Come here before posting "crashing" or "BSOD" threads (problem found)

After seeing an amazing amount of threads all talking about the exact same thing, i made this one to bring it all to one point. The problem is that most people keep posting trying to figure out what the problem is in one thread while another thread had already discovered it.

The problem is a consistant rise in CPU temperature due to an bug in guild wars. It varies depending on the computer, but most are around 1 degree celcius per min (on average) do the math and if you played 100 mins that would be over 100 degrees celcius, which is the boiling point. However no one gets there because the computer has a saftey feature that will shut down the system if it thinks the temp is to high in order to save your precious machine from frying.

Some computers get a BSOD others just plain crash, some restart. It all depends on how its set up to handle an over-heat.

Granted there are mabe some other reasons for a couple of peoples crashes, but most of them are heat related.

How did I fix the problem? I simply opened up the case to my CPU and positioned a fan to blow on medium power outside, into the CPU (with the case off so the air goes directly to the chips) Wether or not you want to try that out is up to you.

wrong

there is no bug in guildwars to cause that it is simply cpu intensive.

also your math is off as the cpu starts out at about 35C-45C to start with as normal running temp.

the last person with high temp crashes cured it by cleaning out all the dust bunnies from his heatsink/fan

AMAZINGLY IT WENT FROM 75C DOWN TO 50C

putting a fan to blow on it only shows your cooling on your pc is insufficient not a bug

Where I understand that point, what about the people that have muliple amounts of fans and still get the same crashes? The question really lies with, why does ONLY Guild Wars make systems heat up so much so fast, unlike any others?

it is cpu intensive (mine is at 100 percent from thelogin screen) but the overheating seems only to affect marginal systems.

my system has a OCZ Goliath copper heatsink with only the stock 60mm fan on it and never goes above 48C

the original poster has a marginal system that was cured by simply opening up the case and blowing room temp air into the case

cleaning or replacing the heatsink/fan would do the same thing without the bother

also he does not take into account the vast majority of players who are not experiencing any overheating problems

edit

many people who have multiple fans also have commented that they have overclocked their system but that cant be the problem *because it works fine on everything else*

if they put it back to stock it would most likely cure it

Gaile Gray from anet stated that thevast majority of heat related problems including crashes and instability turned out to be overclocking related

not saying the OP did this just mentioning possibilities on others

But, like I posted in another forum...replied to yours..is that we do not know for a fact that other PC's that are running fine, still aren't heating up more than normal while only playing GW's. They might just not be heating up enough to actually cause the crash.

I don't understand where you get the system heat from as I can run Guild wars with no change in temp what-so-ever.

AMD 2200 Sempron processor
ATI Radeon 9600Se
2 different sticks of ram, both different size (512 and 256 DDR) and company (same bus speed, 3200)
Win XP SP2, onboard sound

No crashes, can last days without any temp differences.

EDIT: Oh yeah and I run the game on full settings with 4xAA on.

i have no doubt at all that they are heating up a bit while running at 100 per cent
mine goes up a few degrees which is expected
same if you were doing a video rip to dvd or a big long photoshop edit

it is designed to handle it unless something is wrong

there is a big difference between a normal small rise which is expected and a heat spike that will do an emergency shutdown

the fact that most of the systems are handling it without a hickup seems to show that everybody is not getting that 1C rise per minute the OP mentioned which would result in mass shutdowns instead of scattered problems

Im not saying it happens to everyone, but i am saying it is one of the major problems associated with this game. Its the game, if i can run HL2 with all settings max and still get 80 FPS then play GW which isnt NEARLY as needy as HL2 and have my system overheat??

MANY people have complained that their computer over heats and crashes. It is not that machine is in-capable. Especially when it exceeds the RECCOMENDED req. By a butt load.

Another thing i noticed with GW is that its priority is set to "low" and i cannot change it back to normal. I do not recall EVER having ANY program set to something other then "normal" is it like that for everyone else?

yeah i have that problem i have my case open and a box fan blowing into my case its a server size case and has 3 fans on its own... it just delays the inevitable something about my system pins the cpu at 100 the whole time guildwars is running and i just dont have a big enough surface to dispate the heat. wish i could gimp it so it didnt eat up all my cpu cycles somehow and i could cool my processor.

AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 3500+
Asus A8V Deluxe
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT (256 MB)

Heating up from GW is bs, my temperature stays the same on all my computers.
This just shows that you need to cool your system with more fans, or fans that provide a better bearing.

I just posted my fault finding in the Poll thread "do you get BSOD's...", and it looks to me that I get BSOD's because of board temp (not cpu).
Sisoft Sandra exclamated my board temp, then a few minutes later - crash (this was at 51 Celcius).
I will try to clean out my board with some air duster and place my computer so that it gets a better airflow, then I'll monitor it again.

a small trial which will take only a moment

open task manager and check and record (and give us the figures) the cpu per cent usage on HL2 compared to the same on GW

i think that will be enlightening to everybody

again i say this is a cpu max game and with proper heatsink/fan in good operating condition it wont be a problem

same for ram BTW as it will be happy with all you can give it (1 gig at least)

Well the ram isnt the issue. FYI you were saying earlier that a VERY small amount of people are having crashing issues... look at the poll.. its about 50/50

Not BS as alot of people are crashing because of it.

one thing i need to get straight, and i need an answer. Does guildwars show up as "low" priority (alt+ctrl+del and click proscesses and right click guild wars and look at the priority) Its low for me, but when i switch it to normal, it goes back to low as soon as I alt+tab back into the game. I have never ran by ANYTHING thats set to something other then "normal". I have noticed that things suck up 90-100 CPU usage when you set it to anything but normal. So this might be the problem for me. When i do change it to normal the CPU usage goes down a fair amount, but then it goes back to low as soon as i get back to the game.

IS there a way to switch it to normal and keep it there??

Hmm ... that low priority things sounds interesting
It is in low priority mode when i check the task manager.
Maybe the game switches itself to low priority when alt-tabbing out/running in window mode.
That could explain why the reboot doesn't happen for for me when i run it in window mode or the crash delay when you alt-tab out.
In that case the low priority would be a good thing

I played Lineage 2 before, another NCSoft game that tortured your CPU/RAM to the max. You could hardly open the task manager when alt-tabbed out. Maybe they changed the priority to low cause of issues like that. Running Lineage 2 in low priority helped for me, too.

I find a lot of the crashes are on marginal quality systems (OEMs, and selfbuilts without high-spec components), especially cheap RAM.

People, RAM types and builds address differently. So do different programs. If you're overheating, you've got other problems. But if you're not, and you're bluescreening, HEAT DOES NOT CAUSE A BLUE SCREEN! Memory, or software, or other hardware issues do. BIOS controls OHP (overheating protection), so you'll never see it in windows.

I would really say that a lot of these could be video card too, as I see lot of lower end cards (in fact, an appalling amount, and a frightening reluctance to change) and a lot of them barely run the game, which will also cause issues.

Last, but not least, I still see some ingame errors myself, but I know that they're caused by bugs they're still chasing down. I've checked things like drivers, overheating for me is a complete nonissue, and my RAM is high quality and checked so in three different systems.

If it's an annoying issue, that's one thing. But if it's lockups and crashes, either the problem exists in the case, or it exists between keyboard and chair. There are ALWAYS good reasons as to why things do things. You just have to find it the RIGHT way, not on specious math and a lack of understanding of any of the way hardware and software work.

Prove that overheating is causing the crashes. I made a MBM interval log, and all it shows is that my CPU starts at 26C, works its way up to 28C after 15 minutes, and then stays at 28C for the next two hours. Just because that guy had CPU temps that increased by 1C every minute (incredibly crappy cooling, by the way) doesn't mean everyone else does.

are you using H20 for your cooling to get those temps?

if air cooling please give me the brand.

unless it uses 80 CFM and a set of earplugs

It's a Kingwin watercooling kit.

since the last two updates that were suppose to fix "rare crash bugs" has anyone's problems been solved?