Guild Wars 2

Over the last month or so, I’ve been experiencing random crashes that are video related. Sometimes I get BSoD that gives me the error message: “Video TDR Failure (nvlddmkm.sys)”. Other times the game just freezes, and I am able to Cntl-Alt-Del out of it, tabbing to close GW2, which gives me a message in the notification window: “Application GW2.exe has been blocked from accessing the graphics hardware”. When the latter happens, I cannot launch GW2 again until I restart.

Sometimes I can play for an hour or more, other times I can only play about 3-5 minutes before I crash. Most crashes happen when a large graphics change happens on screen, such as bringing up the TP, or making a quick camera turn… but I have also crashed standing perfectly still. At first I thought the problem to be temperature related, but after some troubleshooting and monitoring, my GPU isn’t going above 70°C. I’ve done quite a bit of researching and troubleshooting, and in the interest of avoiding suggestions that I’ve already tried, here is a list of what I’ve done so far:

-Updated the graphics driver
-Rolled back graphics driver
-Updated windows
-Cleaned out the inside of my laptop case for dust.
-Reapplied thermal grease to the GPU, (which, incidentally, lowered GPU temp by 10°C)
-Completely wiped hard drive and reinstalled windows 8.1 (with all updates) and GW2
-Flashed BIOS

After all that, I’m still getting the same crashes.

Lappy Specs:
MSI GT70 0ND
VGA: Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M / 2 GB GDDR5
CPU: Intel Core i7-3630QM
RAM: DDRIII 12GB (4GB*3)
HD: 750GB 7200 RPM
OS: Windows 8.1

I’m pretty convinced that the GPU is going to need to be replaced, but I’m hoping to try some troubleshooting that maybe I haven’t researched yet before I drop a couple hundred dollars on a new one. Any help would be appreciated!

well it does sound like your GPU might be on its way out. But the simplest thing to test out is a complete driver wipe using DDU from safe mode and then installing the latest mobility driver from nvidia.com. If the crashes still happen the way they are now, you probably need to open your laptop up and see if the GPU is embedded on the MB or an addon card (MPCIE). Then start looking around on Ebay for a replacement.

Thank you for your reply, sirsquishy.
I tried DDU and a reinstall of the driver, and I crashed in about 5 seconds after character load.

Peileii.9845:

Thank you for your reply, sirsquishy.
I tried DDU and a reinstall of the driver, and I crashed in about 5 seconds after character load.

Crash to desktop, freeze, or bluescreen of death?

This one was a freeze, which I was able to Ctrl-Atl-Del out of, but it varies. Sometimes it freezes, sometimes it BSoDs.

if you can get it to BSOD, take a pic or write down the stop code and the faulting module. That is the best way to troubleshoot this further.

As mentioned in my OP, it says “Video TDR Failure (nvlddmkm.sys)”

Peileii.9845:

As mentioned in my OP, it says “Video TDR Failure (nvlddmkm.sys)”

But is it still that same BSOD code after the driver clean/reset?

sirsquishy.8531:

But is it still that same BSOD code after the driver clean/reset?

Yes. This was the original error I got. Same error after wiping the hard drive and reloading windows/GW2, same error after using DDU and reinstalling. I’ll guess I’ve had about 25 BSoDs since this started happening with the same error each time, and maybe 10-15 freezes that I can Ctrl-Alt-Del out of before it crashes.