Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

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Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

To be clear, this has been an ongoing problem with GW2 pretty much since this game launched. GW2 was release on the 28th of August 2012. I started playing about a week after launch and started having this problem in the December/January range shortly after buying a new computer. It’s not a new problem and not going away any time soon.

Symptoms of the problem include:

  • First and foremost, it ONLY happens when GW2 is running. Other games work fine as do benchmark and stress test applications.
  • Random freezing, usually with a blank screen. The color of the blank screen can change. I’ve seen green, red, white, blue, yellow, black. When this happens the sound begins looping and the keyboard/mouse become unresponsive. The reset button does not work and the machine requires a hard boot (Holding in power for 5 seconds).
  • Randomly shutting down the computer to an off state as if there was a power outage. Sometimes this puts the machine in to a state where it needs to be started twice. After the crash, it starts and immediately shuts back down before even loading the BIOS screen, then will start normally the second try.
  • Randomly and spontaneously rebooting…pretty self explanatory.
  • In rare occasions the client MAY crash to the desktop and Windows recover, but this is not the norm.
  • Sometimes it will work for several hours, others it will crash multiple times within minutes.
  • Reinstalling Windows does NOT fix the problem nor does a clean install of the video driver.

First try changing the power management profile from balanced to high performance.

Control panel > Hardware and Sound > Power options > and choose the High performance preferred plan.

If that doesn’t work, continue reading.

BEFORE REPLACING ANY HARDWARE, TRY THIS: Most people I’ve seen complain about this issue are using nVidia. Get nVidia Inspector and try downclocking your video card. Inspector makes it VERY easy to do so with just an icon on the desktop. Make two Inspector links. One to reduce the clock speed and another to set it back to normal, then you never have to think about it again. GW2 is VERY sensitive to overclocking, to say the least. The problem can improve or worsen depending on the game build and version of video driver. I did a 15% reduction on my card which was an eVGA 670gtx Superclocked using the factory set clock speeds. After reducing the clock speed I have never had a crash…not one. If I forget to change the clock speed, it WILL crash in one of the ways listed above. If you’re not using nVidia then, use whatever is available for your card.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-inspector-download.html

Now, I fought this for nearly 3 years, REFUSING to give in to downclocking, because I shouldn’t have had to, and even brought the machine in to the techs 3 times where I bought it. I did change the memory, but nothing else, because EVERY test the techs or I ran said the machine was working fine and the problem was unique to GW2. We
tested the memory, PCU, GPU, PSU, MB…anything we could get an app or physical tool for.

I know…it all sounds like a hardware issue, but again, it ONLY happens in GW2…so we were at a loss. The shop wouldn’t warranty anything because they couldn’t reproduce any faults and I refused to randomly buy new hardware for the sake of a single game in the “hopes” it helped. I was defeated, so downclocking was my LAST resort…and it fixed it and made me feel like a stubborn 1d10t. I missed A LOT of grouping due to this problem since I didn’t want to party up only to have the game crash.

I make no guarantee that downclocking will fix the problem, but it fixed it on my machine and in the near 5 years I’ve been playing, I know it’s fixed it for others over the years. What can it hurt to try?

Enough people have had this problem over the years, that this should be stickied…

(edited by Leamas.5803)

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

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Posted by: Coldtart.4785

Coldtart.4785

Just had exactly this manner of freeze on my GTX 750 Ti in the demo. Going to try this and see what happens.

Edit: initial results are promising. Not only did I not freeze during the instance my framerate actually increased dramatically.

(edited by Coldtart.4785)

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

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Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

And how did you fair with longer term results?

(edited by Leamas.5803)

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

Check the Windows event log and see if this error occurs at the time of the crashes. The best I could find 4 years ago, when I was researching it, was that it’s throwing a fault on to the PCIe bus and sending the computer in to hardware panic mode. At the time, there was no fix for the error…down clocking fixed it.

—Windows Event Log Error— (nvlddmkm is the nVidia display driver)

The description for Event ID 14 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found.
Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your
local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or
repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had
to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

\Device\Video7
An uncorrectable double bit error (DBE) has been detected on GPU (02 00 00).

(edited by Leamas.5803)

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

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Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

It’s been “pointed out” on another thread that software can’t be “sensitive” to overclocking.

Arenanet themselves say differently

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Crashing-Issues-1/first#post4146866

“You may also want to check to see if any of your hardware is overclocked or is utilizing a Turbo Boost feature. If so, consider returning to stock settings, because Guild Wars 2 is sensitive to overclocking.”

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

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Posted by: MrFayth.3546

MrFayth.3546

I can personally tell you that software is very susceptible to overclocking.

Though, Gw2 has gave me no problems with high CPU/GPU clocks compared to other games.

GTA-V being the most picky.

i5 4690k @4.1ghz, r7 260x 1180/1680,8Gb G.skill Ripjaw 2133, 120gb ssd Gw2+OS

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

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Posted by: pugpug.6715

pugpug.6715

I have the same problem with restarts when playing GW2
I checked everything
Updated all my drivers
changed the CPU Paste
bought a new HD
I have all the stats and power 700 watt PS
intel i7 3770 3.5 ghz
16 GB ddr 3 ram
Gforce 1070
windows 10 pro
It is NOT overclocked
I can play for about 1/2 hour then my PC restarts
was going to buy the expansion but changed my mind . No sense buying something that i will not be able to play .
BTW . It does not restart with any other game. I tested that too. It’s NOT me !
I really wanted to play but oh well.

(edited by pugpug.6715)

Random Freeze, Shutdown, Restart? READ THIS!

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

I have the same problem with restarts when playing GW2
I checked everything
Updated all my drivers
changed the CPU Paste
bought a new HD
I have all the stats and power 700 watt PS
intel i7 3770 3.5 ghz
16 GB ddr 3 ram
Gforce 1070
windows 10 pro
It is NOT overclocked
I can play for about 1/2 hour then my PC restarts
was going to buy the expansion but changed my mind . No sense buying something that i will not be able to play .
BTW . It does not restart with any other game. I tested that too. It’s NOT me !
I really wanted to play but oh well.

When you say it’s not overclocked, do you mean you didn’t overclock your video card yourself? I’d bet, like the 670 I had problems with, it came overclocked from the factory. Most video cards these days come overclocked in some way by the factory. Is it a 1070 OC (Overclocked) or 1070 SC (Superclocked)? Even if it doesn’t appear to be overclocked, try downclocking the video card, if it helps then great, if not, then you can just reset the clock and look for other solutions. nVidia Inspector literally makes changing the clock speed a double-click of the mouse. Just make two shortcuts on the desktop, one to downclock and one to set it back to normal. I reduced the clock by 15% on my video card, and since it fixed it I never bothered to try other settings, but I’ve heard of people resolving this problem with as little as a 5% reduction.

(edited by Leamas.5803)