Guild Wars 2

Hello,

Hoping someone can provide some help with this. I’ve spent so many hours trying to fix this and nothing has “worked”.

System:
CPU: Intel Core i7 930 (no OC)
Motherboard: GA-X58A_UD3R Rev 2 (latest BIOS)
RAM: 6GB
GPU: Geforce 580 GTX (factory OC, latest BIOS)
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64bit

This all started after one of the GW2 patches before Halloween. My system started to completely lock up and I would have to restart it. This was my first problem with GW2 since launch. It was happening randomly.

I moved to new drivers (removed old ones first and used driver sweeper in safe mode) and instead of locking up the screen would flash black then reload the graphics and you would see this in event viewer.

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

So I once again removed drivers and cleaned up in safe mode, then installed an older driver (but newer than my original drivers). In the process I did other general maintenance to the PC including a defrag, repair GW2, checked all my HDD’s for errors, malware, virus scan, ran memtest for a few hours. Everything I could think of

Everything worked fine for about 2 weeks, then mid way through Halloween another patch came out and I started having the same issues again.

I cleaned drivers and went back to newest nvidia, under-clocked my video card so that it was running as a stock 580 GTX. (remember it was factory OC). Still had crashes.

Hoping I could fix this still. I backed up most things and did a format on my SSD, and re-installed windows 7, new motherboard drivers, all windows updates, and newest nvidia driver beta 310.33. I also installed MSI kombustor and did tests with that which seem to be running fine.

Game still crashes.

It can run fine sometimes for 2 hours then crash 3 times in 10 seconds. Sometimes it will crash 10 minutes into my playtime then be fine for awhile. I can’t distinguish any patterns to when it occurs.

I’ve gone through the sticky threads and made all changes to the nvidia control panel that Anet recommended and others i have read on separate forums. Tried changing various in-game settings.
At this point right now I can’t think of a single thing other than replacing hardware.
I just find it odd these problems usually occur depending on drivers and recent GW2 patches, and would rather not have to pay for new hardware especially after the company I worked for just collapsed and I don’t have employment!

DirectX attached.

If your card is EVGA adjust your setting with this program http://www.evga.com/precision/ increasing the settings a little more than the default and should run fine, that’s how i fixed my problem, then when you finish playing reset it back to default. If it’s from ASUS or X brand they should have a program just like this that allows you to adjust the settings.

Hi Serena,
I’ve got a MSI card. It’s already factory OC’d, but I guess I can try it.
Under-clocking had no effect.

Well I tried slight over-clocks and that didn’t do anything either.

with slight how much do you mean? I did like twice the default tho. I have a GTX 560 OC

What do you mean with twice the default ? That would break your gpu most likely.

To me a slight increase was 5 then 10mhz on the core clock.
A decrease was putting it back to what a non-factory GTX 580 is.

Both didn’t seem to do anything to resolve the problem.

Just like in the SS, yellow means the default, red means my configuration. Dunno how the program looks on MSi

You should look at the clock speeds,not at the bars…

I dont think this is a OC issue, i think it is a game issue cause with GeForce 301.42 Driver WHQL before the Halloween patch it was fine, post patch there where crashes and 0 point texture streaks. Testing with GeForce 306.23 Driver WHQL from Sept, GeForce 306.81 Driver WHQL Oct 9th, and GeForce 310.33 Driver BETA Oct. Every other game I’ve tested runs fine if I start it before trying GW2, after the driver is funked and has to be restarted. I’m using a GTX460 that shares the same driver as you and the 600 series.

Good points Gimek.
To test this out I ran MSI Kombustor (GPU test) and I picked 3 tests and they all ran through to the end fine. I then went into GW2 till it crashed (only about 10 mins of running around!!) then started up MSI Kombustor again.
This time I couldn’t get a single test done, they all crashed about a minute or less in. GPU remained at an acceptable temp the whole time.

I would stay away from 310.33 been a buggy beta driver. Try reverting it back to 306.97. Also have you tried vsync or limit your fps?

I had this same problem with the 310.33 beta driver, so I rolled back to the 306.23. It hasn’t happened since I rolled back.

