Guild Wars 2

For about two or three days now, I’ve had Guild Wars 2 (EXCLUSIVELY GW2, mind you) completely shut off my computer more times then I can count on my fingers. I’ve done some preliminary research on it and everything points to faulty hardware, but this rig of mine has easily run Battlefield 4, Skyrim and Fallout 3 and max settings no problem. Again, only Guild Wars 2 presents this problem to me.

Here’s what I’ve done to remedy the problem (with no success, of course):

• Unplugged the power cord from the PSU, hit the power button to discharge electricity and rebooted.
• Disabled automatic reboot.
• Tweaked DPI settings.
• Double-checked seating of components, all check out
• Monitored component temperatures with HWMonitor, all check out
• Enabled V-Sync.
• Pretty much any common solution that is given when searching for my issue.

I want to say that this is a bug with a recent patch as I was actually just playing GW2 about a week ago for half the day nonstop with no shutdowns. If my instinct is right and it IS a bug with a recent patch, I hope it gets fixed ASAP. Otherwise, what else can I do to get rid of this annoying bug?

Here’s my rig info:

NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti
i7-4770k @ 3.5 GHz (8 CPUs)
32.0 GB of RAM
Windows 10 64 Bit Home Basic
EVGA SuperNova G1 1000w

Branden Gee.2150:

This sounds like classic overheating.

Could be:

• Lack of thermal paste
• Lack of cpu cooler
• Lack of power to cpu cooler
• Lack of adequate quality cpu cooler
• Improper ventilation in your computer case.

Just to name a few!

I would probably use your preferred search engine and look for “computer overheating”.

Again this is guesswork as I can’t say anything definitive with the information provided.

I’ve already stated that I’ve been monitoring temperatures as I play the game, and I’ve seen absolutely zero evidence of any overheating. Even seconds after it shut down as well as at the height of when it would usually fail, I put my hand near all the vents on my rig and it wasn’t anywhere near overheating.

In addition, what information do you need to get a proper analysis?

There is no doubt that it is a hardware problem.
Putting your hand near the vents is not a test in any way,shape or form.
Have you ever opened the case and cleaned it out with a can of compressed air? Blow everything, fans, CPU,GPU, MB—virtually everything until the dust is gone.

I am not so sure this is a overheat problem, there is some other stuff coming to my mind like lacking power or the RAM is running full. Windows 10 still can do strange stuff, even if you have 32gb (my RAM ran full when I tried to install a new graphics driver…)
Is your computer just instantly shutting down, or are you getting some kind of bluescreen?
Do you have latest drivers installed?
Monitor the Temperature and maybe look into your BIOS / UEFI where the max Temperature is set.
Several possibilities here, as already mentioned. My guess is lack of power. Do you by any chance have another PSU that you could plug in and try out?

Sounds like a classic psu failure. It ticks all the boxes. Try another powersupply, preferably a good brand, since you need consistent power which “random” brands usually don’t give, despite listing them as being able to do so.

I don’t think people are getting what I’m saying. I know for a FACT it has nothing to do with my power supply as it comfortably supplies power for games like Skyrim and other higher demanding games. ONLY in Guild Wars 2 does it give me this level of resistance. It’s the third time I’ll say it: I’ve been monitoring temperatures constantly and nothing points to overheating or a failed power supply. No voltage spikes, no temperature spikes, no nothing. It has previously worked with Guild Wars 2 up until about a few days ago (when I believe a new patch came out).

As for Madara’s questions:

- The computer is indeed just shutting down. No blue screen, no error messages, just a straight up shut down and reboot.
- I’ve installed the latest NVIDIA drivers for Windows 10, yes and pretty much anything else that was for anything Windows 10.
- Again, temperatures were fine and the BIOS is and has been set to automatically handle any temperature issues. It hasn’t steered me wrong up until now.
- No, I do not have another PSU to try out nor do I have the budget to go out and buy another.

Couple of ideas here:

First, I know you keep saying over and over that it couldn’t be an overheat issue, but I’d try doing a full cleaning of your CPU fan and heat sink; make sure the fan is clean and blowing as hard as it can, clean out the heat sink of any dust, probably even give your CPU a new coating of heat sink compound (which is pretty cheap). GW2 tends to be more CPU heavy than GPU heavy, especially compared to other top tier games, so something like Skyrim might not have any problems, but GW2 might be pushing your CPU juuust hard enough to cause issues.

