Guild Wars 2

Well, I’ve exhausted my search-foo attempting to solve this problem. Whenever I try to run Guild Wars 2 my computer will inevitably have its audio and video cut out, the fans in the system rev up and then become unresponsive. Fans are still going, keyboard and mouse lights are still on, but I cannot do anything until I reboot my computer. GW is the only game I run on my system that does this – every other game from WoW on Ultra to Shadow of Mordor on High runs with zero problems.

computer specs:
AMD Radeon HD 7770
8 gb Ram
AMD FX-6300 six-core processor
All parts of my computer are less than 6 months old.

I’ve repaired the client, reinstalled it, then repaired it again.
I’ve run chkdsk, hard drive is fine.
I’ve reinstalled the graphic card’s drivers and updated them.
I’ve disabled every non essential program on my computer and attempted to run GW alone.

The crash initially only happened on my engineer – specifically if I was using my flamethrower at the time. I swapped over to my ranger, got a few hours out of her, then I crashed. Rebooted, crashed within 20 minutes, then again within 5 and now I crash right out of character select.

I’m out of ideas. What have I missed?

edit – Updates so far:
Have tried event viewer: no useful information.
PSU is fine.
GPU and CPU temps are fine and CPU memory levels aren’t maxed out during gameplay.
Can run the game with most settings on ultra -except- the shaders setting – must be set to low.
My flamethrower or another’s will crash me.
BIOS are up to date, Drivers are current (old ones or beta ones do not fix issue).
DX9 and DX11 are both up to date.

I HAVE FOUND THE SOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM.

ALL HAIL SHANKS R US

LAVISH PRAISE UPON HIS POST: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/SOLUTION-Black-Screen-Crash-Fix-Finally/4866436/quote

Shanks R Us.2489:

I’m posting here because I’ve finally found a solution to an age old problem. Although I don’t require support, I’m hoping the forum staff leaves the thread (if nothing else, makes a new thread with the information & stickies it) so that the many others facing this issue can find it. For many months, the lack of a solution to this problem was what was keeping me from playing the game.

What the problem was

You have an AMD radeon graphics card. Randomly, while playing the game, your screen suddenly goes black and your monitor says no input. The computer is still running and you can still hear music / background noise – kind of like what you’d expect to happen if your monitor was suddenly disconnected from your PC. The only way to gain access to your monitor again is to manually restart the computer.

Things you’ve probably tried
Note: If you haven’t done these, try them first.

-Updated drivers
-Re-installed GW2
-Ran GW2 in windowed mode
-Ran GW2 as admin
-Ran GW2 -repair
-Disabled some startup programs
-Tried using a different router / directly connected to modem

What worked for me

I’m not 100% sure if this will work for everyone else, but it did for me. I have had this issue for well over a year and have contacted ArenaNet about it multiple times. Nothing suggested has ever worked, up until this. I ran across this fix on a forum for another game; the user was complaining about the same issues I was having.

Here’s what you have to do:

Open up your AMD Catalyst Control Center
Make sure you have advanced view enabled
Click on “Performance”
Choose “AMD Overdrive”
Bring your GPU clock settings down, to around 750 MHz

This is what it should look like: http://i.imgur.com/jUQt8sR.png

What was causing the issue

After some tinkering, I found out what it was exactly that was causing the crash. Basically, fire. Whenever I had fire on my screen (either from players, like a flamethrower, or from a torch on the map) I could hear my GPU humming more loudly. When I turned away, it would calm down. Lowering my clock settings stopped this, and I have yet to crash since I’ve made these changes.

Hopefully this solves your problems!

go look at event viewer. Microsoft might been able to log errors. The link should tell you where it is

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/open-event-viewer#1TC=windows-7

btw, when you uninstalled. Did you use display driver uninstaller? There is not many ways to guarentee the uninstaller clean up all driver bits.

I looked at event viewer, no useful information there, just letting me know the computer rebooted without shutting down properly first. I uninstalled the driver strait form the device manager. I’ll try again with the uninstaller tool tomorrow.

It sounds like your power supply is defective.

