Guild Wars 2

Yeah, yet another victim of the black screens of death.

Have to reboot to use my PC after the crash as I don’t get the luxury of being able to just hit Alt+F4 like some of the other reports of BSoD’s.

And just like most, it all started with the Wintersday patches around the 14th or so. Game ran flawlessly prior to this, just like most every one elses did.

Done all the updating of drivers, BIOS, etc. that can be done. Done the roll-back of other drivers that have been tried.

Ran all the reports that can be reported. (SPECCY, CPUID-CPUZ, Prime95, etc.)

Haven’t been able to participate at all in the Wintersday event at all with this.

Please get this fixed. I’d actually like to get back to playing again someday. Well, be able to play for more than 30 minutes…. consistently that is.

I feel your pain mate .. it’s been like that for me for over 2 weeks. My support ticket, which I opened when it started and has had me testing all sorts of stuff, got the reply of “make a post in the bug report board, we’ve exhausted our troubleshooting options” yesterday.

So yeah .. shrug ….

Okay…. I really think it’s time for them to just come out and admit, “Hey we really F’d something up with one of our latest patches….”

There is just way to many variances on what I’ve read about what is happening to a good percentage of players since the Wintersday patches. Web is filling up with new reports on the subject daily….

Lets get hot in this 1 Anet…. your gaming base is waiting….

Attach your game advisor log here (See Part 1.2)

CPU-z/Prime95 doesn’t test or stress your GPU. The GPU could actually be dying like this. Try testing your GPU (see Part 5.1)

Hey Kirito. Thanks for the thoughts. But it is unfortunately mostly irrelevant at this point in time, with everything else that I’ve already subjected my system to trying to get this resolved. Already done a few game advisors and sent them in to support at various times during all the tweaks they had me doing. They never showed anything off then, so there would really be no point in reposting them now.

The second option, while being a viable possibility, is actually unlikely. If you go through the many posts about this issue, the GPU’s involved span the entire gamut of producers. From ASUS to Saphire to MSI, etc etc etc… and the cream of the crop is my neighbor has the same GPU I have, and is NOT having the BSoD issue.

Go figure, eh…

As for the last option, I have done that. loaded my gpu up as much as possible. Performed fine. Kinda like a jenga stack I suppose though. Did start getting a little iffy at the end. Then again, while graphically intense, GW2 doesn’t put the kind of strain on the GPU that I subjected it to in stress testing.

But I do wish to extend my thanks though for offering your thoughts w/o flames. In times like this when a favored game goes south due to some error in coding or w/e it may be, trolls tend to emerge in droves. So it’s refreshing to see some 1 like yourself offering what assistance they can without raging “IT’S YOU!!!! NOT THE GAME!!!” I just hope they figure out what they messed up soon, so I can get back into the game.

So thank you very very much.

And there it is… the long awaited “We’ve exhausted all avenues…” support e-mail.

I knew this was coming….. you can’t alter, reconfigure, re-install, etc., a computer that much whilst having zero effect on the end result. That being, being able to play the game.

It was pretty much a given from the start that the problem had little to do with my end of the issue.

BUT FEAR NOT!!!!!!!!!…. I think I found a “TEMPORARY” workaround without their assistance that MIGHT assist others having the kind of BSoD issues I was having.

It basically involves turning your high performance gaming PC into a cheapo pocket calculator. After having searched hundreds of forum posts with the help of a few of my guildmates (who were also having issues,) HYPERTHREADING came up. I figured, what the hell…. and gave it a shot….

In my BIOS, I DISABLED Hyperthreading. I went from almost instant crashes upon loading into the gameworld, to getting a good 20-30 mins of gameplay again. Not a perfect fix, but at least I was able to get back in and move around a few zones to see what, if any pattern there might have been.

Not content with 20-30 mins before I would crash, I thought back to when support had me turn down the MAXIMUM PROCESSOR STATE under power options in my control panel. Only slightly, from 100% to 99%. Their ideal was supposedly to prevent the Intel Turbo feature from kicking in. But, just like Socialism, good in theory, Epic Fail in practice. So back into the BIOS I went, and completely DISABLED Intel Turbo.

