Guild Wars 2

Just started GW2. First day was fine, played a few hours. Second day again played about 4 hours with no issues. Then it started. Screen goes black, can still hear music, have to hard reboot the computer. Changed Nvidia panel setting as recommended, changed in-game settings as recommended, GPU running cool etc. What is going on here? I see a lot of people with the same problem. I have never experienced this on any other game, EQ, WoW etc., everything runs fine on high settings. Now screen goes black 1 min into the game.

Win7 64
i7 CPU
GTX 285, 306.97 driver.
1000W PSU
12G RAM

Help?

I got a crash with graphical artifacts and then a black screen for the first time ever jsut before the update.
…and now still getting them after the update.

Just after my lag spikes disappeared?

…I sure am unlucky.

Edit:
I got error 43 on device manager and Windows doesn’t find my card.
I think it just died and this had little to do with GW2 and everything to do with my card being old!

Sorry for the possible false positive.

Did DX9 update, did the client repair, still going into black screen after 5 min of game.

Any other suggestions?

Been Working about it for a while with techs (for 2 months now) and on forum (pretty much near since beta) , and im still having those black screen…
They are still making me some suggestions to fix it (which are most of the time the same, getting asked to update my drivers about 5 times so far when they are already up to date.) Hope you also have alot of patience, but on my side it’s breaking down…

Dunno what to do since i really enjoy this game but getting a crash often make me quit that game for the day…

My next step is to get Radeon card and see if this is Nvidia / GW2 compatibility problem.

That was also my solution at first and it didnt work, went from same video card company as you to a radeon 7850 (not sure the exact number from work) and still getting crashes

saddest thing is I bought the same video card as 3 of my friends who are playing… and they are not crashing…

Funny, I just ordered 7850 from Newegg. Will report back in couple of days.

Wish you luck funniest thing is that i also ordered it from newegg :P

Hummm… today i decided to change my router, I realised i was able to play without my router but not with it… so I bought a new router today.
My current record was 3 pvp match in a row ( if i was able to complete even 1… )
Today i made 6 without any crash. Cant say for sure yet, but i believe my problem is solved….

Old router: D-Link Dir-601
New: D-Link Dir-815

Same problem with Netgear D6300.

Black screen after a short amount of play. Spvp is by far the fastest way to trigger it.

Upgraded router to d6300, had no problem with old router netgear dg834gt.
I have 2 internet connections from seperate providers. 1 wireless & 1 wired.
swapping routers between them, can confirm. d6300 gets black screen after a short time. dg834gt never gets blackscreen.

Have tried port forwarding gw2 on d6300 still get blackscreen.
Only advice can find on internet is to disable spi on router. This is not an option on the d6300. Even if it was an option it would not be one I would take.

Firmware for d6300 is up to date, initial release in september is still the latest firmware.

Would be nice to be able to play the game wired through d6300 on high speed connection. Instead play wirelessly through the old router with the performance hit that involves.

Today I started to get this issue. Never had it before…. Did you guys made any hot-fix this night?

Edit: Have been playing since the first beta.

I have DIR-655. I disabled SPI and it seems to fix the problem, only tested for half an hour tho, no black screen, will test for a longer session. Keeping my fingers crossed. Roysten, port forwarding only works when your PC is on static IP address. Did you make it static? I can’t use port forwarding – it screws up my wireless connection to XBOX for some reason. So I went SPI route.

Have new HD 7850 arriving tomorrow, debating RMA or not, will see how long this workaround works.

Yep I did have a static ip address. SPI seems to be the cause, which is a shame because there is no way that I am switching it off.

At least I have ropey wireless on a separate router to get by with.

Black screen again, 1 hr into play. Disabling SPI did not help.

However, I can play longer sessions between blackouts. 1 – 2 hrs.

Played another 2 hours yesterday and still no crash. Kinda sad I had to change my router to fix it tho…

This has been occuring since beta. Occasional black screens and instant disconnect. Mostly occurs in sPvP, but once in a while in WvW and all parts of PvE. I’ve tried different network settings, removing/replacing router equipment, changing video settings, etc.

I’ve always been able to Alt-F4 and restart the client, sometimes with an immediate second crash with an error message about the login server not being able to connect to the instance but mostly everything starts up cleanly.