Initiaaly, yes, it does sound like my PSU is going, but if it were, -all- my games would be crashing my computer. last time it went I couldn’t play anything for more than 15 minutes. Unless the EVGA 600B is bias against GW, I don’t think it’s the PSU. I plan on picking up a multimeter later to double check, but I’m doubtful that my issue lies there.

A meter won’t necessary show the issue if it happens very quickly.

Your best option would be to substitute a known good working power supply as a test.

This does sound like a PSU issue on a techs side of things. Now I know having graphics setup within GW2 can put strain on your PC, quick question, do you have other high intense games like GW2 graphics wise? If so and those games work, then we can pretty much rule out the PSU.

I’d be concerned at that point with the memory, use a memtest and check it, programs like games and apps use memory addressing, try that next.

Well, the most common game is world of warcraft, which runs on max settings. Skyrim can also run on max. Shadow of Mordor can run on high. Titanfall runs on max settings. GW2 cannot run on medium.

I’ll try a memory test after dinner.

Lythari.6458:

Well, the most common game is world of warcraft, which runs on max settings. Skyrim can also run on max. Shadow of Mordor can run on high. Titanfall runs on max settings. GW2 cannot run on medium.

I’ll try a memory test after dinner.

I have this EXACT same issue. Only my graphics fan revs down. Our only thing in common computer part wise is the graphics. We both have a 7770. Hm… Strange.

Here is my post, see if it sounds like your issue.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Crashing-to-nothingness/first#post4769782

How are your CPU and GPU temperatures? The fact that the freezes/crashes happen quicker and quicker makes me think something is overheating. Get a tool like HWInfo and let it run while you play GW for 5-10 minutes (choose sensors only at startup for HWInfo). If core or gpu temperatures pass 90 degrees Celsius then you might have a cooling problem.

please don’t forget one very important thing

most of the work for GW2 is done on your CPU your GPU is used for things but its your CPU that does the most. as a result this draws ever ounce of power from your PSU when both the GPU and CPU are working. yes nowadays your GPU can doe around 30% of the work but its still CPU bound game (there are ppl who try to argue this but they are stupid bookahs)

as recommended try using another PSU of equal power and find out if that’s the cause (u could ask a friend or go to your local PC repair shop and ask them very nicely to test your PSU they might / will charge u a small amount to do so)

Welp, here’s an update. I downloaded a neat program called speedfan to monitor all of my hardware. I windowed GW, logged on my engineer, set graphics to autodect and started flaming things. My GPU temp jumped up to 60C, but remained steady there with my CPU at ~52C. My CPU usage bounced from ~27% to ~52% and the voltage from my power supply remained constant and at appropriate levels. Up until I crashed, at least. Upon reset of the computer, and reopening the program, all of the temperatures are at appropriate, low levels.

I’m at a loss. I got GW to play with potato settings with everything set to low the other night for about ~3.5 hours, but I still got one of my black crashes in there.

So my system is as follows:

Amd phenom 9500 (4 cores at 2.2ghz)
8gb ram
XFX AMD 7770 ghz edition
I updated my graphics drivers about a month ago, and have been playing on my pc for at least a month, all has been well.

I too am having game crashing issues. I too was on my engineer. The first crash I experienced, was yesterday, Feburary 19th 2015. I logged in, and client downloaded files; I was doing my story, (not sure what chapter), and while following the arrows, I followed an Azura gate that left me in LA, as soon as the game loaded, it crashed (screen went black, all same symptoms as described above).

I reset computer (hard reset, by power button), and loaded engineer, bam, as soon as loaded, game crashed.

I got on my laptop (AMD A6 3500 i believe; its like the first gen apu), logged into engineer, game didn’t crash, so I warped to ascalon as I planned on doing AC later.

Today, I log into my engineer, go into AC, path 1; kill queen, kill kholer, start going down the stairs, the fire kills me (bad timing lol), and as soon as i go into downed state, game crashes.

This is a recent problem, very recent, GW2 is the only game I play. I know it has to do with the game, possible the game/gfx card combo. But it HAS to be the game, because until recently, the game ran fine on my XFX AMD 7770. Only after the most recent time my client downloaded files did I have this problem.

