Game crashes with newer nVidia Drivers
My 332.21 drivers work fine for me and many other players, so it’s not an issue with the driver version itself, as you probably know too. It would be nice to know what you (or the tech guys) have tried to solve this issue. All the basic hardware monitorings and GW2 reinstallings I assume?
i5-4670K @ 4.6 GHz | GTX 660 | 8GB @ 1600MHz | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Win 8.1
I’ve tried pretty much everything short of a full reinstall of Windows, which seems overkill and likely not to work given the problem seems isolated to GW2. Or…if there is a problem GW2 is not recovering from like other applications. That said, I looked at as much as I could, but it’s a bugger to nail down and/or monitor with it crashing to a complete frozen state. There’s a good chance some of the logs are not getting written, other than generic messages. If you have any suggestions I’m willing to give them a try.
For reinstalling. I have GW2 on my laptop as well and have never had problems with it, but it’s not really a powerful machine runs low settings on much of the graphics. I have copied those files over to my desktop to no avail.
It’s not an isolated incident to me though…I suspect most of these people have stopped playing, or just learned to live it…like me.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Crashing-problems/first#post1283603
According to myself in this old thread it started happening to me around the 10-JAN-2013 patch…not as far back as I thought, but still pretty far back.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Messy-Crashes/first#post1327719
(edited by Leamas.5803)
OK, I know this is an old topic, but it remain unresolved as does my thread from last year. I’ve discovered some bad memory. Now I hold quiet optimism that this will fix the issues, but am so jaded over it now that it would not surprise me at all if it does not work.
One keeps asking:
**Why GW2 would be having so many issues with the memory (Bad or not) when nothing else does. Furmark, eVGA stress tester, Skyrim on max with HD textures, ESO on max, several FPSs on max.
**Why is GW2 relatively stable on video driver version 306.97 and not at all on anything newer, when other applications want the newer one and work better with the newer driver. The ESO beta HAD to have the newer driver or it was completely unstable.
I only decided to test the memory out of desperation after updating the BIOS on both the motherboard and the video card to no avail. This system has 64G RAM and the issues appear to be right at the end, starting at 59G.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
nVidia 670 GTX (Factory superclocked)
The bold part is most likely the issue. Try lowering the clock speeds on that card to the equivalent of 670 GTX stock speeds.
You should be able to do this with Rivatuner:
nVidia 670 GTX (Factory superclocked)
The bold part is most likely the issue. Try lowering the clock speeds on that card to the equivalent of 670 GTX stock speeds.
You should be able to do this with Rivatuner:
If the overclocking were the issue, you’d think I’d have issues with other graphically intensive software such as Skyrim or ESO…even Furmark or the eVGA stress tester which will run the GPU to upwards of 90% of it’s capacity. Again, on the surface, this would point to a problem with GW2, at least partially. I do know this is not an uncommon problem with GW2 and not just this model of card.
In any case, not surprisingly, removing the bad memory did not resolve the issue. In fact, it crashed the computer to a frozen state literally 2 seconds after I logged in and started moving. I couldn’t have taken more than 2 or 3 steps, then a second time, this time the driver reset but recovered within 15 minutes of rebooting, this time part way through Plinx.
I found another site that suggested changing the “Power Management Mode” in the nVidia Control Panel from “Adaptive” to “Prefer Maximum Performance”. After changing this I managed to play for about 90 minutes with no issues and tried a couple different zones that typically give me problems such as the Queens champ train and especially the Cursed Shore Plinx run a couple times.
Now I believe this is the longest I’ve managed to run any driver other than 306.97 without crashing, but it could have just as easily have been just luck since these crashes do tend to be random.
I wonder if it has something to do with the quick spikes and drops in frame-rate associated with events with a lot of players, such as these. Perhaps the power management is having problems keeping up when set to Adaptive and resets the driver, where performance mode will keep the power constant. This might indicate a buggy or failing PSU, if changing this setting actually resolves the issue.
Most likely, it was just a lucky run, but we’ll see over the next couple days.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
Game crashes with newer nVidia Drivers
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: ArmoredVehicle.2849
I feel your pain when stuck using old drivers. Back when nvidia couldn’t fix the freeze/lockups/hiccups on Fermi based cards (400/500 series) I spent 8 months with 314.22 drivers.
