Guild Wars 2

Seriously?

I haven’t been able to truly enjoy this game (I’ve even bought the 3-days pre-purchase) yet because of this extremely annoying error. I’m talking about the infamous black screen/crashing error. I’ve rarely played in the past month as I can’t be bothered to log in only to be pressing ctrl+alt+dlt every 5 mins…
I’ve read the Sticky thread, adjusted a few things here and there, updated my drivers, but nothing really works. Underclocking my GPU by 10% using MSI Afterburner made the game run smooth for about a week before the crashes started again. Now that I try AC for the first time, I crash every 5 mins…

This is the error I’ve been getting lately ;
http://puu.sh/1dyKj

Come on A.Net, I just want to play the game I’ve bought…

P.S: GPU is an nVidia 660M GT

if you need to underclock to make it stable, the gpu is obviously barely stable. Return it under warranty for testing and replacement.

Squall, this issue is occuring for a large number of people, many of whom are having no issues with other games. I am one of them.

I also get the “Black screen issue” as people are calling it. It’s a system hard freeze/lock up. The symptoms are screens going into idle/no signal mode (ie, black) with sound stuttering or buffer looping in the background, or the screen completely freezing with buffer looping sound. For some people, windows will recover and display a “driver stopped responding” error.

I get this exact same problem. Allow me to elaborate, before you all start asking the obvious questions…

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (3.3Ghz, Factory Standard Settings)
Gigabyte GV-N570OC-13I rev2.0 Geforce GTX 570 Super Overclocked (Factory Overclocked)
Gigabyte GA-990FX-UD3 rev1.1 Motherboad (latest BIOS)
4×4GB (16GB) DDR3-1600 RAM (PC-12800) (Running at 1333MHz)
Corsair Enthusiast TX750M PSU

Average temperatures for CPU and GPU range between 42 and 48 degrees celsius while gaming. Maximum temperature while being stress tested on a warm day is no higher than 55 degrees celsius. Well and truely below the maximum safe operating temperatures for a GTX 500-Series graphics card and AMD Phenom II CPU.

RAM has been tested for faults and found to be stable.
System will run many other games indefinitely without problems (8+ hours).
Games tested: Team Fortress 2, RIFT, Aion, League of Legends, City of Heroes, Just Cause 2, Diablo 3, Skyrim, Tribes Ascend, Assassin’s Creed II, Darksiders, Batman: Arkham City.
Drivers tested: 295.10 301.42 304.79 306.02 306.23 306.97

Other fixes attempted:
- Put system in DMZ on router (D-Link DGL-4100)
- Various graphics driver settings (VSync, AA, AF, Display/GPU Acceleration, Power Management mode, etc. Many combinations tried)
- Lowest detail possible in game
- Highest detail possible in game
- VSync on/off in game
- Frame rate limiting (30, 60, Unlimited)
- Unloading/closing/removing from startup as many third-party applications as possible

Another system on the same network (thus, connected to the same router) running different hardware (Intel Quad Core with an 8800GT) runs Guild Wars 2 without issue.

As far as I am concerned, all signs point to the culprit of this issue being Guild Wars 2 itself. No other game causes this issue. I have played Guild Wars 2 since launch. Some times I will go does without a problem. Some days I will have several lock ups. Some days (like today) the game is impossible to play as it locks up my system within seconds of launching.

The problem does not seem to be reliably reproducible as I can find no particular combination of settings or configurations that definitively impacts the frequency of these crashes. They are intermittent.

I have already opened a support ticket with ArenaNet support and thus far their assistance has been unhelpful. Now, if anyone else wants to try take a crack at this, I welcome the challenge.

Update: Changing VSync settings in game tends to exacerbate the issue, sometimes causing the system to hang on changing the setting. nVidia Control Panel is set to “Use Application Settings”.

its a TDR, classic unstable system. Those permanent hangs are likely actually BSODS that the screen can’t display because the gpu has got itself in a lock loop

Being one of many getting it, does not make it any less an unstable system, it just means alot of people have unstable systems.

