Guild Wars 2

This has been happening literally every day since last week’s patch and this is something new to my machine. Every day when I’m playing GW2, I end up crashing to the BSOD and the computer restarts itself automatically. I don’t know much about kernel-power shutdowns – is this a cooling issue that the computer is dealing with? I’ve never had this problem until this week and it ONLY happens during GW2.

I’ve set all my settings to low/lowest, and at first I thought it was only happening in high wvw lag fests, but it happens randomly. I have an ATI Radeon 5450 graphics card so it’s not as if it’s a gaming machine, but I find it weird that this all just started after this last patch on Tuesday.

Any insights for a non-techy?

Thanks!

Wait for them to fix it.

What would be wonderful in this case is the stop error code presented at the bottom of the blue screen. In order to figure it out we need the whole string commonly in a form such as

0×000000 0×000000 (0×00000 0×00000 0×00000 0×0000 0×0000)

We’ll need all those codes aside from the generic cause at the top saying “IRQ NO LESS THAN EQUAL” or something similar, usually in all caps.

It’s a hardware or a driver problem. No software (such as GW2) that does not directly access the kernel can crash your computer.

Here’s your to-do list:

1. Update all your drivers, including graphics card, motherboard chipset, networking and sound card/chip drivers.

2. Install a temperature monitoring software and turn on logging.

3. Play.

If/when the computer crashes, check the logs. If your CPU was running hotter than 70 celcius or your GPU hotter than 90 celsius at the time of the crash, you most likely have an overheating problem. To solve that, install more/better coolers on the case and/or the CPU.

If the temperatures stay below the above thresholds at all times, it’s more likely that you have a hardware problem. It could be as simple as an inadequate and/or low quality power supply, or as difficult to track as a broken mainboard.

Hope you find the problem.

The reset might be that your system is SET to reset whenever a BSOD happens (its the default setting for Win XP and Win 7). This can be changed under Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced Tab > Startup and Recovery SETTINGS > System Failure (uncheck AUTOMATICALLY RESTART box). This will allow you to view the BSOD error properly (and provide the STOP CODE mentioned above).

Tom Gore is 100% correct in that it MUST be a driver or hardware issue. I’m not saying that GW2 is triggering the failure (either overheating something, using more memory / resources than other programs, etc.), but it is the trigger for the failure, not the cause.

Unless something in the game code addresses the kernel incorrectly since the last patch? I’m certainly no expert but could that also be a cause?

GW2 (and other software) cannot access kernel mode – only user mode.

The OS can access kernel mode, but not applications. Drivers can access both (depending on the driver), but most of the time they run in kernel mode.

Sorry for delay here – hope someone’s still reading it!

The BSoD sometimes shows the IRQ_NOT_EQUAL message but almost always displays the following stop: codes – 0×0000001E (0xFFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0XFFFFFAB0079ACBB0, 0X0000000000, 0X000000007EFAB000)

I’ve spent the last day or two cleaning any malware off the system as well as updating drivers through Microsoft’s Device Manager (since when I go to the ATI website it can never seem to complete the download). I’ve also confirmed through diagnostic tools this is not a hard drive issue.

At this point, it’s pointing toward a driver issue as well – but I’m having a hard time figuring out just how to clean everything up – so frustrating.

For what it’s worth, I now cannot even open up GW2 without getting a crash message. I’ve tried uninstalling GW2 but it doesn’t show up on the list of programs to uninstall via Control Panel, nor can Microsoft FixIt uninstall it either.

Here’s my crash report -

—> Crash <—
Exception: c0000005
Memory at address 6956375b could not be read
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 4548
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 21480
Module: ntdll.dll
When: 2013-08-04T20:33:35Z 2013-08-04T16:33:35-04:00
Uptime: 0 days 0:00:01
Flags: 0

This could be bad ram. Try a memtest, however, this doesn’t always find the issue if there is one. Since we don’t know how much ram you are running, nor can we see your full crash report, it’s hard to say specifically or help you troubleshoot completely.

You might want to consider exporting your crash log as a .txt file and posting it here. Your crash log should be located under my documents/guild wars 2, called arenanet.log. You can post it using more posting & formatting options below.

Also, possibly a game advisor report might help too.

http://us.ncsoft.com/gameadvisor

Kyllaa – thanks for the suggestion to do a Game Advisor test. I did that and have uploaded that directly to NCSoft support so I’ll see what that yields.

Attached is a txt file with my most recent crashes from today – figured I’d keep it just to today, but if the entire file would be helpful, I’m up to doing that as well.

Not sure if this is helpful or not?

• Crash <—*
  Exception: c0000005
  Memory at address 6956375b could not be read
  App: Gw2.exe
  Pid: 7324
  Cmdline:
  BaseAddr: 00400000
  ProgramId: 101
  Build: 21480
  Module: ntdll.dll

Unfortunately, it’s an NTDLL.DLL crash, which can be caused by just about anything:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/a/ntdlldll.htm

I did notice that it shows as an Access Violation error and the crash address is the same everytime:

• Crash <—*
  Exception: c0000005
  Memory at address 6956375b could not be read

Bad memory will cause this as well as a malware infection. We really need to see the Game Advisor report to get a better idea of what is going on.

I’ve ran MalwareBytes numerous times today and it’s come up clear, as has SpyBot Search & Destroy and Norton Internet Security.

Attached is game report – I obviously can’t make heads or tails of it

Hey Ashley – I’ve got support working on it now, so I don’t want to duplicate your efforts, and just sent them the DxDiag as well, hopefully it’ll yield something. Thanks for getting back to me

It’s possible that some background program is interfering with GW2. Have you tried using MSCONFIG to disable unneeded start up programs?

Here’s how to do that:

http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/msconfig_win7.html

abomally – I did try that a while back and GW2 still continued to crakitten least it ruled something out, right? Thanks for the suggestion!

Lillie,

Looking over your report; it seems there maybe something strange going on.
FastFreeConverterUpdt.exe, C:\Program Files (x86)\Fast Free Converter\FastFreeConverterUpdt.exe
is flagged as malware. This maybe causing issues. As well; WildTangent is installed. IMHO, their games are crap, their software runs like crap and there maybe privacy issues with their software. I would advise uninstalling it.

Xystus – Last night after just letting it rest for a bit, I was able to open the game as if nothing had happened and I played with no incident for about 3 hours. I’ll get rid of the Wild Tangent crap (don’t play any of them anyhow) and will also run my Malware Bytes daily from now on. Thanks for taking the time to look at the report and keep your fingers crossed for me!

Days without BSoD: 1

Lillie,

One more thing. I see you run Spybot. Spybot has the option of using a “hosts” file. I would use their tool to add the Spybot hosts file. It will block a TON of bad stuff that is known.

check for heating issues, with cpu, memory and gpu. check to the PSU to see if its maintaining voltages underload, if these all check out fine do a full uninstall of graphic drivers, reinstall the drivers. make sure you turn any program off that interfaces with directx, meaning things like onscreen display, evga percision or anything that overlays graphics onto the screen.

IF it still crashes, att .5 volts onto your cpu and .5v onto your memory, if it still fails.

You may need to reinstall windows, win 8 is pretty sweet. if you still crash, you either have a hardware issue or the game hates you