If your problem still persists, try underclocking like abomally said. GW2 never been a trouble free game when it comes to technical problems.
I just want to pop in and say I’ve had this problem with the most recent driver.
Thing is though, I think it was 332.21 that was the last stable driver I had (instead of the latest one that didn’t as with the OP). I’m pretty sure I skipped 335.04 to go straight to 335.28, so I think I might try going to it and see if I can get it to work with a slightly newer driver.
I have a GT 520, and I’m still using XP 32-bit (got a copy of Win7 64-bit, just waiting until Google Fiber is installed in my area so I’m not spending days downloading GW2 and all the Steam games I play) with 4G of ram.
If your problem still persists, try underclocking like abomally said. GW2 never been a trouble free game when it comes to technical problems.
I’m really trying to avoid messing with the clock speeds since this is a factory OC straight from eVGA.
I have a GT 520, and I’m still using XP 32-bit (got a copy of Win7 64-bit, just waiting until Google Fiber is installed in my area so I’m not spending days downloading GW2 and all the Steam games I play) with 4G of ram.
FYI, you can just copy your GW2 folder to a new machine and run it. There’s no need to redownload it. Same with Steam installs, there’s a way to copy the games from one install to another even between different PCs, look for it on their forums.
Now, here’s what I discovered. Fixing the memory did not resolve the problem, cranking all the setting up to performance mode made things a little better, but still did not fix the problem. It crashed on me last night. I’ve seen this error in the event log. It was the last message issued before my computer crashed last night.
Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort1, was issued.
- <Event xmlns=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event”>
- <System>
<Provider Name=“mvs91xx” />
<EventID Qualifiers=“32772”>129</EventID>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0×80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime=“2014-05-07T05:23:35.874536200Z” />
<EventRecordID>186377</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>RobPaula-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data>\Device\RaidPort1</Data>
<Binary>0F001800010000000000000081000480040000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000810004800000000000000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>
Now, the mvs91xx driver is the Marvell SATA controller driver, which is known to buggy on many machines. During reboot, I typically see this message
The driver \Driver\nvoclk64 failed to load for the device Root\SYSTEM\0001.
- <Event xmlns=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event”>
- <System>
<Provider Name=“Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-PnP” Guid=“{9C205A39-1250-487D-ABD7-E831C6290539}” />
<EventID>219</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>212</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0×8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime=“2014-05-07T06:01:58.654019600Z” />
<EventRecordID>186599</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID=“4” ThreadID=“56” />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>RobPaula-PC</Computer>
<Security UserID=“S-1-5-18” />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data Name=“DriverNameLength”>16</Data>
<Data Name=“DriverName”>Root\SYSTEM\0001</Data>
<Data Name=“Status”>3221226092</Data>
<Data Name=“FailureNameLength”>16</Data>
<Data Name=“FailureName”>\Driver\nvoclk64</Data>
<Data Name=“Version”>0</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
nvoclk64 is the nVidia overclock driver, originally part of nTune from what I understand. I’ve never installed nTune. When installing the drivers, all I ever install is the “Graphics Driver” and the “PhysX System Software”. I’ve done a clean install, even so far as to use the DDU utility to ensure it’s completely removed.
After disabling the Marvell SATA controller in the BIOS, I did not receive the nvoclk64 on reboot, but perhaps this was just an aberration. I will try again tonight to see if I get more crashes.
I don’t think this will fix the problem, but if it does, why would GW2 be triggering resets on the Marvell SATA bus. The Marvell SATA controller does share the PCI-E bus rather than running natively, like the Intel SATA controller. Could there be conflicts on the PCI-E bus between the nVidia overclock driver and the Marvell driver causing random resets? Why would this be so prevalent in GW2 and nothing else?
(edited by Leamas.5803)
At this point I’m reasonably certain it’s the motherboard has issues and will be taking it back to the store for service since I purchased an in store extended warranty. I tried moving my boot drive from a SATA2 port to a SATA3 port (Both ports on the Intel bus since I disabled the Marvell bus), but changing the port the drive was plugged in to caused all kind of boot issues and caused the Intel controller to throw resets similar to what the Marvell controller was doing.
