GW crashes - please help!

I can load up guild wars perfectly, and can start playing the game. However, after a certain amount of time (it varies) the screen will freeze. I know, however, that the game is still running because I can hear pinging when i am clicking the minimap and can still move because guildmates have told me that I am still moving. I have tried defrag'ing, updating my graphics drivers, updating DirectX, and now can't think of anything else that could be wrong with it. Any help would be extremely appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Hmm, what's your computer specs?

I remember some years ago I had this problem on a GeForce 5500.

Here are some specs:
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz
RAM: 1021.8 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (Build Service Pack 22600)
Video Card: ATI Radeon X300 128 MB

Eek - the x300 was a budget card back in 2004. It's pretty poor for modern games, I'm afraid.

Maybe it's dying of old age? Probably a good time to consider upgrading

May have been a Guild Wars bug. Perhaps the recent update resolved the issue?

i would have to agree with snograt and say that it is the video card that is your problem here, sounds like it needs upgrading

Graphic card is most likely overheating. Monitor GPU temperature, clean out dust from GPU with a can of compressed air, if this doesn't help your graphic card might be dying, how old is it?

I agree with that assessment. A lot of budget cards of that class didn't sport a good heatsink/fan and overheating easily occurred with some dust on it. I doubt it's dead as GPU's are resilient to thermal damage and it shuts it self down when it over heats... ie. screen freeze. Oh also make sure that the GPU fan is actually running.... a lot of the smaller fans that came with the video cards had a fairly high failure rate. If it's dead then you'd have to replace it with an after market cooler, or just get a new graphics card.

i am having an identical issue

intel celeron 2.6
windows xp pro
nvidia/bfg 55oo fx (tried swapping with a nvidia/pny 6200 issue persists)
1gig ram

complete freeze after about 10minutes gameplay outside of towns
all drives defragged
virus scanner updated and scanned
spyware scanner update and scan
all drivers/directx/microsoft updates

all to no avail

I also have the same freaking problem! I play, then the screen freezes but the game still runs.

I have a GeForce 7300 GT 512 mb.
My system ram is 1 gb.

This sux balls.

Ima try cleaning the GPU though. Hope it works

Suggestions: Try a complete system spring clean. Blow all the dust and crap out with an air duster (you know - those expensive aerosols with just air in them). Make sure all vents are clear - your mom's toothbrush does a good job here. If you're comfortable with the technical side of things, remove your processor, clean off the manufacturer's crap and apply a thin layer of thermal paste.

Buy a better fan/heatsink.

Buy more/better case fans.

thanx! What is a heatsink? What is the manufacturer's crap? the stickers?

A heatsink is a device (read: chunk of metal with fins) used to transfer heat away from something, in this case the CPU. To enhance heat transference, thermal paste/goop is used to "fill in the gaps" between the heatsink and the CPU. Sometimes, usually after years of service, the thermal paste can inhibit heat transference and therefore replacing it is a good idea. I wouldn't recommend doing this if you don't know what you are doing, it's easy to do but you'll probably have lots of trouble if you've never done it before.

To the OP - how long has this been happening, did it just start one day out of the blue? Had you previously been able to run the game on the same system hassle free, no freezing?

I've been having mine for the past few weeks.
I previously had the video settings on shadows - low and reflections - terrain & sky but I now put it on max everything but no anti-aliasing.
Can that be the problem too?
I also run windows media player in the background while playing now so can that be a problem too?

btw, it used to crash before too if I minimize GW too often

Yup. Stick your reflections and shadows down to minimum. Turn shadows off totally if you can live without them. Both of this are very graphics-intensive.

Problems with minimising are common - especially Alt-Tabbing for some reason (anyone know why?).

I think it's memory related (right?) - sticking another Gig in there wouldn't hurt. Although one should be sufficient..

Oh, and don't try the processor/heatsink thing I said unless you're sure of what you're doing. It's very easy to ruin a processor or memory chip without taking the correct precautions.

lol.
I was actually gonna go buy thermal paste

I'll just keep those shadow/reflections minimum then and go buy myself a hairdryer/canned air to clean the inside of my PC

Thanx!

in communication with technical support i found that running -no shaders -no sound -dx8, relieved the issue for now(at least for my system). I urge others to try the same and i will update if a better solution is discovered.

There's no need to run -no sound unless you like playing with no sound. You might also try to run GW with either -no shaders or -dx8 instead of both at the same time.

-nosound completely disables sound processing - it's not the same as pressing mute. It has been known to solve problems - try all the above individually. If, say, -nosound works on its own, then there is an issue with your sound card/drivers. That's how diagnosis switches work.

that is in fact what I am doing, or what i intend to do when i find time. Starting with the three combined is just a work around for the time being.