Guild Wars 2

So my whole screen just went totally black apart from the gw2 mouse cursor while I was reading the new LS mail from Logan. I had literally only been logged in about a minute after the patch.

Anyone else experiencing any crashing after updating to the latest patch? After this latest patch my game has been crashing every few minutes. It either closes automatically with no error message or the screen will just turn black with only the game arrow showing like it froze. At first, it did want me to report the issue to Anet which I did but its not even asking for that anymore when it crashes.

Seems like you got further than I did – every time I try to open the Story Journal the game freezes up on me. =/

The same just happened to me, however after the relog I could read the full mail without any issues

Thank you Mark for the update! =)

Black Screen of Death for me as well after the bossfight “Tracking the Aspect Masters”

It seems to be happening at random times. I could just be running around or staying still and it will turn black or in some cases for me, the game completely closes out.

Is there a fix for this yet? I just started guild wars 2 today and every now and then my screen goes black.

It’s still not fixed, happened to me just now.

Hi All,

I was having the black screen issue too and have been looking for a fix to this problem for a few weeks now. One thing that I read on a forum was that disabling your firewall on your router has helped some people fix this issue.

Initially, I’d assumed it was an issue with my graphics card. However, once I had updated all my graphics card drivers and messed with the settings to no avail, I decided that maybe this really could be a network issue (I was originally skeptical). When I connected to my router through my internet browser, the first thing it said was that there was a firmware update, plus another update after that. After I completely updated the router, I decided that I would try playing the game before messing with the firewall. I played for about 6 hours last night with no black screen!

The one thing I have noticed from all of the different forum posts is that there appears to be a bunch of ways to possibly fix this issue… maybe this will help out others as well! For reference, I have a Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router.

Hi
I am have this issue also. I will try to explain what I am seeing.

1. When I try to map sometimes guild wars shuts down to desktop.
2. Going to a instance sometimes gw2 shuts down to desktop.
3. Random shut downs to desktop.
4. Cursor disappears after about a minute of coming in to game.
5. GW2 also shuts down when I log in on character change screen.

I am hardwire strait to cable modem. So it cannot be a router issue. These problems come and go at no set pattern that I can tell. It has been happening since wintersday patch.
Hopefully you can get this issue fixed.

ps forgot cannot interact with vistas, shuts down to desktop and gw2 is closed completely on all of these issues.

Update I have found the cause at least in my case. It was caused by the latest update of evga’s precision-x program for the NVidia gpu. Once I deleted the program I no longer am having the game shutting down.

I just started the game today and I’ve been having this problem for the past couple of hours. I tried to power through by force quitting when it happens then start playing again. Really really frustrating.

Is there a fix to it yet?
Apologies for the bump.

i’m still experiencing this intermittenly . the game freeze, so what i usually did was minimize the game and then maximize it back. sometimes the game go back to normal, sometimes the black screen of death appear just like OP explained, only mouse cursor appear.

this is very annoying.

Having same issue as azizul and others like here. First it was in wvw only, now it just happens on a frequent occassion everywhere. No response yet from A-net
Perhaps a p2p subscription would be better, so they have more pressure on it.

Suggesting that is like squeezing water from a rock. They are working on these problems. They will get to them when they can they already have a multitude of current bugs to work out. They aren’t ignoring your plea, they just need to fix some other major issues that need to be addressed first. Besides Anet vowed not to have a play to pay model. They felt like their model should be reflective of the original gw1 pay model which is is very successful at that.

I’m also suffering from the black screen of death, it can be in wvw or just sitting in la.

I get this happening on 2 different systems. It all started after a patch a few months back. Hopefully soon this will be resolved before the expansion. I also double checked my network and everything is good. And all my hardware checks out.

I’m still having this happen as well. Updated all drivers but nothing seems to fix it.

When will this bug be fixed, I know your working on the expansion etc but this black screen bug is really annoying and is preventing a lot of fun gameplay

Just missed beating triple trouble because of this and it would be nice if someone from Arenanet would reply to this topic. I know not everyone has this issue but for the ones that do it is very frustrating to put a lot of time into something and then lose it.

