Guild Wars 2

Tech support has been trying to help me since 11/15. They’ve been very patient and diligent about finding a resolution for me. A big shout out to them — cause there’s only so much they can do via email.

What I find frustrating is that through all of this I haven’t been able to find a solution either (pictures and logs I’ve posted abt hardware tests). I’ve done by best to check for any potential software and hardware issues, following advice from tech support, and googling/digging around.

I really am curious as to what the problem could be..

It bugs me that they gave up instead of continuing to find this issue that plagues many people; instead of continuing the pass it off to you telling you its something on your end. With many people suffering, you would think that just MAYBE it’s their end.

“It bugs me that they gave up instead of continuing to find this issue that plagues many people; instead of continuing the pass it off to you telling you its something on your end. With many people suffering, you would think that just MAYBE it’s their end.”

Especially since I’d bet that the great majority of people who are experiencing crashes and disconnects are using hardware equivalent or better than that officially recommended by ArenaNET for optimum performance.

So … once again I will ask, when will we see a serious response from ArenaNET regarding the causes and proposed fixes for these problems?? It’s stupid for them to keep pumping out new content when the old content can’t be enjoyably played for so many people.

OK…add me to the group having these problems…

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer DELL Inc.
System Model Studio XPS 435T/9000
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel® Core™ i7 CPU 975 @ 3.33GHz, 3334 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date DELL INC. A16, 7/28/2009
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = “6.1.7601.17514”
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 5.99 GB
Available Physical Memory 3.68 GB
Total Virtual Memory 12.0 GB
Available Virtual Memory 8.32 GB
Page File Space 5.99 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
GeForce driver version 310.61

I recently swapped out my nVidia GTX 460 for an EVGA GTX 660 (slightly overclocked) and I’ve been getting the screen freeze/black screen frame rate drop randomly anywhere from 2 minutes to half an hour of play. Note that this did not happen with my GTX 460 card…what did happen was that my frame rates were terrible in general with the 460 so I decided to upgrade the GPU.
These are the Anet-recommended setting changes that I’ve made so far:

For Nvidia cards:
1. Right-click on your desktop and select “Nvidia Control Panel.”
2. Once opened, left-click on “3D settings” and select “Adjust image settings with preview.”
3. Select “Use my preference emphasizing” and move the slider to “Performance.”
4. Select “Use the advanced 3D image settings” and left click on “Take me there.”
This should take you to the “Manage 3D Settings” window. Once here:
5. Change “Power Management mode” to “Prefer maximum performance.”
6. Change “Multi-display/mixed GPU acceleration” to “Single display performance mode.”
7. Change “Vertical Sync” to “Use the 3D application settings.”
8. Click “Apply” to save these changes.
(I also set Anti-Aliasing to “application-controlled”)
9. Start Guild Wars 2.

Once loaded, access the “Graphic Options” window and make the following changes:

1. Change “Refresh Rate” to “60 Hz.”
2. Change “Frame Limiter” to “60.”
3. Change “Reflections” to “None.”
4. Change “Render Sampling” to “Supersample” then back to “Native.”
5. Enable “Vertical Sync” at the bottom.

Now what happens is that I get a crazy colored screen instead of a black screen…no error messages, and a frame rate drop down to about 20-25 fps after the freeze…I can still play and eventually my frame rate recovers to a fairly constant 60 fps, except in Lion’s Arch, where frame rates have always been terrible…in LA frame rate drops to around 40-50 fps. As others have said, this is not an issue for me in other games…Diablo3, WoW, Assassins Creed 3, etc. If I had to hazard an opinion, I’d have to agree with the majority and that the problem is GW2 client-related. Terrible for a company that has worked over five years to bring this game to market, and this is the best they can do for graphics performance?? smh

When I was kicked from the game, I got an error message. At the bottom of the error message is the following:

Is this a corrupt file issue? I’ve done clean installs — from disc and online. Reformatted, done repair, created a second admin user for windows..

ticket no. 121116-000820 *

I’m playing on a mac and I too am having issues getting booted. I can log in and everything, but after playing for a bit (time varies) I’ll get a disconnection message. I’m playing on a late 2011 Macbook Pro 13" which meets system requirements. Monday the game worked just fine and I had no issues, but yesterday and today I get disconnected. Yesterday it was to the point where I couldn’t even log in, but today I can.

this recent update seemed to give me new reasons for crash. 1 is freezing during loading screen on third fractal which means i have to ctrl alt delete. and other is Fatal Error: Fatal disk-error (1450) on write, i have to restart my pc to be able to get back into game. I never had either of these problems before last update..

