Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve only had this new gaming desktop for about a month. It uses an i5-4670k with a Nvidia 760, so the specs should cover the game well.

Trouble is, I’m not able to play Guild Wars 2 consistently. A play session will be fine for the most part. Good frame rate and everything, but then I’ll get stutter-spikes with an annoying bleeping sound. In the worst-case scenario, that happens and then turns into a full freeze that black screens the game, but not the pc. This may recover and allow me to continue the session or it may put the client into a not-responding state. It then may or may not give me a message that says something along the lines of “Nvidia driver kernel has stopped working and has recovered.”

Fixing it has proved to be remarkably difficult. I’ve tried reducing the graphics settings for the game, but there doesn’t seem to be a correlation. I’ve tried clean-wiping my drivers and reinstalling the newest one. I’ve tried opening my computer up and airing out the dust; there wasn’t much. I’ve tried virus scans, junkware scans, and malware scans.

As of this moment, nothing has worked. Help would be appreciated.

It definitely sounds to be related to some issue with the graphics card / driver (but that could just be the failure symptom of an actual hardware failure of some sort). Here are some suggestions to help pin it down.

• Reseat your video card. An intermittent connection on the PCIE-16 slot could cause strange behavior. While you are at it VERIFY that you are plugged into the primary PCIE 16 video slot (most MBs have 2 and it’s usually the one closest to the center of the MB).
• Check your Event Log (especially after the system fails and is able to recover). The recorded error / warning may provide some insight into what is causing the driver to fail (or how it was able to recover my give valuable data).
• Check for a GW2 crash log. I’m unsure of the details, but the wiki should provide them (or someone will post them after this). Often that will point to something with GW2 that may be addressable.
• Try to repair your GW2 client / data file. (see link below and find the -repair option)
  http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

Hope one of these helps and good luck.

What power supply do you have?

abomally.2694:

What power supply do you have?

I run an iBuyPower Revolt, which uses a custom 500w gold standard. It was a matter of concern for me when choosing to order the pc, but every source I found pointed towards it being strong enough to handle everything up to an Nvidia Titan.

Don’t think the power supply is the issue, especially because the system has met all of my needs up until the past week or two.

And it’s unfortunate to know that the TDR bug has so many root causes. I’ll have to consult some more knowledgeable friends and see if they can help me find out which it is and how to fix it.

Well, I can’t find any information on the power supply for the iBuyPower Revolt. I really need the info off of the power supply itself to try and determine its quality. Your symptoms do sound like a power supply issue (could also be motherboard or GPU).

TDR isn’t a bug. It’s designed to try and recover a GPU if it’s unresponsive for a certain period of time in order to try and prevent having to restart the computer. If all hardware is working correctly, you will never trigger TDR.

abomally.2694:

Well, I can’t find any information on the power supply for the iBuyPower Revolt. I really need the info off of the power supply itself to try and determine its quality. Your symptoms do sound like a power supply issue (could also be motherboard or GPU).

TDR isn’t a bug. It’s designed to try and recover a GPU if it’s unresponsive for a certain period of time in order to try and prevent having to restart the computer. If all hardware is working correctly, you will never trigger TDR.

I’m leaning towards a driver issues. The conflicts started when I upgraded to the newest Nvidia driver (340.52). Must have had left over files from my previous driver that caused a conflict. Did a full wipe on the drivers and a reinstall on the 340.52, but that doesn’t seem to have resolved it.

I also just bumped my power options from Balanced to High Performance. Haven’t had the chance to test the game out under this to see if that helps at all. It could take anywhere from a half hour to several hours for a conflict to show up.

I’ve also had this issue, though it has been a while since the last black screen, and has lately just been the freezes. This while getting the driver stopped windows message. It has happened on two PCs.

This only started recently, and may be indeed related to a driver update that somehow conflicts with GW2.

First PC was Windows 7, i5-2500k (not overclocked) and a GTX 660 Ti card. Second PC is a windows 8.1, i7-4790k (overclocked), and a GTX 780 card. Brand new and not much on it yet.

Interestingly on Sunday while playing, I was primarily in PVP, and the two times it happened were each on the Skyhammer map ( just found it interesting.)

In any event, I am back to running at medium level, and had really wished to run higher graphics options on the new PC.

Grimm.3972:

I’ve also had this issue, though it has been a while since the last black screen, and has lately just been the freezes. This while getting the driver stopped windows message. It has happened on two PCs.

This only started recently, and may be indeed related to a driver update that somehow conflicts with GW2.

First PC was Windows 7, i5-2500k (not overclocked) and a GTX 660 Ti card. Second PC is a windows 8.1, i7-4790k (overclocked), and a GTX 780 card. Brand new and not much on it yet.

Interestingly on Sunday while playing, I was primarily in PVP, and the two times it happened were each on the Skyhammer map ( just found it interesting.)

In any event, I am back to running at medium level, and had really wished to run higher graphics options on the new PC.

That’s an interesting thought. I may have to give other games more extensive playing to see if the conflicts are exclusive to GW2. The only other things I’ve played much in the past few weeks were Rift and Firefall. The conflicts I had with Firefall were well-known server conflicts and the Rift conflicts were the direct result of the driver upgrade – and were resolved when I attempted to downgrade back. I only upgraded back to the newer driver because I thought it might solve the ongoing GW2 conflicts.

Who knows, really. That many driver upgrades + downgrades may have done some damage. I might have to wipe my computer and re-install everything.

Did a clean install of the 337.8 Driver, which, if I’m correct, is my computer’s original Nvidia graphics driver.

So far, I’ve noticed a large improvement. Few if any graphical tears or instances of flashing terrain. Which is certainly a good sign.

Haven’t had a driver kernel failure yet, though I experienced one 5-ish second lag spike (no sound stutter or anything) that I wouldn’t have even been suspicious about if it weren’t for the nature of this problem.

Current testing with the driver is about 2-3 hours ish. High settings auto-detected to what my pc should be capable of.

Haven’t put it under serious load yet, as I only did gathering, crafting, and minor combat, but the previous driver kernel issues occurred during all activities – combat, gathering, crafting, and even standing still.

So I’ll call myself cautiously optimistic for the moment and put in a more rigorous test of it tomorrow to get more conclusive knowledge.