You’ll make yourself believe everything to defend ANet.

sigh

A computer is only as solid as its weakest point(s) of configuration.

Blackscreens (TDR/invisibsods) have a number of SYSTEM configuration related causes, not one of them being usermode software that is running on it. Graphics Drivers MAY often be the apparent cause. However often it is something completely different and an anomaly in the actual component configuration between individual parts of the system.

While you guys are busy blaming Anet, for a PROBLEM WITH YOUR SYSTEM. Others who are getting this are already working out WHY the problem occurs, by going back to the basics and starting off with TaE, that is, testing known working hardware, drivers, bios settings, etc.

You already proved yourself that a change to the hardware state changed the behavior of the problem in your initial post. Now actually do some hardware diagnostics.

Squall, did you actually /read/ what I wrote? I listed no less than a DOZEN different games that have ALL run without issues of any kind, especially not a system hang. How can you justifiably say that when only a SINGLE game is causing such an issue, after THOUSANDS OF HOURS OF TESTING, that hardware or configuration is to blame?

In addition, I’ve found certain configuration settings within Guild Wars 2 that make the problem more frequent and certain locations in the game world that make it more frequent. I cannot say the same for any other game I have ever played on this system, because not one of them has caused this problem.

Finally, your statement regarding invisible bsods. About half of my crashes do recover with a “driver has stopped responding error.” At which point am I meant to get the BSOD then when the system hasn’t completely hung?

Skyve, it may interest you to take a look at this forum thread, where are number of other people are having the same issue we are. One of those people did have a faulty system, the others however, are in the exact same situation that I am.

One of the users believes the issue to be with a recent Windows Update on Windows 7 that is causing a branch misprediction error that forces windows into a panic event. I cannot say for certain if there’s any truth to this, but it’s more information than anyone else has come up with at this point.

Yes, i read it, and discarded it as completely inconclusive and a waste of the time you could have been testing various system configuration changes.

And actually, i just noticed you have a GTX 570….. I hope its a recent one, otherwise you’ve got the kittened Mosfets to factor in. (570’s have one less than the 580’s and on games that tax the Memory and GPU heavily, this can make the card very unstable.

Of the games you listed, NONE of them work the memory controller as hard as GW2.

if you have a PS2 handy, you can simulate GW2’s load by using PCSX2 with GSDX set to an extremely high internal resolution.

How can you tell me that information is inconclusive? It’s simple logic. No other game I have tested hangs my system, regardless of configuration. Guild Wars 2 does.

How recent is ‘recent’? How many months? I’ve listed the exact model and revision, that should be relvant information, since you apparently know so much about this.

No I do not have a PS2 handy. And if that is the case, then please name me a game that does tax the memory controller adequately enough according to you. I’ll run that and see if it hangs. If it does, /then/ we can start talking hardware faults.

Regardless, what you are claiming does not line up with what I am experiencing. Just yesterday, I logged into a character I had left in the Heart of the Mists, in one of the least grapihcally intense areas. The game would freeze my system within 10 seconds of loading the game world. After fiddling with vsync and the frame rate limiter, in addition to returning my graphics card’s power management mode to ‘prefer maximum’ and disabling Adaptive Vsync, I was able to log in again without issue and leave Heart of the Mists.

Further; if the memory controller failing is indeed what is causing these hangs, then this does not explain why running the game on lowest detail settings (thus using smaller textures and less gpu memory) still causes these crashes. Surely by that stage, memory usage cannot possibly be significantly more than a game such as Just Cause 2 or Batman: Arkham City.

If you run 3d mark vantage, if your system is unstable, it should hardlock on you as well. I would give that a try.