Well since this last patch Im back to blackscreening again. Nothing has changed on my pc but now AGAIN my game basically unplayable. No freezing up no warning of any kind just bam blackscreen and have to hard boot to get back in game as I cant alt/tab out. This is so frustrating for me as I like this game but if cant stay in game to play its a moot point.

Ive had problems with crashing too, i can log into a character, and before i move my mouse the games crashed, of course the only solution is to restart my computer manually. the first two months of the game were fine, then when mad king started the crashes started happening, now that lost shores update has made the game unplayable.

Just started recently (as in not happening in the past) where my client crashes due to some sort of memory leak. It has nothing to do with my system because nothing has changed at all (hardware, updates, installs, et al). Anet please confirm and respond that you understand and are attempting to fix this spreading issue. Thanks.

Still happening for me. No error report option afterwards, nothing. Just a CTD or client lock-up, the second one forcing me to open task manager to close it. Sometimes I’ll crash immediately after getting into character select, too.

I too have been having serious crashing issues ever since the One Time Karka event weekend.

I can’t stay in Lion’s Arch or any of the WvW zones for more than a few minutes at a time. As I love WvW, this has been a huge disappointment for me. And it’s frustrating to the point of tears to wait 30 minutes for an Eternal Battlegrounds que to let me in, just to crash before I can accomplish anything at all.

I’ve tried all the fixes listed here, with no luck.

To sum up:
I crash in Lion’s Arch.
I crash (frequently) when I zone.
I crash in any WvW zone.
I crash (frequently) even when standing around doing nothing.

The game is barely playable at this point, and it seems like there’s a whole host of us with these same problems.

Memory checked out with memtest and prime95.. Ran gpu and psu through OCCT. Both passed. No errors..

Tried adjusting RAM mhz, voltage and cas latency. No go. I’m experiencing a grotesque jump in page faults when I load the game (spikes of 470-520). I have 16g of RAM.

I either crash or freeze within 30 seconds of loading my character.

Probably due to the page faults? This only occurs with GW2. I can play Borderlands II, and Vindictus both at max settings without a hitch..

I’m having the same problem as Wolfies. I’m running on an older system (Windows XP with Phenom II X4 @ 3 Ghz, 4GB RaM, AND GTX 260 core edition).

However, the game ran great up till the Lost Shores update. Since then it gets a complete black screen with flickering and mouse lag when it starts up. Then crashes my computer with BSOD. Computer will then be stable after a restart. This is definitely frustrating as I can’t play at all now.

Having the same problem. Freezing, sometimes being unable to do anything and being forced to hold down reboot button and restart. I have the geforce 620m card, and have tried multiple driver versions. Also tried all the fixes above, nothing worked….. Gw2 have run perfectly since i got i 2 months ago, this issue only occured the past few days.

I’m not sure if my problem is quite the same as everyone else’s, but I do crash frequently. It usually takes an hour or two and suddenly the entire screen locks up. Sound either continues playing, turns into a very loud buzzing noise, or just outright disappears. Then I have to force close the client. The problem is that GW2.exe still hangs in processes, even when I try to end it. I have to force restart my computer every time.

It’s worth noting that before this I had terrible audio/visual lag and a very loud stuttering noise regardless of which game I played. It was very annoying and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out the problem, so I went into msconfig and enabled the number of cores operating in my processor, manually bumping them up to 8. It solved the problem and improved my fps rate greatly, but after a day or two I realized it was causing my laptop to overheat (sometimes going up to 95 degrees celcius!). So I disabled it again. Now I have no idea why it still does this. I haven’t experienced this crashing in any other game so far and the highest it’s ever gone since is around 75 degrees celcius.

Specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 (64 bit)
Model: Dell Xps L502
Intel Core i7 2720QM CPU @ 2.20 GHZ
Nvidia GeForce 540m
8 GB of RAM

I’ve had this issue for a week or two while changing zones. I’ve never had the problem before.

What is Your solution Anet?
I’m tired of this crashes.
Everything started with Shores update.

You can’t blame my pc cuz, there were NO problems like that.

I’ve installed all possible latest drivers.
Closed every single application running in background.
Upgraded Bios’s firmware.