Second one is; How old is the hard drive GW2 is on? IIRC the GW2.dat file is actually a compressed form of all the games files, which it then decompresses the needed files during gameplay. If your hard drive is several years old and/or an off brand, it might be too worn out to keep up with the demand. Again, AFAIK this is something GW2 does that most other games don’t, which my be why you don’t have an issue (yet) with other games but have issue with this one. If you have multiple hard drives, you might try moving the game’s files to it (even if it’s some slow-kitten backup drive that has you suffering from pop-in graphics for five minutes every time you load a new area) and see if problem persists.

Finally, it could still absolutely be a PSU issue; I’ve had two Power Supply failures and the very first sign was random shutoffs without bluescreens or lockups. I’d look for something that tracks power usage and see if GW2 draws more juice than the other games you can play just fine. Could be a new PSU is in your future whether you like it or not. On the other hand… it might just need it’s innards cleaned, PSU get full of dust too, and some heat tracking software forgets that it exists.

Take it to a computer repair service. It appears to be hardware problem of some sort.
EXACTLY the same symptoms as you described when I upgraded my vid card.
PSU replaced and amazingly the issue was gone.

Did you blow out the case, components and fans etc as was suggested by a few posts.

Ive had this problem in the past, exactly as you described but with gw1 several years ago. The problem was my graphics card, more specifically the fans stopped working causing overheating and causing my computer to shutdown constantly while playing. A new graphics card fixed the problem. Consider swapping it out if you have one around to see if your graphics card is causing the issue.

Unless both me and OP are having hardware issues, i had this exact same issue happen to me 2 days ago while in Guild Wars 2. Mind you, this rig is only 3 weeks old, so i doubt it is a hardware issue. However, it could be a insane coincidence that we both just happen to be having computer hardware issues. Again, this just happened to me once and its only happened to me while in Guild Wars 2 itself. Never had it happen in any other game. But who knows, this PSU is about a year old. ((Only part that isn’t new))

Oh, and its not overheating. GPU doesn’t get over 130 *F and thats only while in a heavily populated area and while just roaming around in town or something it stays between 108 to 120 *F at about 45% load. ((60 to 65% load while in a highly populated area.)) CPU isn’t hot either. Its liquid cooled and stays around 114 *F while in a populated area. Rarely do i ever see it get higher then 134 *F under heavy load. ((70% to 80%)). So this isn’t a overheating issue.

I had the same issue yesterday, and I “think” I’ve found out why. Windows 10 AUTOMATICALLY installs updates, “some” of which require a reboot—————-oops!!
I resolved my issue by changing the update process to allow Windows to update my system while I’m sleeping!! and NOT on the default schedule. Try that and see if it works.

And, yes, it “could” be a hardware issue———usually with the PS————and the fact that this “only” occurs while playing GW2 is not necessarily “true and correct”— there may be other (background) programs that are impacting the ps demand. Remember, GW2 was designed to work under Windows 7, and was patched for Windows 8. It may be that GW2 needs additional patching for Windows 10——especially since W10 works on a “different” model than any previous version.

So, a while later and I’ve done everything hardware-wise to resolve this issue.

• I replaced my motherboard which was causing a buttload of other problems for my PC.
• I replaced the PSU.
• I reapplied a fresh coat of thermal paste.
• I reinstalled HWMonitor.

So, for the first month or so, Guild Wars 2 ran perfectly fine. Only now is it starting to flare up again. Keep in mind that this is with an entirely revamped setup that has ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to short circuit at all due to overheating or what have you. I am 110% convinced that this is no longer a hardware issue.

I have loaded it up as I normally do (with a few other programs running) and it has fizzed out my monitors and become unresponsive; the only way I can resolve it is to hold down the power button and boot up again. I’ve ALSO done this the SECOND I started up again. No programs running, JUST Guild Wars 2 – and I get the exact same problem: a hard crash 5 seconds into the game.

Once again, I am unable to play the game for even a breath or two and I have tried literally every solution that has been suggested here.

Just wondering; what OS are you using?

Windows 10, 64-bit.

What size PS are you using?? I’ve got a 850w ps, running W10, 32GB, on an ASUS board with a MSI R7-370 GPU (4GB memory) and I (ok, personally) haven’t seen this type of issue arise. My suspicion is that your running your ps at almost full capacity————-or may have a faulty ps cable that’s the cause. The best response I’ve noted was to have a “pro” check your system for hardware faults.