Generally, it’s an annoyance everywhere except sPVP which is unplayable, and Fractals because this crash removes you from your groups instance.

Any suggestions for how to debug or collect more information about this type of crash is very welcome.

If you’re having issues with disconnections which is the causation of the black screen, have you thought about reconfiguring your firewall? There’s a tutorial out there on one of AVG’s forums that provides a fix by manually opening ports for the game.

If this fixes the black screen, then this is purely a network issue and not a hardware one, since there is too much inconsistency with the graphics card users experiencing and recreating the issue. E.g. your 3 friends are using the same graphics card as you are but are not experiencing this problem.

If not, i suggest taking a look at this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Black-Screen-Issue-Nvidia

Tried all of the above nothing works.

Roysten.3456:

Same problem with Netgear D6300.

Black screen after a short amount of play. Spvp is by far the fastest way to trigger it.

Upgraded router to d6300, had no problem with old router netgear dg834gt.
I have 2 internet connections from seperate providers. 1 wireless & 1 wired.
swapping routers between them, can confirm. d6300 gets black screen after a short time. dg834gt never gets blackscreen.

Have tried port forwarding gw2 on d6300 still get blackscreen.
Only advice can find on internet is to disable spi on router. This is not an option on the d6300. Even if it was an option it would not be one I would take.

Firmware for d6300 is up to date, initial release in september is still the latest firmware.

Would be nice to be able to play the game wired through d6300 on high speed connection. Instead play wirelessly through the old router with the performance hit that involves.

D6300 is the problem i see, im using and getting black screens every 10-20 mins. Tried everything i could find; “port forwarding, installing newest DirectX9, deleting local.dat” etc… But enabling DMZ seem to fix the black screen for D6300, can play up to 5+ hours without black screen.

Even tho black screen is solved, i get random drop outs, maybe 30-60mins? Very annoying when doing dungeons and quests…. Even changed ISP because of this, still getting drop outs. So i decided to go and buy a new modem tomorrow to see if it will improve on the drop outs…. btw im wired all the way =)

About every other time I run GW2 since I began playing again after about a one- or two-month hiatus, I get an unusual black screen upon logging in and the launcher gives way to the client. The screen is totally black save a flickering title bar. Keypress response is very laggy at this point, and if I’m able to alt-tab or bring up the task manager then the black GW2 window immediately shoves itself on top of them and prevents me from killing the process. If left long enough, GW2 will apparently make it to the character select screen as I can hear the title music — however, at this point my video adapter stops sending a signal, or perhaps stops rendering entirely. It’s hard to say, really.

I double-checked the nVidia Control Panel and all of Guild Wars 2’s graphics settings were already set to application controlled, where applicable — and I don’t recall ever altering them in the first place. I only ever tweak these sorts of settings on a per-application basis.

EDIT: Trying Windows key+L to try and get to the login screen during the title bar flickering phase yields an error message box that says “Failed to parse line 903” that recurs a few times after hitting its OK button before I’m thankfully led to the login screen. After that, I can sign in and the misbehaving client window actually allows me to ctrl-alt-del and kill GW2.exe. I also updated my graphics drivers (latest non-beta) in between the original incarnation of this post and this edit and the issue still occurs — actually 100% of the time now instead of approximately half the time. I do NOT overclock.

My system specs are as follows:
Windows XP Home
1.6GHz Intel Core2 Duo E6300 (I know this is below-minimum specs, but it runs fine, even back in beta when the client was far more CPU-heavy)
3GB RAM
Asus GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB

Enclosed is a dxdiag log.

I have a new unopened HD 7850 sitting in the closet because I am more and more convinced this is a modem/router problem. I was able to go on several hours long sessions by doing this:
1. Hard reboot both ISP modem and router (by unplugging them for a few seconds)
2. Delete local.dat file.

I still blackout but can go for hours without crashing.

Firozen, pls post your new router model and the results.