That’s not to say there are not other issues. If I have 3 out of 8 sticks of memory gone bad, which the store insists were good at the end of March, when I had it in for service for other reasons, it’s conceivable that the video card and/or the PSU are also bad. It will be going back in for service as soon as the store says I can take it in.
I have a GT 520, and I’m still using XP 32-bit (got a copy of Win7 64-bit, just waiting until Google Fiber is installed in my area so I’m not spending days downloading GW2 and all the Steam games I play) with 4G of ram.
FYI, you can just copy your GW2 folder to a new machine and run it. There’s no need to redownload it. Same with Steam installs, there’s a way to copy the games from one install to another even between different PCs, look for it on their forums.
Oh I know that. I’ve all my Steam games + GW2 on a separate hard drive since I built this computer, so I wouldn’t have to download them all whenever I reformatted the drive XP was on. It’s just that drive is long overdue for a cleanup itself, and I figure I’d do that and reformat for Win7 at the same time.
I’ll probably install Win7 first, move as much as I can over and then clean out the other drive, it’s just that the HD Windows runs off is about a third of the size of what I keep my games on, which is full, so not everything is going to make it.
I have a GT 520, and I’m still using XP 32-bit (got a copy of Win7 64-bit, just waiting until Google Fiber is installed in my area so I’m not spending days downloading GW2 and all the Steam games I play) with 4G of ram.
FYI, you can just copy your GW2 folder to a new machine and run it. There’s no need to redownload it. Same with Steam installs, there’s a way to copy the games from one install to another even between different PCs, look for it on their forums.
Oh I know that. I’ve all my Steam games + GW2 on a separate hard drive since I built this computer, so I wouldn’t have to download them all whenever I reformatted the drive XP was on. It’s just that drive is long overdue for a cleanup itself, and I figure I’d do that and reformat for Win7 at the same time.
I’ll probably install Win7 first, move as much as I can over and then clean out the other drive, it’s just that the HD Windows runs off is about a third of the size of what I keep my games on, which is full, so not everything is going to make it.
Why not use both drives? I have my Windows disk and my games disk. The 600G of steam games wouldn’t even come close to fitting on the 240G Windows drive I have.
I am completely amazed at how many different posts are created all exclaiming the same problem. What really surprised me was that there is a post that shows this has been happening for nearly a year. I’ve tried many different fixes but found nothing works.
I’ll get on my computer (which has been on all night) in the morning and within seconds of stepping into EOTM the screen goes pink and then black and then if I wait long enough it will reboot the computer on its own or I will restart it myself. This may happen one more time but after that I am good to play for hours.
Frustration is not nearly as powerful a word needed to describe this. I, like many others most likely, deal with it as an “undisclosed feature” of the game. So many people are experiencing this. It would be nice if we could get an official response stating that it is being looked into (even if it isn’t).
There have been several threads about it. And it’s never been responded to. I think filed a bug once and they said it had to be driver issue since the game was stable on 306.97 and not on other versions. nVidia says it has to be a problem with the game, eVGA seems to agrees with me and thinks it’s a motherboard issue. Megabyte want me to do a bunch of testing and unplug a bunch of drives. It’s always a vicious circle with each manufacturer blaming the next.
I’ve managed to somewhat stabilize it on the 335.32 driver, but I had to turn the Marvell SATA controller off, set the frame limiter to 60fps and set both the nVidia driver and Windows power management to high performance, which burns more power. I may ultimately try a fresh install of Windows at some point, but that takes me like a week to get things back to normal.
For various reasons, I still think my motherboard is going. It’s not just GW2 though, if you search some of the errors you’ll find in the event log you’ll find others complaining about other games, quite often MMOs. When you have problems there seem to be no solution for, especially weird crashing problems, it’s always a good bet there’s a hardware issue…very often the power supply. I have two other machines running the same driver and have never had problems with GW2 on those machines.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
I have a GT 520, and I’m still using XP 32-bit (got a copy of Win7 64-bit, just waiting until Google Fiber is installed in my area so I’m not spending days downloading GW2 and all the Steam games I play) with 4G of ram.
