Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 crashes constantly on my home machine. I have not noticed any consistent in-game activity or action that precedes the crashes. Uptime can be just over a minute, to ten minutes, to (very rarely) 20-40 minutes. I do not have overheating in either my CPU or GPU, and I have tried two different graphics cards (GTX 570 and GeForce 8800) with identical results. I am running the latest drivers for the graphics cards.

I should note, these issues went away for about five days, from Monday evening 8/27 to Saturday morning 9/1. I initially credited it to the new beta drivers Nvidia released on 8/27, but since the crashes returned, it seems likely that something was changed in a GW2 patch on Monday that was changed again in the patch on Saturday.

Edit: I should also note, for the majority of crashes (say, 70%) the game simply dumps to desktop without a freeze or hitch, with the ArenaNet crash log submission tool up. In about 20% of cases, the game freezes solid, and I have to bring up task manager and kill it. In rare cases, it gives a full on blue screen, often with an error message of irql_not_less_or_equal (It may have always been this message, but I don’t always get to see the full text before the PC reboots).

Edit 2 I do not run AVG.

I have attached my crash logs. If I don’t have the most submitted crash logs of anyone in the game, I’ll be surprised

And here is my current dxdiag, running the older GeForce 8800. As mentioned, I have also run the game with an EVGA GeForce GTX 570, with identical issues.

Still crashing, but I’ve seen some new error messages that hadn’t come up before. Updated ArenaNet.log attached.

I have also tried downloading all available Windows updates, but this had no discernible effect.

First question: Any hardware overclocked (CPU, GPU, Memory, etc.)?

You really need to list full system specs!

Idolicious.6091:

First question: Any hardware overclocked (CPU, GPU, Memory, etc.)?

Not at the moment. My newer graphics card is factory OC’d, but my older one isn’t. Doesn’t seem to make a difference between them.

Idolicious.6091:

You really need to list full system specs!

That’s why I posted my dxdiag

Check if your Powersupply is working right.

Searias.9601:

Check if your Powersupply is working right.

It is. I recently bought a brand new 850 watt PSU (building a new machine soon), but I’ve tried the old 800W one as well. Identical results.

check this out http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560129%28v=vs.85%29.aspx . Here is something I got from a different site about this issue "This is usually a device error – part of a memory dump for any of a variety of issues but usually a device driver or a cable error, in my experience.
We often see it in the early stages of an ATI graphics driver failure (Happes to Nvidia also).
It usually has to do with the following: Memory error due to small memory defect in memory module or AGP video memory. Failure of device or device drive of one of these: Video, Audio, NIC, modem. Failure of IDE/EIDE/ATA cable as it hardens and shrinks from age. Device order error on IDE/EIDE/ATA cable where Cable Select is being used but the primary device is NOT on the end of the cable. (On cable select, master is at end, slave is in the middle.
Microsoft has its own theories. You can do a search of their knowledge base or try:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb:en-us;314063. If that doesn’t work quite right, search for 314063 in the knowledge base.
Also could be a registry corruption error.
The tricks. 1. Download and resinstall drivers for all devices. 2. Download Memtest86 and test your memory for about three hours of iterations. 3. Check all your IDE/EIDE/ATA cables. If you have an ATA drive that is on an old style cable, change to ATA cable with 80 conductor – 40 connector.
Also a common error when someone upgrades to Windows 2000 or Windows XP from an earlier OS. Only fix in this case is to do a clean install on a formatted disk.
Registry error problems can be fixed by restarting in Safe Mode (pressing the F8 key) at least three or four times. This will fix errors in your registry that will get rid of a lot of such problems. "

Thank you very much for gathering so much information – I really do appreciate it, and I’ll start working through the possibilities you’ve mentioned.

I have to point out, though, that it seems extremely unlikely to be a hardware issue on my end. I’ve gone back and tried several other games (Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Diablo 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic) and they all play fine on this machine, going for hours without crashes. Guild Wars 2 is the only game/application that is experiencing these frequent crashes.

Also, try running this http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html. If your problem is caused by a corruption in your registry this should fix it.

Having the same issue with a Radeon HD4870. Started out as driver crashes, black screen back to desktop (kill task), now its progressed to only BSOD’s, can happen in 10 seconds or 40 minutes, but it never fails to eventually ruin my night. It has pretty much broken my ability to level and made the game a waste of $60. Pretty bummed but nothing seems to resolve the issue.

Also Win7 64.

Try disabling “Character Animation” and “High res textures” ingame. It helped me.

So, probably because I was so certain it wasn’t possible, it looks like my problem is RAM related, and Guild Wars 2 is the only application that notices.

Running Memtest86, I encountered literally millions of errors on my RAM when all 4 sticks were installed (8 gigs total, which is the max that my motherboard can support).

But when I tested every stick and every slot individually, no errors. If I leave up to 3 sticks installed, memtest still finds no errors, and GW2 runs fine for hours.

The only issue I can find is that my BIOS and memtest report the total installed memory as 8.19 gigs, rather than the flat 8 that Windows shows. Is it possible that I am just slightly over the max my mobo can handle, and this is causing the issues? Or is 200 megs of RAM just rounded off normally, and I have some other issue somewhere?

That is most probably a ram timing issue when running on dual channel with 4 dimms. Try running the mems with more relaxed settings, or using a different divisor (or slightly upping MCH voltage if needed).

A good starting point for you: http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/27140-ga-p35-ds3l-memory-settings-i-just-need-stable-machine.html

VirtualBS.3165:

That is most probably a ram timing issue when running on dual channel with 4 dimms. Try running the mems with more relaxed settings, or using a different divisor (or slightly upping MCH voltage if needed).

Could you clarify “more relaxed settings”? Messing with the RAM settings in BIOS is a bit new to me

VirtualBS.3165:

A good starting point for you: http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/27140-ga-p35-ds3l-memory-settings-i-just-need-stable-machine.html

Unfortunately (or fortunately, one would think!), my RAM settings are already correct as far as I can tell. Timings are accurate (5-5-5-15 in my case), MCH voltage is already upped 0.1v as recommended.

Even so, really appreciate the help!