But still, game crashes now even on walk/chat/jump.
I can’t talk with ppl in guild! Can’t do any big events!

Somehow I’ve got ,,Out of memory crash"
Fake !
I’m still having 1.5gb Ram + 200Mb on Graphic Card.

Its….baaaaaack.

Yep, the constant crashes, the annoying lag, the aggravation of a game that does not work.

So to top off that i Still have the consistent 3 second lag From ERROR 7 that was never truely fixxed(granted i dont get booted anymore but the lag still exists)… Now… I literally crash every single time i use a waypoint. Started with the release of the Lost shores and has actually gotten worse. Today i’ve played for about 4 hours and crashed at least 7 times. Its getting so annoying im considering uninstalling the game until a new content update launches. Please advise.

Edit: Each time this happens I allow my PC to send the Error Report, 2 weeks of error reports… you’d think you guys would have an idea of whats going on.

Im still having random freezes as well. I can ctr+alt+del and close the game. Last time i got “apphangb1” error after that. My hardware is fine and wont crash/freez in other games and benchamrks. Gw2 never froze my cpu pernament i can just exit and play again but its annyoing when it happens in a fractal for example….

If you have your video driver crush you need to do:
– if you use Asus crad download Asus GPU tweak;
– If you use another cad download MSI Afterburner
– install and run this program.
– you need to use option GPU voltage. Increase voltage by 1 or 2 steps(one step is 0.012). For example my GPU voltage was on 0.975 after increase this to 1.000(1st step – 0.987: 2nd – 1.000) I no longer suffer from video driver crash.
– Then press “apply” and save this profile like “1”
– every time before run GW2 run Asus GPU Tweak or MSI Afterburner and load your saved profile.
Video driver crush happen because GW2 “think” that your factory overclocked(most of cards now factory overclocked) card is unstable so if you wanna play without crash try my little guide. Good luck!
Some update:
Also you need to try increase GPU clock too by 1 or 2 steps(1 step 10 Mhz)
For me it looks like by default I have GPU clock – 775 Mhz GPU voltage – 0.975 and mane many video driver crush.
At 800 Mhz(2 steps for clock from 775 to 800) and 1.000 voltage(2 steps from 0.975 to 1.000) GW2 work fine without video driver crush…

Well i dont even know if thoes are drivers crashing or smtn. All i only got the apphangb1 error and other times after i shut down the game i get 0 errors. My card is currently oced to 1050/1200 1.145v. I tried underclocking, stock clocsk with higher voltage and even uping them only a bit. Freezes stay the same.

It’s not related to drivers crashing. At least not my issue. Otherwise, the game wouldn’t hang like it does, the screen would go black for a few seconds and you would get a notification that your graphics drivers failed and have been restarted. This does not happen, the game client outright locks up or CTD’s with no error message most of the time.

Interesting to see this thread still alive. I’ve tried all the suggestions I’ve come across. Nothing has worked. I’ve given up.

Good luck to everyone here ,though. I hope you all find a resolution to your issues.

I took a break due to my Uni exams. Now i’m back and i face this crashing issue.

It seems that GW 2’s recent patch causes some issues with heat ? My system would freeze within 10-15 mins into the game. Never happen before my break 2 months back.

Any ideas Anet ?

Any fix for this yet?

I’m having the same freezing / crash issues as everyone else here.

First time I’m reporting it officially as I’m tired of alt-tabbing out and killing the GW2 process. (Not sure how work on an expac can be justified with all of these technical issues and no help)

As with everyone else, the GW2 issues cropped up the day of the Lost Shores release.

Please invest some time here ANet in figuring out what the problem is and if you are, please communicate this to the community.

Edit: Added mmc picture of application hang history for GW2. NONE OCCURRED PRIOR TO 11/15. Whatever could have happened on that date…

List of problems that i faced during game and now its totally unplayable in spvp:
1. Loading screen bug;
2. Freeze in game from 2 sec to 15 sec;
3. yellow/blue color of windows (started 2 updates ago);
4. Arena error.
Mi friends all got same problem. Tryed to reinstall game, windows, all drivers same problems. Stop playing till problems gona be fixed, thx that make 1 more team leave tpvp, anyway who cares about tpvp its so popular in “PVP sport game”.

Glad that game is free and i can just come on month events to get few days of fun and play other game.