FYI, you can just copy your GW2 folder to a new machine and run it. There’s no need to redownload it. Same with Steam installs, there’s a way to copy the games from one install to another even between different PCs, look for it on their forums.
Oh I know that. I’ve all my Steam games + GW2 on a separate hard drive since I built this computer, so I wouldn’t have to download them all whenever I reformatted the drive XP was on. It’s just that drive is long overdue for a cleanup itself, and I figure I’d do that and reformat for Win7 at the same time.
I’ll probably install Win7 first, move as much as I can over and then clean out the other drive, it’s just that the HD Windows runs off is about a third of the size of what I keep my games on, which is full, so not everything is going to make it.
Why not use both drives? I have my Windows disk and my games disk. The 600G of steam games wouldn’t even come close to fitting on the 240G Windows drive I have.
I…I do, I just explained that. I was explaining how I might reduce how much time I spend downloading all my games again by moving as many of them to the drive I run Windows on after installing Win7 before cleaning out the drive they are normally on. Though if the next thing you’re going to say is that I shouldn’t need to to more than a defrag if I never use that HD for anything other than installing games on it (which is true) I’ll probably start installing Win7 tomorrow.
Anyway, you said you started having problems on any drivers over 306.97, right? and you “fixed” it for now by setting your driver/power management to high performance?
I thought I look through the release notes of the next Win7 driver release after 306.97 – 310.70- and saw this:
Power Efficiency Optimizations
Release 310 drivers introduce power-optimizing enhancements. As a result of these
enhancements, you may notice that GPU core clock speeds are different with this driver.
For example, the GPU core clock might be faster when the GPU is in idle mode than in
previous drivers. Or you may notice higher GPU core clock speeds after closing or
opening certain games than in previous drivers.
This is because the reported GPU core clock frequency is no longer correlated to GPU
power-saving states. Instead of lowering the GPU core clock frequency, the hardware
and software use other methods to put the GPU into a low power state when the GPU is idle or in response to changing application requirements.
This ensures optimum power use while continuing to provide high graphics performance.
Sounds like Nvidia’s new power saving method either exacerbated, or brought to light some issue that for some reason only affects GW2. You might be right in it being a motherboard/PSU issue.
(edited by Foefaller.1082)
Anyway, you said you started having problems on any drivers over 306.97, right? and you “fixed” it for now by setting your driver/power management to high performance?
I thought I look through the release notes of the next Win7 driver release after 306.97 – 310.70- and saw this:
Power Efficiency Optimizations
Release 310 drivers introduce power-optimizing enhancements. As a result of these
enhancements, you may notice that GPU core clock speeds are different with this driver.
For example, the GPU core clock might be faster when the GPU is in idle mode than in
previous drivers. Or you may notice higher GPU core clock speeds after closing or
opening certain games than in previous drivers.
This is because the reported GPU core clock frequency is no longer correlated to GPU
power-saving states. Instead of lowering the GPU core clock frequency, the hardware
and software use other methods to put the GPU into a low power state when the GPU is idle or in response to changing application requirements.
This ensures optimum power use while continuing to provide high graphics performance.Sounds like Nvidia’s new power saving method either exacerbated, or brought to light some issue that for some reason only affects GW2. You might be right in it being a motherboard/PSU issue.
It’s not perfect, and the driver does occasionally reset, usually a couple times a session, but at least hasn’t completely crashed the computer. At least not since setting the frame limiter to 60fps…which is too bad since it looked pretty sweet running at 120fps.
Game crashes with newer nVidia Drivers
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Crazy Chipmunk.6874
I’ve been fighting this battle since about February. It never really occurred to me to check this forum. I bought this computer brand new the weekend after Thanksgiving, running Windows 8. GW2 would crash it every time, usually within seconds. I would get a message about NVIDIA crashing and Kernal Error 335.xx (can’t remember the exact number). I had Best Buy try to fix it. They failed. Then I brought it to a local computer repair shop, which I have been bringing it back and forth to since late February. I had a new graphics card and power supply point in. They test it at the repair shop and everything works fine. They even run around in GW2 to test it and it works no problem. I bring it home… crash a few seconds after starting GW2. I managed to play for about 20 minutes yesterday, the longest time ever on this computer. I tried it earlier…. crashed within 30 seconds. I am not good with computers. Most of the posts above I can barely understand. Can someone be kind enough to tell me in words I’ll understand what I have to do?
