Guild Wars 2

All of a sudden while playing GW2, my screen will turn all one color. I can still talk on VOIP and my music keeps going, though eventually dies in another minute or so. I have to hard reboot my PC to fix it. So it seems like it’s a GPU lockup on GW2.

I’m running Windows XP sp3 with a GeForce GTX 260, 332.21 drivers (latest drivers as of last night). Running 1920×1200 resolution.

I’ve been having this issue off-and-on since beta. Switching to Fullscreen windowed mode and using a 30 FPS limiter made the crash extremely rare. At some point when the video settings were reset by a patch, I changed to just Fullscreen, but still with the 30FPS limiter. Since the latest major patch on Tuesday, it cropped up again, about once every other day. But it’s gotten so bad today that the game is borderline unplayable. I’ve mostly been doing sPvP hot join and it happens every other game. I was running around WvW for about an hour beforehand (just small group stuff) and I had no problems. I can sit in Heart of the Mists and not have problems. I checked the AA mode setting on the sticky and it’s application controlled.

Things I’ve tried that haven’t worked:
- Repair Utility
- FullScreen Windowed.
- Rate Limiter at 60 FPS.
- Rate Limiter at unlimited.
- Disable second display.
- 310.90 drivers – same issue
- 306.23 drivers – lasts about twice as long before crashing.

Things to try:
- Windowed mode in a smaller window

If it helps, when I had the problem a year ago, the story mission “A Light in the Darkness” would cause it a lot.

Solved? Taking the GPU out of the case and blowing air through the ventilation system seems to have solved it. It’s relatively difficult to do that when it’s installed because of the enclosed GPU case and centrifugal fan design. I had previously only cleaned the fan area and blades.

Hey there ,

Now to be honest I don’t really know what is really causing your problem , but you say 30 fps , make it bearable where 60 fps makes it crash now judging by that ,and the fact that you have a GTX 260

I am going to advise 2 things for you . they might work or they might not but its worth a shot

Firstly I am pretty sure that card of yours is overheating that is why the screen turns one colour , so clean out your pc , mainly the GPU , since I know dust can also clog up a fan or one of your pc’s out let fans might be clogged up restricting air flow.

Secondly if that doest work , I recommend getting GPU-z and it will allow you to see the temperature of your card under load and whether or not its still overheating if it still is open the side panel for extra airflow , and think about getting a gpu cooler for your card .

Now like I said this might work or it might not

A few other things I can recommend you to try

-Is reduced the screen resolution
-Set the graphics to maximum performance (I know its not as good-looking but its worth a shot)

If they help your card is definitely overloaded or overheating .

Hope it helps ,and its worth a shot to try Good luck .

I highly doubt it’s an overheating issue, seeing as it was fine all summer long and is only having trouble now, in the dead of winter. In fact, the troubles only started this week. And it happens when the PC has been running for hours, or minutes. Other games that should stress it just as much have no issues.

I had it limited to 30 FPS (using the GW2 graphics menu option) since last year when it would do the same thing. However, capping it at 30, 60, or unlimited seems to do nothing now.

I cleaned the PC tonight, specifically GPU fan and vents and it had been cleaned about a month earlier. No change.

I went through all the graphics settings over a year ago when the game came out and I got stuck on the one story mission that kept crashing like this. Running windowed fullscreen at a cap of 30FPS made it only happen once a month if that. And I don’t recall it happening at all for the past few. None of the other graphics settings did anything, and they’re already just a step up from low.

I’ll try to get a monitor on it, but I doubt that’s the cause. Usually when I’ve seen graphics cards overheat, they start to artifact and not just completely crash.

I have to run GPUz with another application to compare. Just before the restart, there is a spike in processing load accompanied by a small increase in temperature, fan speed, and current draw. It may be this combination is just overwhelming it.

Really take hawkser’s advice this sounds like over heating if you haven’t had your PC opened up for some time then you need to do so, PCs are dust magnets even in the cleanest houses, even a little dust is enough to restrict airflow and cause over heating gets some canned air take it outside and blow it out, don’t do it in the same room the PC is in, all that dust you just blew out will be back in there in just a few hours. While your at it reseat the graphic card and memory. taking the graphics card out will help you get the dust out of the card more efficiently. Also if it is a dust problem and you have had an overheating problems then most likely the heat sink compound on the CPU has dried out you may need to redo this. There are youtube videos on how to do it if you never have before. Find videos showing the pee size method, it just takes a little compound.

I’m having this same/similar issue and it only happens with gw2. I can play bf4 perfectly fine without any crashes at all. The crashes started with the Tuesday game update. I’m using a GTX 280 with the latest drivers which I cleaned out and reinstalled. I can’t play the game anymore as I crash within 3 to 5 minutes of getting in game.

http://imgur.com/NQcPdVs
http://imgur.com/R9cHhQ4

I’ve check the windows event log and all I get are kernel shutdowns which are because I have to reset my computer to do anything. Already looked for gw2 error logs and did not find any.

John Lightning, that looks like the kind of artifacting I would expect from a GPU overheating.

My GPU uses a centrifugal fan design and an enclosed case for the card, which makes it relatively difficult to notice how dirty it is. I pulled it out and blew through the vent and fan areas and a lot of melted dust flew out. It’s now running about 10°C cooler under load and seems to have no issues (have to play for more than 30min to be sure).

I guess something with the latest update is stressing the GPU a bit more and was sending it over the edge.

I’ve monitored my gpu and it isn’t overheating, it gets to 73 C max and it was only crashing in gw2, I could play battlefield 4 which is way more demanding than gw2 forever without crashing.

Anyways I reinstalled gw2 and just played for 2 hours or so and didn’t crash once. So looks like a reinstall fixed it.

Visual artifacts like that are regularly connected to a failing grpahics cards, be wary. It might be an idea to keep some money in ur back pocket for the immediate future just incase it decides to fail entirely.

@OP: Take ur graphics out ur rig, and take it apart (dont worry its easy), replace the TIM (thermal paste) and dismantle the plastic shroud,heatsink and fan so u can clearly see the whole heatsink, you will likely find a layer of stuck dust that you will have to peal of. GPU cooler designs that suck air in and force it through the card and out the back are very prone to getting dust caught in places u cant clean out unless u take it part.
In the event there is no dust, replacing the TIM on such an old card with newer modern TIM will likely increase its ability to cool anyway so its still worth it.

Yeah I wish had money to begin with to put in my back pocket. Hell if I had any money I would’ve upgraded my gfx card a while ago.