Time of this report: 12/12/2012, 19:22:02
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 05/23/12 09:46:11 Ver: 04.04
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3552MB RAM
Page File: 3164MB used, 2385MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

Display Devices
———————-
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 260
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_05E2&SUBSYS_12603842&REV_A1
Display Memory: 2399 MB
Dedicated Memory: 879 MB
Shared Memory: 1519 MB
Current Mode: 1280 × 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Id: SAM02A0
Native Mode: 1280 × 1024(p) (60.020Hz)
Output Type: HD15
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver File Version: 9.18.0013.0697 (English)
Driver Version: 9.18.13.697
DDI Version: 10
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 10/10/2012 21:14:16, 15309160 bytes
WHQL Logo’d: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp:
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-46A2-11CF-4B59-6D321CC2C435}
Vendor ID: 0×10DE
Device ID: 0×05E2
SubSys ID: 0×12603842
Revision ID: 0×00A1

Patrandec.7830:

Dear ANet,

I’ve been experiencing some serious crashing over the past few weeks. During play the screen will suddenly flicker and then be replaced by a blue/green/purple screen with vertical lines. There is nothing I can do to control the game when this happens. It would tend to stay like this for about 30 seconds and then it sometimes corrected itself. But 80% of the time it would change to a different colour and then crash – I can’t even CTRL-ALT-DEL most of the time this happens. The one time CTRL-ALT-DEL did work I saw a Guild Wars message saying that my graphics card had crashed.

Well, if nothing else, this just saved me a service call. Thought my video card was fried, but after all the normal investigation, it’s only in GW2, and happens exactly as described here. Just started two nights ago for me, not a problem before then.

So far it’s only when I’m around water or shimmering textures, as far as I can tell. I only started playing around a month ago, wondering if the timing has something to do with it, based on when these threads started for everyone else that started when the game first came out.

Well, if nothing else, this just saved me a service call. Thought my video card was fried, but after all the normal investigation, it’s only in GW2, and happens exactly as described here. Just started two nights ago for me, not a problem before then.

Only in GW2 does not rule out HW, infact it just makes it more obvious that your hardware is not operating in a completely stable configuration.

Quoted text is somewhat a biased opinion.
For people that could run hours on end on Prime 95 and OCCT without crashes, how do you explain that ?

I’m not trying to diss Guild Wars 2, been with it since the beta days in Guild Wars 1. The fact is, people have been crashing since the recent updates.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Well, if nothing else, this just saved me a service call. Thought my video card was fried, but after all the normal investigation, it’s only in GW2, and happens exactly as described here. Just started two nights ago for me, not a problem before then.

Only in GW2 does not rule out HW, infact it just makes it more obvious that your hardware is not operating in a completely stable configuration.

For people that could run hours on end on Prime 95 and OCCT without crashes, how do you explain that ?

Stability testing does not end with stress testing tools. Most of them only stress the ALU (Integer Math) side of things and not the FPU (Floating point math). None of them stress the Instruction and Execution units that much, which is where a weakness in RAM quality usually shows up first. Many memtests utilities also only do Read, Write and Copy tests, but do not perform Execute.

The most vulnerable period for hardware stability is when load is light and signal voltages are not constant.

When overclocking, (via bclk/fsb) some fail to boost the IOH voltage (x58/x79) leaving the northbridge unstable during heavy transfers.

Similarly, when alot of usb or sata devices are operated off of the PCH/ICH, this can also at times require a small increase (most often only required on EVGA mainboards).

More often then not however, the crash occurs because of a scrambled or incomplete response during execution of a previously written value.

Given the amount of data that is pushed through both the south and north bridges while gaming, a crash here can respresent bad sata or usb drivers (rarely) but most often barely stable voltage.

i am having problems starting the game, i was able to play fine yesterday but today it keeps crashing when i get to character selection, i can’t even select a character or create a new one

After 7 days of non freezes i got another one today …. I was just simply running in the grove and poof !!! My screen is frozen i can hear the music. I can speak on ts and myt system is ok ctrl+alt+del fixes the problem. I didnt even get error and system view says that gw2 Application Hang and nothing else. I reinstaled windows 7, got newest drivers for mobo and card. My system seems stable (24 prime,memtest etc). If it was some kind of system failure ram for example i should get a perma freez for the whole system or a blue screen right? Anyone found a fix for this problem ?