Mine are Motorolla serfboard and Dlink DIR-655 wireless router, using wired connection as well.

i am able to log in with the launcher, and after i hit play it opens the game but i only get a black screen. from there i am unable to tab-out and i have to start the task manager in order to close it. is there any quick way i can fix this? i’m trying to avoid taking the long way of re installing

Sorry if this isnt very clear, I’m typing in a bit of a haze of frustration/anger (understatement). Tried rolling back drivers to what I had, it uninstalled in a messed up way that I was unable to reinstall ANY graphics drivers, had to do a system restore just to be able to (note, I know this is a bad idea), reinstalled, and now I have “bad driver” issues in GW2 (manifests itself in the same way as before) and other games — which if this was the issue in the first place was incredibly unclear going by GW2’s behavior alone. I may not be able to provide more info to help resolve this, if it is indeed related to other folks’ issues too, as I’m likely going to have to reinstall XP at this rate. Ugh.

EDIT: So the “bad driver” thing that was declared by another game (Minecraft, oddly) only seems to rear its head if I run GW2 first and do not reboot in between. Apparently the effects of its blackscreening mess up rendering until a reboot occurs. Also interestingly, I can’t tell Windows to reboot after having run GW2 and it does its messed-up thing. I have to do a hard reboot with the reset button on my computer case.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

- Clean installation of your video card drivers (may need to do this through a Third-Party application such as Driver Fusion) !

Tried this, currently at 306.97. No change.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

- Update your version of DirectX!

Fully up to date – DirectX 11, no updates available.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

- Either disable SPI Firewall or bypass your router and connect directly to the modem

Tried both diabling SPI and bypassing modem. No change.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

- In your Nvidia Control Panel or Catalyst Control Center, set your Anti-Aliasing settings to “Application Controlled.”

This is my current setting.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

- Delete the local.dat file and follow with a repair of the game client.

Tried this. Still getting black screen errors.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

- Re-seat your graphics card (remove the card and put it firmly back into place)

Have not tried this.

I do not suspect this is a graphics issue specificially, but a symptom of a network error. When the black screen occurs, the application is still running – pressing function keys brings up menus over top of the blackscreen and I can select and change options in these menus to my hearts content. The instant the black screen appears, however, my guild mates and party members see me go offline.

Also, I can cause a black screen almost on-demand by logging off and selecting the “Go to character select” option.

If there is any information I can collect that would help debug this issue I would be happy to gather and send it.

I am in the middle of playing and every so often i get a Black screen and i can still hear the sound in the background. i have searched the forum for an answer but i have not found one can someone please help me. I will keep searching the forum for answers in case there is one but so far have not found one.

thanks in advance for the help!

tried these?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Black-Screen-Issues-merged/first#post982850

I think this problem has nothing to do with graphics, or drivers. My black screen problems started right after end of halloween content. It´s network related problem. BUT, it´s problem of the game, the game should hold some latency issues, ore where is the problem and not immediatelly disconnect player without any message a stay black. Internet providers are different and nobody has perfect provider. Unfortunatelly I have only one option and cant change it. Don´t tell me, that programmers in Anet cant fix it or figure it out, what is wrong. Twice I had message about network connection when it went black, but message fade out very quickly, so I cant say what exactly was written there.

There are two different blackscreens, first is needed to complete restart PC, because of crash of system. I can tell, yeah, it´s driver problem, or hardware. But the second is, that you can press F11 to go to the menu, but you cant see character, or anything else. And this is software issue in GW2. Players should say, what type of blackscreen they have. Not only, aaaaaah, I have black screen every minute, because he will probably get wrong and not helpful comment.

having this same problem, tried playing for about 6 hours today and had well over 20 black screens, could not access menu’s or anything, had to force close the game each and every time, it was significantly worse when i was in a dungeon, story line dungeons became very severe, more so than normal dungeons.

have all the latest drivers and updates.

windows7 64bit ultimate
i7 960 3.2ghz
12GB ram
ASUS HD6950 2GB DirectCUII
Sabertooth x58 LGA1366

mafdet.8725:

About every other time I run GW2 since I began playing again after about a one- or two-month hiatus, I get an unusual black screen upon logging in and the launcher gives way to the client. The screen is totally black save a flickering title bar. Keypress response is very laggy at this point, and if I’m able to alt-tab or bring up the task manager then the black GW2 window immediately shoves itself on top of them and prevents me from killing the process. If left long enough, GW2 will apparently make it to the character select screen as I can hear the title music — however, at this point my video adapter stops sending a signal, or perhaps stops rendering entirely. It’s hard to say, really.