TLDR: My XFX AMD 7770 didn’t crash for a month leading up to the issue, after my client downloaded files for GW2, my game now crashes my computer. My laptop with an AMD A6-3500 APU (slower gfx card, slower cpu cores) does not crash at all.

hi guys, i posted something similar earlier https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Radeon-r7-240-issues/first#post4817356

I also have AMD… i have checked EVERY forum and it says GW2 is NOT compatible with AMD/ATI chipsets buuuuut… every single blooming website says my pc is more than capable of handling this game… i can run Far cry 3 on medium (which is extreamly power hungry) i can run WoW on high, i can run Dragon age Origins (old game i know) on high… etc blah blah blah… but this game… wont even last more than an hour on LOW graphics!!! i have changed my resolution to a lower setting and each time i do, it works longer and longer… but it always… ALWAYS eventually gives me visual artifacts (100000000000s of rainbow lines and pixles)… my monitor then flikers on and off… everything is unresponsive and i have to do a hard reset… there is no log report in the events viewer i have ran GFX/CPU diagnostics while game is windowed and the max temp my GFX gets to before the above happens is 33 degrees C and my CPU gets to 55 C and my fans run at 60%… sound like a big compatability issue with AMD (as the forums suggest) but this is just rediculous

I have even ran 3Dmark and the ONLY thin that fails the benchmark is the final demo (the 4k one) so come on GW2 TECH HEADS… FIX THIS!!!! or better yet… why not give out a free Nvida card with ever purchase of this game?

this is not a psu issue or and AMD issue. I am having this too. this past month the game locks up and crashes my pc evey single time I play it within an hour. I have a i7 4770k, 2400mhz ram, Gigabyte Z87X UD4H, 128GB Samsung 830 SSD and currently a GTX 970. I’m using a HX 750 psu I had for year through many far more taxing setups. I’d like to get an idea wtf is going on as it’s incredibly annoying.

Update:

I had set my shader settings to low and have been running GW as an admin. Everything has been fine the past few weeks as I’ve been leveling my ranger/warrior/elementalist/ect. I haven’t touched my engineer. Tonight I decided to pop on her for a while to attempt the pvp daily for an engineer win. Less than 2 minutes into the match with my flamethrower a blowing my computer crashed again. I don’t really understand -why- my game is crashing. Lately I’ve been all over the place with my Ranger, including doing world bosses such as the Fire Elemental. Anybody who has ever done one of the bosses know it’s a giant zerg fest of all different classes. But I’m fine unless -my- engineer is running around torching things now.

Waves, myabe we can make this the crash thread. Other games on high run fine. This one randomly freezes then crashes each time. Rig is cooled, power supply is way over specd and new, machine purrs like a kitten. I ran the client repair App. Still freezing and crashing. Pattern seems to be that when it starts rendering a lot of new data on transitions the system crashes…. Specs:

CPU:4970K DC running stable at 4.8gHz, GTX 780Ti (in the PCI Express slot), Windows 7 SP1, SSHD, good FPS at recommended settings.

Have you guys tried to check whether or not you are running latest bios on your GPU and Mobo? Also reverting overclocks (aside from factory ones) might help.

Oh .. i remember my PC crashing with bluescreens all the time in Age of Conan
when i had a NVIdia card .. after testing masses of older versions i found finally
one where it didn’t crashed that often.

Later i found out i only happened with Shader 2.0 .. shader 1.0 was no problem.
It was simply always happening when there was a specific blue glow effect.

Years later in Lotro i learned that NVidia drivers have problems with SB-Live Soundcards
because the try to use the same memory and thats was maybe the reason why
i had so many crashes.

So often it really are just the combination of some different things that lead to
problems. But mostly in the end its a driver problem .. the game just uses a
standard Direct-X call and only the driver that runs in kernel mode can crash
the system from that.

Try using older amd drivers, like 14.9 or some betas. A lot of people have had problems with the omega drivers.

muslumgurseks.4951:

Have you guys tried to check whether or not you are running latest bios on your GPU and Mobo? Also reverting overclocks (aside from factory ones) might help.

I’m not sure why playing with the bios would be useful? I could be missing something but playing around with that isn’t something to be taken lightly.
I also am not overclocking my system, so nothing to revert there.

Ansau.7326:

Try using older amd drivers, like 14.9 or some betas. A lot of people have had problems with the omega drivers.

I’m actually using driver 14.301.1001.0. No Omega drivers here.

