Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I have a particularly weird issue, that happens constantly, but only once a day. What will happen is I’ll log into GW2, select a character and start playing, then within 5-10 minutes my computer will completely lock up – cursor won’t move, sound still plays and screen sometimes goes black (but not always). At this point I am forced to hard reboot my computer (by pressing the reboot button on my case) as ctrl-alt-del or alt-f4 does nothing.

What is bizarre about this is this only ever happens the first time I play the game. Once this has happened, I can play the game from then on without any problems (once the computer has restarted). Also, if I alt-tab out of the game on my first time playing, this generally lets me play without experiencing this complete hard-lockup of my computer (not always, but at least 70-80% of the time if I alt-tab out then go back, I don’t get a hard lockup).

This only ever happens with Guild Wars 2 – I can play other games fine without any problem. I’ve tried playing some of my other games before GW2 just to see – including Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, Portal 2, Dues Ex: Human Revolutions, Metro 2033, The Witcher 2, & Mass Effect 3 – but they can play without locking my computer up, it’s only GW2 which does this.

I don’t believe it’s a problem with either CPU or GPU overheating, as I have monitored my temps when the game has been running, as well as other games, and CPU max’s at 57-58^C and GPU’s at 80-85^C. Both these temp’s are under the max ‘safe’ temp’s for them, so shouldn’t be a problem (I have a decent/good case with good cooling, but high ambient temps).

Here’s my specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 965 @ 3.7 MHz
Ram: 8gb DDR3-1333 7-7-7-21
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5
Video Card(s): 2x HD5870 1gb (CFX)
PSU: Corsair HX850W
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Video Driver: 12.8
Application Profiles: 12.8 cap 3

My ATI/AMD settings are all set to defaults. I also have not disabled CFX – and yes, I know it’s likely giving me negative scaling right now (ie I’d likely get better performance disabling CFX). I haven’t changed any settings in the AMD Vision Engine Control Centre. I’ve also checked the settings as stated in the AMD Black Screen sticky. My windows is up-to-date as well.

I’m not sure what’s causing this problem – as I said, it only happens with GW2, and only the very first time I play the game. The 1st time it’ll lock my computer up, but from then on I can play it without a problem – or if I remember, alt-tab out and back into the game and generally avoid this issue.

Please find attached 4 files:

ArenaNet.log
NetworkDiag.txt – I just ran GW2 with the -diag command. This was done prior to running GW2 today.
DxDiag32bit.txt – DxDiag 32-bit version
DxDiag64bit.txt – DxDiag 64-bit version (I don’t know what, if any, difference in the information gathered via either version)

I hope these files might help find out what is causing this issue, and find some resolution – it is getting fairly annoying to have to hard reboot my computer if I don’t remember to alt-tab out (or if alt-tabbing doesn’t work).

I would like to add / confirm – this is not an overheating issue. I had the day off today and used HWMonitor to keep an eye on the temp’s for my CPU & GPU’s.

CPU – never went higher than 55^c, even after hours of GW2 running
GPU – never went higher than 85^c.

Both these temp’s are below the threshold point, so it can’t be a overheating issue. I have considered a few different possibilities, but I’m not sure if I’m on the right track with any of them. Here they are (in no particular order):

a) PSU failure – power supply failure could be causing the issue. If it’s spiking or dropping power under demand it might explain the issue. The biggest problem I have with this theory is why does it only ever happen with GW2, and only the 1st time I run it in a day?

b) RAM failure – Can ram failure completely lock/freeze a computer up? And again, why with only GW2? Maybe there is some weird co-incidence that GW2 is trying to use ram that never gets used by anything else, and that ram is faulty and thus only showing up when I run GW2… but that seems unlikely, and again, why only the first time?

c) GPU failure – another possibility. If my video cards are failing, it could explain why the system is hanging/locking-up. But.. same questions as with a & b..

d) Driver issue’s – I’m suspecting this is could be the issue, but not sure. Reason I’m thinking is when the system locks up, it sort-of acts/seems like it does when the video drivers stop responding (it has only happened to me rarely over the years, but it has happened). Thing is, unless my memory is off, the drivers always recovered previously and I could continue to use my computer (although I rebooted anyways). So it could be bad drivers, could be a conflict between the drivers and GW2..

Does anyone else have any other thoughts / suggestions as to what might be causing this issue? Or what I could try to find out what could be causing this issue? Or a possible solution? I’m puzzled/baffled by this problem… and wish I knew what could be causing the issue.

Do your GPUs have HDMI out?

Does your motherboard include Realtek Audio?