I double-checked the nVidia Control Panel and all of Guild Wars 2’s graphics settings were already set to application controlled, where applicable — and I don’t recall ever altering them in the first place. I only ever tweak these sorts of settings on a per-application basis.

EDIT: Trying Windows key+L to try and get to the login screen during the title bar flickering phase yields an error message box that says “Failed to parse line 903” that recurs a few times after hitting its OK button before I’m thankfully led to the login screen. After that, I can sign in and the misbehaving client window actually allows me to ctrl-alt-del and kill GW2.exe. I also updated my graphics drivers (latest non-beta) in between the original incarnation of this post and this edit and the issue still occurs — actually 100% of the time now instead of approximately half the time. I do NOT overclock.

My system specs are as follows:
Windows XP Home
1.6GHz Intel Core2 Duo E6300 (I know this is below-minimum specs, but it runs fine, even back in beta when the client was far more CPU-heavy)
3GB RAM
Asus GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB

Enclosed is a dxdiag log.

I’m having a very similar issue. It started sometime between the Halloween content and the Lost Shores Event. The first time I start GW2 it goes to a black screen, no music, no graphics, no flickering, just black with a mouse cursor. Eventually I have to ALT+TAB out and kill the process. When I log back in a second time it works.

I have been playing since BWE1 on the exact same machine and never had an issue. I’ve tried resetting all of my nVidia settings for GW2 to program controlled, updated drivers on everything! tried a -repair and -image and finally a full wipe and reinstall of the game and it still happens. Now I am still able to play which is better than some folks, however, it is extremely annoying!

Try changing it to windowed mode and fiddling with the resolution. Some monitors support high resolutions, others don’t. It can also be the game not being compatible with certain resolutions and card renderings with said resolutions.

i have attempted all the solutions in the above posts except for reseating my graphics card, i have decided to download the game again, but now it cannot complete because the download fails.

the game has never been this bad if ever before the patch :/

I have to agree with kinetik. The game worked flawlessly for me all through the BWE’s and after launch, it wasn’t until the lost shores event that the client began “Acting up”. As mentioned previously there have been no major hardware changes since.

An update after the Dec 14 update… black screen is now happening at roughly 5min intervals. Makes any type of play completely impossible.

No changes to anything in the system, other than the patch install itself.

black screens = try a different DNS or delete local.dat

Changed primary and secondary DNS to public ones. Rebooted modem and router, deleted .dat file. Played for 4 hrs, then crashed again. I am on the new HD 7850 now btw. The only difference – instead of black screen on Nvidia now it is yellowish with vertical lines.

So far the only remedy to at least play for a few hours for me is reboot router/delete .dat file.

Drivers Updated. Directx up to date. Changed DNS server to Google DNS. Deleted Local.dat. Repair and fresh installed files. Running on lowest possible settings even though I have 2x Geforce GTX 560 Ti. Still getting blackscreen within 10m of play. I’m done.

Tried old drivers, new drivers, router settings, repaired the client, re-downloaded the client, graphics settings, driver settings. The black screen feels constant and it’s about enough to force me into quitting.
I have a i7 3770k @ 3.5ghz, 8gb DDRs 1600mhz Ram, EVGA 660Ti 3GB SC. Netgear D6300 router.

you guys should try battleping (http://www.battleping.com/). The connection 2 option helps with connections that are affected by game or traffic shaping. solved my issue for now. 5h and counting.

I started having this problem from today as well. I have no idea what is causing it and this is the first time this has happened to me while playing GW2. I log-in play for a couple of minutes and then I get a black screen and can’t do anything. No clue how to fix this and it is really frustrating as I cannot play at all…

jbits.6239:

you guys should try battleping (http://www.battleping.com/). The connection 2 option helps with connections that are affected by game or traffic shaping. solved my issue for now. 5h and counting.

That worked. Thanks !

My black screen issue might be resolved 3 days no issues.. (fingers crossed)

Issue: random black screen sometimes 3 times in 5 minutes sometimes once in one hour. would happen crafting alone or in WvW zergs. Started sometime during the last Beta.

Symptom: the screen would go black. no cursor. gw2 game environment sound gone. gw2 music would still be playing. Would have to alt/tab, close supplication and restart it.