I’ve been fighting this battle since about February. It never really occurred to me to check this forum. I bought this computer brand new the weekend after Thanksgiving, running Windows 8. GW2 would crash it every time, usually within seconds. I would get a message about NVIDIA crashing and Kernal Error 335.xx (can’t remember the exact number). I had Best Buy try to fix it. They failed. Then I brought it to a local computer repair shop, which I have been bringing it back and forth to since late February. I had a new graphics card and power supply point in. They test it at the repair shop and everything works fine. They even run around in GW2 to test it and it works no problem. I bring it home… crash a few seconds after starting GW2. I managed to play for about 20 minutes yesterday, the longest time ever on this computer. I tried it earlier…. crashed within 30 seconds. I am not good with computers. Most of the posts above I can barely understand. Can someone be kind enough to tell me in words I’ll understand what I have to do?
The problem is that no one has been able to identify what the problem is. There are two things you can do. If GW2 is the only thing you’re playing, you can try the 306.97 nVidia driver and set the frame limiter in GW2, it’s under the video option, to 6ofps.
If you want to keep 335.23 (Assuming it’s the newest) then you can try this and it helped me a lot, though not perfect. The graphics driver still resets occasionally on me, but I’ve had no total computer crashes since doing this.
1. In the nVidia Control Panel click on Manage 3D Settings and change the Power Management Mode from Adaptive to Performance
2. In Windows, go to Control Panel and Power Options and change the plan to High Performance, or whatever the equivalent is on Windows 8.
3. VERY IMPORTANT…In Gw2, under video options, change the frame limiter from Unlimited to 60fps.
Personally, I still think it’s a motherboard issue and GW2 is somehow triggering it when nothing else does.
Game crashes with newer nVidia Drivers
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Crazy Chipmunk.6874
thank you so much. i will be trying your suggestions.
thank you so much. i will be trying your suggestions.
Let us know ow you make out.
Game crashes with newer nVidia Drivers
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Crazy Chipmunk.6874
it worked for a little bit. i managed to play that day for about an hour. but i just tried logging on with a different character and it crashed after about 30 seconds. re-logged and it crashed at 10 seconds. i came back here to double check the settings. very frustrating.
Sorry to hear that. Perhaps try a clean install of the driver. It’s a checkbox you can select during install. Did you try the 306.97 driver? I know using such an old driver is far from ideal, but just to see how it reacts.
To be clear, is this a driver crash where the screen goes blank and recovers, or a system crash where the computer reboots itself or needs to be reset, or is the game crashing to desktop?
BTW, in your original post you said about the techs testing it, “They even run around in GW2 to test it and it works no problem.” While I have had it crash just doing nothing, for me, certain things seem to be much more likely to trigger the crash and it seems related to high frame rates. If I stand around or stay in Rata Sum the game will run all day without ever crashing, due to the high population, framerate is typically under 40fps. For me crashing is far more likely when I start participating in events with lots of mobs and large swings in framerate between waiting for mobs (120fps+) and after they spawn (Can get below 30 at times). While not perfect, Setting the frame limiter to 60fps seems to help this.
Game crashes with newer nVidia Drivers
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Crazy Chipmunk.6874
i’m back to failure. i’ll be honest, i’m not sure what driver i’m using. i’ve been prompted to update but declined. i’m pretty ignorant about most things computer now. i used to have basic knowledge but that has been rendered obsolete.
leamas: first question… yes to all. a few minutes ago it crashed in seconds, took a few minutes to close itself, then went black screen forcing a hard boot. my tech played gw1 for a few years and ran around checking things out. probably what ever map the character was on. if i log on my ranger in the charr homeland it immediately locks.
my last computer was running windows 7 with a different graphics card, not nvidia. gave it to my daughter when i upgraded to this. might be taking it back since it will still run gw2 with no problems. and she can have this one.
sorry its not the best laid out post… i had my 2nd round of chemo 2 days ago and feel like crap.