If so, try using the GPU to supply sound and completely remove all Realtek drivers and disable the audio device in device manager.

Try this please, and post your results.

Probable causes of cold boot problems are related to the connections of components, where, after heating, the metal connections dilate and make contact again. If nothing else works, take everything out and put them back in, making sure the sockets (CPU, RAMs, PCI-E) are clean and there is no oxydation anywhere.

My go-to suggestion as of late is to run a benchmark (http://www.3dmark.com/3dmark11/download/) and compare your scores to the average for your hardware. If there are power or hardware problems, the score should reflect it, but I doubt that’s the reason.

“cursor won’t move, sound still plays and screen sometimes goes black (but not always)”. Elaborate on the sound part.

deltaconnected – I ran that, and my machine is showing up performing slightly better than most others with similar hardware to mine. I’m no expert on how accurate or reliable the “basic” test’s are, or what the scores mean – but for my hardware, the majority scored between 3,600-4200, with the next biggest getting 4200-4800. I was in the second lot with ~4,500.

What I meant in regards to the sound part – when the computer locks up, any sound that is playing at the time keeps on playing. So if there is music playing, the music keeps playing. I think the sound is looping however and not just continuing as normal.

ZaxanRazor – Yes, my video card does have HDMI out. Although I frequently dual-screen, which I can’t do with HDMI. And yes, my sound chipset is Realtek Audio.

What your suggesting isn’t something I’d thought about. Guess it’s something to possibly try.

VirtualBS – Thank you for linking that thread. I’d searched around, but didn’t see that thread. It seems I’m not the only person experiencing weird lockup’s like I am. In regards to your post there:

Ran the app crash log viewer, no crash files located/found. Only error/logs showing related to AMD/ATI drivers not closing correctly when shutting down my computer, nothing when I’ve experienced the lockups caused by GW2.

BSOD – I’ve never seen a BSOD with GW2. When the machine locks up, it either stays showing the same screen that it was showing when it frooze up, or goes to a black screen. I’ve left it sitting for 5-10 minutes, but no BSOD and no recovery back to game or desktop. There’s no dump files or anything, no bsod/crash codes either. So can’t check/compare anything with the bsod checker you linked to.

One update – I disabled CFX today before playing GW2, and played and the game did not crash or lock my computer up. This is not conclusive proof of anything, but it’s possibly a sign that the lockup issue with GW2 is related somehow to crossfire. I’m going to keep crossfire disabled for now (well, at least while playing GW2) and see if I get anymore lockups – will have to wait at least a day to properly check again. I’ll update again at that time.

PS. Haven’t run the burn test yet. I’ll run that tonight when I have the time to run it and let it go for awhile.

@ Kamatsu.8206, please check this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Black-screen-and-not-responding-This-might-help/279092

Your GPUs seem to be running too hot. Try doing a custom fan profile for them.

The HD5000 series felt a lot more tolerant of heat than the HD6000s. My 5850’s had no problems on OC runs at 80c, though at 90c-ish they started to show artifacts (never a black screen). Still worth a shot to get something like Afterburner and aim for a curve that isn’t too loud but keeps them slightly cooler.

Asked about the sound part since I recall someone fixing it by playing around with their network settings (disable jumbo frames, or some filters on the router).

From what I gather, there’s 3 different black screen problems – the usual hard-lock one caused by hardware through power/heat/driver, the program crash that you can still ctrl+alt+del out of, and this (hard-lock would stop sound completely or have a very short sound loop).

VirtualBS – never had any problems with my video cards in other games. I’ve seen them run up as high as 87-88^C in Metro2033 in summer without any artifacing or problems. I unfortunately have high ambient temp’s, so without spending a fortune on water-cooling or on air-conditioning… I can’t do much about the temp’s. I will look into doing a custom fan profile though, as it might help.

deltaconnected – ahh, well I just searched and found out my sound drivers aren’t the latest. So might just update them. And if that doesn’t do anything, I’ll try removing them completely.

Also a bit of an update:

- was able to run the game yesterday with CFX disabled and experienced no crash at all.
- clean uninstalled 12.8 & 12.8 cap 3 and then installed 12.9 beta drivers and 12.9 cap 1 application profiles. Was able to play the game with CFX enabled without crashing.

Will keep monitoring – but it looks like my particular crash/lockup might have been caused by a combination of GW2, 12.8 drivers and CFX being enabled. Hopefully now that I’m using 12.9 beta drivers, the problem will be resolved.

sry ima bit of a nub when it comes to computers but i am having the same problem and do not know what CFX is and how to disable it can some1 plz help me out