- System

- Provider

[ Name] Application Hang

– EventID 1002

[ Qualifiers] 0

Level 2

Task 101

Keywords 0×80000000000000

– TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2012-12-15T21:43:13.000000000Z

EventRecordID 2430

Channel Application

Computer Aln-Komputer

Security

- EventData

Gw2.exe
1.0.0.1
1224
01cddafcfc8ddc4f
66
C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe

55006E006B006E006F0077006E0000000000

Dane binarne:

W wyrazach

0000: 006E0055 006E006B 0077006F 0000006E
0008: 0000

W bajtach

0000: 55 00 6E 00 6B 00 6E 00 U.n.k.n.
0008: 6F 00 77 00 6E 00 00 00 o.w.n…
0010: 00 00 ..

My game freezes too, i need ctsl+alt+del to close it, but no error appears, only freezes.

appcrash can often be caused by things running in the background

you say you’re using teamspeak? disable the overlay

Not using overlay. Thoes damn freezes are so annyoing and i cant even isolate them cuz i get no error massage…. They are pretty random as well 7 days of game play 0 crashes. A small walk in the grove boom crash.

Today I again had massive problems with the game client freezing after a few seconds .. minutes of game play and sound still running in the background. Keyboard and mouse were locked so I had to reboot.

I tried all the usual stuff (delete local.dat, update/switch video drivers, reinstall directx, …) to no avail. Until I saw a comment here stating that the router might be the problem.

Though hard to believe that this could be the reason for my computer freezing, I checked on it (FritzBox 7270) and saw that my computer has registered an additional IP address (X. X. X.255) which is kinda odd because .255 is not a valid address.

Anyway, I rebooted my router and surprisingly enough the game freezing is gone …

EDIT: Switched to another char. Did some jewel Crafting (in Black Citadel). Freeze after 3 minutes. Argh! This is so frustrating. Everything else (e. g. GW1) runs smoothly on my computer. The only thing that gives me a headache is GW2.

I might have found a reason for those freezes … at least on my Alienware M15x.

The freezes were much more frequent when starting to play and got worse after I actually improved the cooling of my system (cooling pad + 2 desk fans). I also noticed that I had unusual good FPS (> 80 FPS on a GTX 260M) before freeze.

Long story short: I disabled Turbo Mode in the BIOS and got a significant improvement. No more freezes so far. Knock on wood.

Turbo Mode (Automatic Overclocking) is enabled on Alienware Laptops when only/mainly 1 core is under (heavy) load and the system stays within thermal limits. Which is pretty much the profile of a well cooled system running GW2 …

Would those crashing care to say the location of their GW2 directory? An email I just got from support stated it could be caused by this. The correct location is C:\Games, so the full directory of where Gw2.exe is supposed to be located it C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe. After moving mine, I seemed to have stopped crashing.

Also, have you ensured that no other programs are interfering?

I seriously hope that you misunderstood something here, because the storage location is not supposed to affect the stability of an application, unless it’s a very old app and relies on 8.3 naming conventions, or has a deeply nested folder structure (255 char limit) or the drive it is installed on is faulty.

Btw, since W2k C:\Games\… is an officially bad folder to install an app to, i. e. according to MS it should be somewhere below ProgramFiles.

xlion.3065:

I seriously hope that you misunderstood something here, because the storage location is not supposed to affect the stability of an application, unless it’s a very old app and relies on 8.3 naming conventions, or has a deeply nested folder structure (255 char limit) or the drive it is installed on is faulty.

Btw, since W2k C:\Games\… is an officially bad folder to install an app to, i. e. according to MS it should be somewhere below ProgramFiles.

That’s the thing, though. I had mine in Program files, and I was plagued with the issue. Since moving it, I have not crashed at all. The suggestion to do this comes from the response I got from customer support.

That was the ONLY thing I tried, from what they told me to do. At least give it a shot, fixed it for me.

EDIT: Figured I’d throw in the last portion of the response from customer support. This is why I moved my folder, and suggested doing the same :

“Finally, I’d like to confirm that Guild Wars 2 is installed to C:\Games\. The path of Gw2.exe should be C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe. If it is not, please move Gw2.exe, Gw2.tmp, and Gw2.dat so that they reside there. You may need to create one or more of these directories. If you still have crashing issues, please attach a screen shot of the location of these files.”

I sometimes have this problem, but a quick alt+tab then jumping backi n fixes it 99% of the time