // 01:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by dimirpaw

Why don't you buy a cooler? Since your card fan is broken? Or Replace it?

How much does that cost? Im a college student man.

Akilles · Dec 14, 2005, 01:21 AM // 01:21

replacement fans are cheap

20 bucks maybe?

http://xoxide.com/vgacoolers.html

love that place

Dex · Dec 14, 2005, 06:34 AM // 06:34

OMG, you're soooo right. I can't believe how often people jump to the "it's overheating" solution. In my experience overheating is not the problem nearly as often as people think it is unless you are trying to overclock your equipment.

Honestly, RAM issues, drive cable shorts, and hard disk (bad sectors in your page file) problems are far more common causes of random reboots when playing games (when there's no overclocking involved). I'm not saying overheating doesn't happen -- it does -- just saying that it's not the problem as often as many people think. When people say they get random crashes while gaming causing reboots this is what I suggest:

Right-click on your My Computer icon and click Properties or open the System window from Control Panel. Click the 'Advanced' tab. Under the section that says "Startup and Recovery", click the Settings button. Under the section that says "Sytem Failure", uncheck the box that says "Automatically restart". This will keep your computer from just restarting when it hits a fatal system error. Instead, you will get a blue screen that actually tells you what the error was. Now play until you crash and you should get the blue screen instead of a restart. If the error you're getting looks like "IRQ Not Less Or Equal..." or "Page Fault In Non-Paged Area" then you're looking at a hard disk, HDD cable, or RAM problem. Trust me. (BTW, the IRQ it speaks of is not a peripheral Interrupt Request -- it's a RAM thing) I've been through this many times with many Windows systems.

If this is what you see then download this program:

http://www.memtest86.com/memt32.zip

Make the bootable diskette using their disk-maker app and boot from it. Run the full test and let it go overnight if possible (not totally necessary, but good to be thorough). If you see more than 1 or 2 errors in the list the next morning then you have a bad stick of RAM or your BIOS settings for your RAM are no good. If you're using aggressive memory timings tone them down and run the test again. If not, or if you are still getting errors you have a bad stick of RAM and you need to replace it. If your RAM is OK, try replacing the cable to the hard disk where your Windows page (swap) file is located. Also try using some disk tools (like Norton Disk Doctor) to run a surface scan on the drive to see if there are any media defects. Yes, even brand new hard drives can have media defects!

I hope that helps. Most of the time that I give people 'real' information on diagnosing their problems I never hear from them again.

Either it fixed the problem and they never post back, or they just don't want to do what I tell them. However, I'm just telling you what to do if you really want to find out what's going on...

Restarts like that are also probably not software/driver issues, but I suppose it's not totally impossible.