What I did summary. This last two weeks I completely rebuilt the computer and home network every component and cable changed including the Comcast cable from my house to the telephone pole. Cost about $1400 as some items I returned to the store.

Configuration now.

Windows 7 64 bit
EVGA 570 latest drivers
ASUS Sabertooth Z77 LGA 1155
I7-2600K (standard clock)
8 gig ram 1600
Asus wireless adapter PCE-N53 300Mbs
Corasir xt850 p/s
NZT Phontom 410 case
N600 router
Comcast box (not sure)

Result: No Change, still black screening

The Last VooDoo changes:
a) port forwarded to the game using portforward.com
b) changed all my graphics settings down one notch. ie. ultra to high, high to med, etc….
c) in my router disabled “SIP DLG”, and disable “port scan and dos protection”
d) Changed a bunch of setting in the Nvidia panel. In short everything that could be set to “controlled by application” I set that way.
e) Changed the vert sync in game to 60

NOTE: I did all the above with my original hardware and (a,b,c, d,e) did not work.

Result: No black screen in three days.

Conclusion: total voodoo, break out the chicken and holy water, sprinkle twice, mash the keyboard and pray.

I am afraid to say if you have the “black screen issue” good luck trying to resolve it. This is definitely a long term game breaker which will cause Anet to loose a bunch of business at some point.

I can only hope mine is gone as the bottom line is this is a really good game.

Thank you for all the posts and suggestions as I am 100% certain there is no silver bullet for this.

After seeing the suggestion above to use battleping I started looking into my latency and discovered my ping to GW2 servers is really bad – 260 – 290 ms, by comparisson I ping to Boston at 5ms (I live in Connecticut) With battleping my ping is around 110 ms (Texas servers) and even down to 60 – 80 on some ports.

It sucks to pay $5 a month for extra service, GW2 no monthly fee being one of the selling points, but I do not have any other solution at this time. I sure not going to spend hundreds on new equipment for just 1 game.

People with black screen, check your latency.

1. START → type resmon
2. Create desktop shortcut to it and run it
3. Expand TCP connections box.
4. Start GW2 in windowed mode, make the window small enough so you can see bot the game and Resource Monitor.
5. In the Processes with Network Activity you will see GW2.exe, check the checkbox next to it, now it will filter all connections in TCP connection box only to GW2 related.
6. Your ping in ms is in the last column on the right.

Battleping has a free trial mode but it disconnects every 20 min, enough to see the difference.

So I’m guessing that there’s not going to be any such solution for this any time soon?

EDIT: So after playing around for a week or so now, I figured with the Netgear D6300, you have to switch on DMZ and set the default gateway / address for the DMZ to 192.168.0.1
You can find this under advanced settings, just look around in there until you see something that mentions DMZ. So far I’ve had about 2 hours of non-interrupted play.

EDIT 2: This setting fixes the issues with GW2, however it breaks Steam, causing it to continually disconnect. Use at your own discretion.

This issue is definitely network related. I’ve been encountering it since the betas but I thought it would get fixed. I upgraded my GPU recently and the issue still happens. My friends who are on the same ISP as me, but have different routers, do not have this problem. My router is D-Link DIR-600.

The battleping solution works, but it increases my latency ’causing very noticeable lag, and its not free, so it is not a considerable solution for me.

Most of the black screens happen in sPVP and story quests.
I played WvW for more than 2 hours in one session with lots of people and didn’t get a single black screen.

Still waiting for a solution.

Gatts.3954:

This issue is definitely network related. I’ve been encountering it since the betas but I thought it would get fixed. I upgraded my GPU recently and the issue still happens. My friends who are on the same ISP as me, but have different routers, do not have this problem. My router is D-Link DIR-600.

The battleping solution works, but it increases my latency ’causing very noticeable lag, and its not free, so it is not a considerable solution for me.

Most of the black screens happen in sPVP and story quests.
I played WvW for more than 2 hours in one session with lots of people and didn’t get a single black screen.

Still waiting for a solution.

I agree about this being a network issue, I had tried everything to stop this from happening to me and nothing worked, nothing but putting my router/modem into DMZ mode.

Forgot to add that since I’ve done this, I have had absolutley zero issues with black screen anymore.