I have updated all my drivers and run the repair as recommended in other posts, and I still get black screen of death. It happens atleast twice a day. It can happen in any map, pve or wvw. It’s happened during a pvp match and also in a dungeon. Please Anet, fix this soon.

this is happening to me too.. still no fix?

why am i getting this black screen with this game it just happens randomly yet i play other games that are more demanding of my pc and have no problems what so ever no crashing black screening its dam annoying especially if im doing pvp or wvw fix it anet enough is enough!

I have never gotten this issue before but in the past 2 hours I have gotten it no less then 8 times, 4 of which were on character select, 3 times on teq with minimum graphics settings and once during a fractal. Does this have anything to do with the required streaming content thing that has been implemented?

I’ve crashed out twice in the last few hours, both of them in the silverwastes after VW. One of them while running out, the second time when trying to use a Waypoint.

Just had this happen to me 4 times within the last 20 minutes. Twice after loading EotM and twice in Plains of Ashford. There doesn’t seem to be a specific trigger either, the screen just turns black and the only thing visible is the cursor.

Happens to me too, 3 times during last week; seems random.

Just returned back to Guildwars after a long break and really enjoying being back. Missed the emersion of GW. However, since returning I now have this crazy black screen issue randomly. Happens every session and can be after 10mins or up to 45mins – and goes to black screen with mouse cursor and music playing. I have tried all of the suggested fixes and no luck. Running game on lowest settings, windowed mode, reinstall, updated all drivers, direct connection to router, removed firewall, extra cooling fro CPU. Nada. Very frustrating. AreaNet: Is this really just a known issue that you are still working on? Please let us know.

I have the same report. I’ve just returned from a couple month absence from the game, after I updated I choose a player and about a couple of minutes into playing the screen minimizes… only thing showing is the cursor and I can still hear the music… taunting me..

Well the screen does not minimize for me, just turns black with the cursor still active and music playing. Happened just once more at Tequatl.

Today it’s a disaster: getting this every time I log in, sometimes fast, sometimes after an hour of playing. Not much in my error logging, but this:

In bytes

0000: 54 00 6F 00 70 00 20 00 T.o.p. .
0008: 6C 00 65 00 76 00 65 00 l.e.v.e.
0010: 6C 00 20 00 77 00 69 00 l. .w.i.
0018: 6E 00 64 00 6F 00 77 00 n.d.o.w.
0020: 20 00 69 00 73 00 20 00 .i.s. .
0028: 69 00 64 00 6C 00 65 00 i.d.l.e.
0030: 00 00 00 00 ….

Hope someone is looking into it.

This is also happening to me, and I have done more than my fair share of research on the subject. I have tried everything that people have suggested to no avail. I hope that ANet is still working on fixing this problem.

I’m having exactly the same issue: after a few months of inactivity I decided to come back on GW2 buying the new expansion pack and I’m having this “surprise” all the time. I wasted an entire day looking for a solution but nothing seems to work. It isn’t a computer issues (the computer is pretty high quality) and it’s not a problem of connection. And it doesn’t happen on any other game. Please, let me know if any one finds a solution, I’m going crazy!

Bumping this up.
This black screen problem happens lot. It’s really annoying.
I’ve had it on three different graphics cards over two systems with multiple driver versions etc etc. The only solution is to shutdown GW2 from windows and restart.
10 months and no fix yet?

Yeah, i wanted to dive into gw2 again but this random appearing black screen keeps me away from doing that.
Please tell us how we can help to fix this issue…

nevo.2304:

Yeah, i wanted to dive into gw2 again but this random appearing black screen keeps me away from doing that.
Please tell us how we can help to fix this issue…

Whatever was going on 10 months ago (when this post was created) is different from whatever might be going on now. I strongly recommend starting by working with Customer Service to troubleshoot the issue — follow the links to create a ticket starting with “Support” on the top left navbar of this page.

V Man.8512:

So my whole screen just went totally black apart from the gw2 mouse cursor while I was reading the new LS mail from Logan. I had literally only been logged in about a minute after the patch.

I’ve heard of this error before but just experienced it for the first time just 10 minutes ago. No freeze, artifacting, or warning; the screen just went black save for the cursor which moved about just fine.

Absolutely bizarre.