I’ve also had a huge reduction in FPS and Intermittent crashing since the patch just before Halloween and all patches since. 2 or 3 weeks ago I was getting 50-60 fps at max settings even under high load in WvW, tonight my fps is lucky to be over 20fps in Wayfarer Foothills, with medium settings and hardly any animation traffic at all. Something is definitely wrong.

Alpha Dragon.4576:

I would stay away from 310.33 been a buggy beta driver. Try reverting it back to 306.97. Also have you tried vsync or limit your fps?

Hi mate,
Yep, done both of those and still crashed.

I’ll try a 306 driver again and see how it goes

I rolled back from the 306 drivers to the 304 beta and still the same thing…..something is funky with the game/drivers. I can play every other game I have just fine until i try GW2 and it corrupts my driver requiring a restart. Monitoring CPU, GPU, and temp before GW2 crashes and it all within spec on my non-OC system. Graphics are behaving like they did 2 weeks after launch.

306.23 crashes as well took 2 hours, but it happened eventually!

@Elth
Revert back to 306.xx. You’re using 310.33 it’s a buggy driver.

@Secro
Can you check your event logs? See if anything driver related might have cause the lock up. Also what anti virus are you using? Is UAC turned on as well?

Hi Alpha,
Just the usual event which occurs when this happens:
“Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.”
Using MSE, UAC is on and I’m running the GW2.exe as admin.

Try to disable UAC and perform a clean install (Try using 306.97?) . You can also check this thread.

I’ll give the UAC thing a go I suppose with 306.97.
I’ve done the whole directX thing when I re-installed windows.

If you have a spare videocard you can also try that as well. If you’re running any other program either shut it down (TS/Vent/Mumble/Gamebooster etc) so we could isolate more.

UAC disabled with 306.97 was a no go.

I never run any other programs when I’m troubleshooting, either.

Same problems here. About 2-3 weeks ago I was having this exact problem with NVIDIA driver nvlddmkm crashing while in GW2. I did a few reinstalls, restarts and somehow (not sure how) the crashing stopped.

I log in the first time today after a few days, and I’m getting the crashes again. Textures are out of wack such as this — http://imgur.com/7A706

Did the following to try and fix it:
1. Restart —> GW2
2. Update window drivers --> GW2
3. Restart —> GW2
4. Update NVIDIA drivers (clean install 306.97) --> GW2
5. Restart —> GW2
6. Restart in safe mode, remove all NVIDIA drivers, reinstall newest —> GW2

nothing workin

Hrm I wouldn’t say same problem. My graphics look fine, not artifacts, screwed up textures or anything really. It even “runs” fairly well with a decent FPS at all times. Just these black screens are killing me ;P

Interesting. I am getting "“Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.” messages as well

Well based on some reading it’s related to driver. If you can check 295.73 or 296.10 drivers as well? and try to reseat memory / GPU? check for power issue as well.

Pretty sure I tried 291.10 and it locked up my PC instead of those crashes.
I’ve installed 295.73 now, and yes i’ve re-seated GPU/Memory as well.

99.9% sure it’s not related to power. It’s a newish corsair and those things are solid.

Alright I did some digging and this nvidia driver crashing issue is so incredibly broad, that there is no way to pinpoint the problem just from seeing the driver crash.

See NVIDIA’s support forum for a nice explanation.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/389688/geforce-drivers/nvidia-statement-on-tdr-errors-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-/

Yeah I’ve read that before.
Tried a lot of those things already.
Is there a way to test a PSU with software? I really doubt it, but just thought to ask. I don’t have a second one

Inside my case is spotless, it has really good air pressure so none gets in.
I cleaned the filters on the bottom fans just to be sure, the temps haven’t really changed much though.

295.73 has been running fine for the last 3 hours so far.

I woke up today, returned my laptop on from sleep mode, and played with no problem today. Weird. Looks like a heat related thing in my case…

Alright it hasn’t crashed on 295.73.
A bit weird that EVERY other driver crashes me.
Something must be wrong here, wish there was an easier way to find out!