Guild Wars 2

Since yesterday, GW2 has randomly frozen and locked my PC – no BSOD’s, just a completely unresponsive computer that needs the reset button hit. However, today, I managed to prevent that by hitting <alt><enter> very quickly after the lockup.

When I look at my event log (there is no crash log), I see the following:

“Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered.”

What’s this all about, then?

Any ideas? This keeps happening – tonight, I lasted five minutes before the hang. What should I post to help diagnose this? There is still no crash log.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=642390
Try that.

EDIT – changed the title to something more meaningful. amdkmdap is part of the driver suite that is being reported to have been the culprit for this lock-up.
_____________

Thanks for your reply but I had read that thread before

It seems there is no one solution to this: overheating GPU; PSU not up to scratch; driver sweeper and reinstall; clean the dust out; change the TDR value… the list goes on.

- on the GPU front, the fans aren’t anywhere near revving at maximum so I’m ruling that out

- changing the TDR value. That scares me a bit even though the MS website has a “fix it for me” option. I’d be interested here at what an ANet dev would say this.

- PSU not up to scratch (or, rather, not powerful enough); I have 1KW Enermax in my rig.

- clean out the dust. That’s something I do need to do so that’s a little job for the weekend

- driver sweeper? Worth trying I suppose…

What I am curious about is why its only just started happening. Windows is up-to-date as are the video drivers (9.12.0.0). And – as others have reported here with various different issues – it seems to be playing GW2 that eeks out these odd problems.

What about getting a more up-to-date (see: below) GPU?

System specs:

i7 x980 @ 3.33ghx (it was o/c’d to 4.0ghz but I’ve used the standard bios profile to bring that back down)
ATI Radeon 5970 2GB
6GB 1600 RAM
1 × 500GB Velociraptor as C:
1 × 64GB Intel SSD (where the game sits)
Creative Fatal1ty sound card
2 optical drives
Other odds and sods.

Game advisor report attached.

Wow… seems like only yesterday I updated my drivers! Thanks for the heads up there; those drivers are only 2-3 days old!

I’ve downloaded the three necessary items (the uninstaller, the sweeper and the drivers) and I’ll give it a whirl on the morrow. Looking over various support forums on the interwebs, there seems to be two schools of thought regarding the clean installation and usage of sweepers. Half the community ignore them while the other half would never install over the existing drivers without first using them. Ho hum.

Anyway, I’ll post back once finished – keeping me fingers crossed!

EDIT:
PS – I am hopeful this will be the answer as the release notes for the drivers state:

Quote

“Significantly improves latency performance in Skyrim, Boderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution

Unquote

OK, well, I’ve been playing for an hour with no freezes so I’m hoping this is the cure

Incidentally, when I ran the sweeper, it did pick up a whole host of artifacts even though I’d uninstalled the drivers using the AMD uninstall routine. From now on, I will certainly be using a cleaner when updating my drivers!

Thanks once again and wish me luck!

Spoke too soon. Back to locking up. Literally five minutes in and wham. According to the event viewer in Windows, it’s the kernal again – even 41. Which, I guess is me hitting the reset button:

- System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
[ Guid] {331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}

EventID 41

Version 2

Level 1

Task 63

Opcode 0

Keywords 0×8000000000000002

– TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2013-04-28T12:58:15.928809500Z

EventRecordID 645511

Correlation

– Execution

[ ProcessID] 4
[ ThreadID] 8

Channel System

Computer MININT-C870EJL

– Security

[ UserID] S-1-5-18

- EventData

BugcheckCode 0
BugcheckParameter1 0×0
BugcheckParameter2 0×0
BugcheckParameter3 0×0
BugcheckParameter4 0×0
SleepInProgress false
PowerButtonTimestamp 0

This is getting frustrating now so would appreciate some help.

Many thanks.

EDIT: I have now done three things that may have helped:

- put my CPU o/c back to 4ghz
- turned off my screensaver! (I was suspicious that my crash first appeared after minutes and the saver kicks in after three minutes – related? Can’t see how but there you go)
- played in Windowed mode instead of full screen.

It seems to be running OK now (fingers crossed) but I’ll just have to keep my eye on it.

EDIT2
Ack, apologies! That was mean to be an edit, not a reply! Sorry about the bumpage there…

So, do you think playing in windowed mode can make a difference? Also, could a screensaver also play a part?

I’m just curious to know that what I did can actually affect the lock-ups I’ve had…