Keep throwing suggestions at me, please. I’m giving each a try at this point.

I am able to play with most of my settings up, except for Shaders. Setting Shaders to the lowest setting and running as an admin had fixed my problems up until logging on my engineer last night.

Your problem is quite rare. As you describe, the issue seems to be the lighting of the flamethrower.
- Does it crash no matter which shaders option you choose?
- Have you tested different amd drivers to see if this problem happens in all?
- Have you tested if it crashes with another engi (different race, gender, hight…).

Lythari.6458:

muslumgurseks.4951:

Have you guys tried to check whether or not you are running latest bios on your GPU and Mobo? Also reverting overclocks (aside from factory ones) might help.

I’m not sure why playing with the bios would be useful? I could be missing something but playing around with that isn’t something to be taken lightly.
I also am not overclocking my system, so nothing to revert there.

Ansau.7326:

Try using older amd drivers, like 14.9 or some betas. A lot of people have had problems with the omega drivers.

I’m actually using driver 14.301.1001.0. No Omega drivers here.

Keep throwing suggestions at me, please. I’m giving each a try at this point.

I am able to play with most of my settings up, except for Shaders. Setting Shaders to the lowest setting and running as an admin had fixed my problems up until logging on my engineer last night.

Because if there is any incompatibility between any of the hardwares you are sticking to mobo, updating the bios might resolve it. as for motherboard bios update its pretty straight forward. Gpu ones might get hairy if your vendor doesnt offer automated bios updates.

Ansau.7326:

Your problem is quite rare. As you describe, the issue seems to be the lighting of the flamethrower.
- Does it crash no matter which shaders option you choose?
- Have you tested different amd drivers to see if this problem happens in all?
- Have you tested if it crashes with another engi (different race, gender, hight…).

- yes
- just tried the omega drivers, going to try a different one now
- out of character slots – I’ll see if I can get on my wife’s account later

If you are using Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1 my suggestion is to go to microsoft.com and download the latest DX 9 package and install it. I had this issue with my 6870 in other games, but after installing the DX9 package it was fixed.

moonstarmac.4603:

If you are using Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1 my suggestion is to go to microsoft.com and download the latest DX 9 package and install it. I had this issue with my 6870 in other games, but after installing the DX9 package it was fixed.

I’m not able to install anything DX9 since my computer already has DX11 on it.

I’ve also tried every available driver for my graphics card I can get my hands on that comes from sites I trust.

I also just crashed on my Ranger during the quest “The Source of Orr”; during one of the cinematics of all things. So my crashes aren’t relegated to -just- my engineer, but busting out the flamethrower is the quickest way to test for a crash.

“I’m not able to install anything DX9 since my computer already has DX11 on it.”

I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying here. Even if you have DX11, you must install DX9 for DX9 games to work.

You can install Dx 9.0c doesnt matter which dx version you have now. You might be missing some packs on it and that also causes a problem.

My bad then. I went to download dx9, it popped up the installer and immediately finished, I assumed it was because I had dx11 already on my system. I thought dx just had all of the previous versions along with and that’s what had happened. Either way, I have the latest of dx9 and dx11. :/

Welp, I’ve now discovered it is -anybody’s- flamethrower. I joined up with a buddy who had recently made an engineer and was toting the flame belcher and whilst we valiently slew some jungle grubs my computer gave out on me. I can pretty confidently state that it is flames that cause me to crash. At least some of them.

Updating Main post with all information so far.

Hi,
Just got the game, but fortunately I have two video cards. NVIDIA GEforce gt 720 runs with no problems. Swapped it for an AMD ATI Radeon XFX 7770, logged into my eng, no problems to start, but used flame turret and static shot and boom.
Definitely a compatibility problem with the game and video card. Its not just the flame thrower, other fire particle effects (Norn starting quest causes something similar) can also cause problems.
I too have an i7 4770k, but doesn’t look like that was the problem.

TLDR;

You have a factory overclocked video card and it is corrupting the fire particle shaders. Underclock your graphics card with your cards software when GW2.exe is running to Factory Reference levels and everything will be happy again.

And as I’m about to push reply, I realize this is a copy of another one with this solution, but please only use your factory reference clock levels.