Same thing happened to me with two different characters in two different areas of play…
Plains of Ashford and Sparkfly Fen

For the past 2-3 weeks now I have been having a black screen issue. Its happens a lot in the fractals, “Fire Shaman” and some of the others. Screen goes black for 4-8 seconds and then recovers. I have tried repairing the game several times now. I tried clean installs of every available driver from Nvidia for my GTX750ti. I have this problem on Windows 7 and Windows 10 although the problem started after upgrading to Windows10. (I reinstalled 7 just to see if that would fix it but no luck.) I am posting here in hopes there is a fix that works that I haven’t come across yet. Please help, thanks.

Well, it seems someone necroed an old thread. Anyway, I have been having this black screen issue for months now: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Wth-Constants-disconnects-and-black-screens

Simply that: screen goes black out of nowhere, no signal of lag, no signal of crash coming, no signal of disconnect, no crash report window… just poof, black screen. When it happens I can’t do anything but see the cursor, or hit F11 and enter options or hit Ctrl+F12 to bring up Logout screen, but I can’t log out neither go to Character Selection screen. Also music and ambient sounds keeps playing but for others I’m not there anymore (disconnected). My only option is close the game via Alt+F4 and restart. Very very annoying. :S

This issue has been ongoing for me for a while now. Happens daily, usually close to when I first start up. Very frustrating, particularly when you’re at a critical time in gameplay. Hope it’s fixed soon.

I didn’t get a black screen until I had the boss fight with Modrem Vinetooth in HoT.
I fought him 15 times and every time got the black screen.
I figured it was probably a video issue because my windows event logged showed an nvidia driver problem event.

Since I have an Nvidia card, I used the Nvidia GeForce Experience Games optimization option.
Nvidia apparently has GW2 for a game optimization option and it shows what video settings it will turn down/off.
I clicked optimize and no more black screen but the game isn’t as crisp as it was before but maybe it isn’t supposed to be with the old 560 Ti card I have.

This has been happening to me at least once a day since I started playing again last week. Randomly does it with no consistent causes. No lag, not even a stutter. Just random black screen and then I have to force close and relaunch. Then today I kept getting an error message ‘Unable to connect to log in server’ or something similar. Took me about 5 more tries to get back in game. Pretty sad that it’s still happening when they said they were looking into a fix over a year ago….

Hi guys !
I’ve had the same problem for a long time… Had to restart the GW2 client nearly every 10 to 15 minutes which made it really hard for me to advance my prsonal story.

I would recommend using a laptop fan for laptop users ! I think overheating is stopping the GPU which makes GW2 crash… I’m not a big expert on hardware problems, so I don’t feel like providing a valid explanation, but this really solved it for me.
Well partially I have to admit… The black screen still occurs, but only from time to time if I’m running to many programs at the same time.

Give it a try ! Still, I still think the problem is related to the game, because it’s not happening with any other game …

Good luck

I too just recently returned to GW2 wanting to give it another try. I have Windows 10 and it is literally going to black like 3 or 4 times an hour. Is there really no fix?

I just experienced this too on both our old Toshiba (Windows 7) and new Dell ( Windows 10) laptops

So guys it might help to some of you…

I also had black screen crashes a lot of times randomly or after error code 42 that said server was unable to connect to log-in server. Those seemed to go together. I did nearly everything!

What I did now though as I ran out of ideas helped me (SO FAR) at least because it’s been an hour without a single crash or errors. I also run WIN10 which might be important for those with this OS that ran into a problem.

My solution was (surprisingly no one mentioned this solution across forums before…) :

1. I went to device manager and checked driver for Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller.
2. The version was 9.xxxxx and I clicked the button to update its drivers.
3. It told me it had the latest driver updates which were from April 2015.
4. Out of curiosity I went to their website http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=13&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false and checked what they had there.
5. They had version 10.xxxx of drivers from October 2015 especially made for WIN10!!!
6. After I manually installed those drivers I had no single crash within the past hour. Before it was happening in less than every 10-15min from login. I will play more tomorrow to double check but so far it did the trick!!
7. On some forum someone started having this problem last year after Wintersday update which had weird correlation because my problem also appeared with Wintersday update this time. So I wonder if drivers and maybe some game framework with this update conflicted in some way,

Anyway, I hope maybe it can help some of you. It never hurts to try and update some stuff. Weirdly I didn’t think of this basic thing before.

EDIT: spelling.