With both features turned OFF/DISABLED, I was able to go for a good 2hrs of uninterrupted gameplay, (other than the expected lagg here and there) and was able to log in and out repeatedly several times without a BSoD.

So there you have it, yet another temporary fix until ANET fixes whatever it broke with it’s wintersday patch back around the 14th-17th.

Hope this helps at least a few of you. I know how crappy it feels to be “out of game” for such an extended period of time. (2 weeks+ for me until this).

Good Luck…!!!

That sounds like either a temp or power issue because reducing the clocks reduces the power consumption and so does disabling HT. Likewise, disabling HT lowers temps in many situations. Alternatively it could be a voltage problem but that is extremely unlikely if you are not overclocked and using auto settings.

This will not necessarily show up in stress testing because running prime95 doesn’t use as much power as GW2, it only uses the CPU. Likewise programs like occt and furmark will also consume less power because they are throttled at driver level.

I cannot comment further not knowing the specs though.

Well, as it turns out (and as I expected really), this was only a temporary fix, and didn’t resolve the issue, as the Black Screen crashes have resumed.

Decided to just wait until Wintersday was over and see if the “end-event” patch that clears out all the event stuff would wipe the issue away.

No dice… that didn’t work either. And now, judging by the wave of new posts, it seems the end event patch has crippled even more players.

So, I attempted yet ANOTHER driver wipe for my GPU (nVidia 9600GT 2GB) and roll back to 306.97 clean install. This didn’t do it either.

I appreciate the thought (@Majestic,) unfortunately, temp/power isn’t the issue here either as I physically dragged my rig into the shop and had all my components stressed. My computer is running fine. Additionally, I’ll add that like everyone else having this issue, it’s ONLY GW2 that this prob is happening to. Appreciate your attempt though.

So, Guild Wars 2 will officially be “sitting on the shelf” collecting dust now, until they fix whatever they broke.

Thx again for the many suggestions at possible fixes. Unfortunately, you can’t fix what isn’t broken. It’s on Anet’s end, that which needs to be fixed.

Something is definitely not right after the last patch. I have been able to play with no problems since day one…now I can’t go 5 minutes without a crash to black screen, and then either an auto restart or a hard restart. I’ve submitted a ticket with my log, updated all of my drivers that needed updating, and still no improvement on the problem.

If disabling HT and stoping Turbo fixed ur issue it could be temperature issue ..but more likely (as u probably already checked temps) its a PSU issue.

PSU’s degrade over time ..more importantly GW2 is one of those few games that hammers CPU’s hard AND also hammers GPU’s hard ..whilst constantly running stuff from the harddrive ..and using the Internet….i would highly suspect that ur PSU’s could potentialy be being overwhelmed. Specialy if its a prebuilt computer using a cheapo PSU.

Unfrotunatly the only sure fire way of testing if its the PSU is to install a replacment. One that is preferably bigger ..or at the very least the same wattage but newer or of a better make.
There have been a few people on the forums with BSOD/reset issues, and some have been fixed by replacing the PSU even thugh all tests they done (stressing components) didnt show up any faults. GW2 has an uncanny ability to push things harder than some benchmark/stress test programs. Just look at GPU heat, GW2 can make GPU’s run hotter at max usuage than say BF3 at max usuage.

About 2 days now and now Guild Wars 2. All I get is trying to load the client, logging in and get nothing but a black screen and music playing in the background. Or it does load past the character screen and sits at the loading screen for Lions Arch, or other places on the map, then sits there forever. I even did a repair on it tonight, no avail it didn’t work. And don’t even start to ask if all the settings are right. My network connections works, or I wouldn’t have even been able to post here, or log into Guild wars. My drivers are up to date, port numbers check out ok, my router checks out ok.

But it all seems to be the client and the game server at Anet’s end to be causing the client to not log in and not load.

I might be rusty at programming, but I’m no dummy to see that someone at the other end of my network cable has a problem and it’s not my ISP.

I’m convinced they don’t know whats going on. Hopefully in the longer run this gets fixed so I can return to the game.