I’ve so far fun Furmark and Unigine Benchmarks. Both on the maximum settings they’re capable of, with no issues. I’ll give 3D Mark Vantage a shot as well just for the sake of completion’s sake, but this is my point really. The only time I have issues is the random occurance of lockups on GW2.

I mean really… I was playing WvW for like, 8 hours or so the other day without interruption. The only problem I had was the usual “invisible people” glitches that start cropping up after that much time playing. And you can’t blame /that/ on my hardware kitten That’s happening to EVERYONE.

Then, two days later, I can’t even run the game for more than 10 seconds and it took me an hour or two of fiddling with settings to get it going again. Mind you, it only took that long as well because I was trying to figure out exactly what causes it to fall over. I was /intentionally/ trying to make it crash after a point. Vsync (in game and control panel), frame limiter, power management mode seem to be the biggest influencing settings for frequency of hangs in GW2.

But then, this is hardly surprising… as these are exactly the settings ArenaNet has given specific values for to reduce the frequency of these hangs. Which brings me back to my very FIRST and original reason for posting…. GW2 is broken kitten Not so broken that it’s completely unuseable perhaps, but there’s definitely an issue there.

Allow me to quote the NCSoft Tech Support Ticket I have open that I’ve been going through the issue with.

There are several people tracking and troubleshooting this and they have found various settings etc that may help until we get an update from Nvidia or ArenaNet that takes care of the issue.

This was after a week of an NCSoft tech support going through the usual checklists of checking drivers, benchmarks, settings, etc with me.

My entire purpose here and with my support ticket, is mostly to raise awareness and make a bit of noise so that something is eventually done about it. That may or may not be necessary, as I’m certain ArenaNet developers are already well and truely aware of this problem, but it gives me at least some peace of mind.

Fingers crossed they figure it out sometime within the next month or two.

Ya I just know 3D mark vantage will lock up an unstable system more so than heaven benchmark or furmark

Well i got pretty much the same issue now since last nights patch.

And since i already tested my hardware in every possible way and 3dMark Vantage is running without problems.

Since i logged in today atfter the patch downloaded i ran the game for about 15 minutes until the client froze and a loud humming sound started, after about 7-10 seconds the froze released and the game ran smotthly again and the sound went back to normal. Figuring that it was a one time freeze, but how wrong i was and after about 5 minutes after the first freeze the client froze again and kept on freezing every 5-10 minutes before i was tired of it and closed the client and restarted my computer and started monitoring and logging what kind of things happend at the freezing points where as NO unusual hardware issues was recorded. (yeah i was running the client after the restart and it kept freezing) If it was a hardware issue with the gpu forxing it into looplocks it wouldnt release the freeze right? or am i wrong here as well?

i might be born kitten but i enjoy playing games that dont mess with my experience and yeah GW2 just started messing with my experience and i’m bored of it!

So yeah i think the fault lies in the Client and badly adapted engeine for certain hardwares.

Psieonic.8132:

How can you tell me that information is inconclusive? It’s simple logic. No other game I have tested hangs my system, regardless of configuration. Guild Wars 2 does.

Other games aren’t GW2, other games don’t drive the gpu and imc to the heavy usage that gw2 does. Thus, any conclusion that the game is at fault, is a completely flawed belief and will be disregarded by anyone with any background in beta testing and diagnostics.

No I do not have a PS2 handy. And if that is the case, then please name me a game that does tax the memory controller adequately enough according to you. I’ll run that and see if it hangs. If it does, /then/ we can start talking hardware faults.

The Witcher 2, with ubre sampling enabled.

Further; if the memory controller failing is indeed what is causing these hangs, then this does not explain why running the game on lowest detail settings (thus using smaller textures and less gpu memory) still causes these crashes. Surely by that stage, memory usage cannot possibly be significantly more than a game such as Just Cause 2 or Batman: Arkham City.

Well the IMC/VRM was just a potential reason. There are people using exactly the same hardware as you without these problems, which is why its not possible to blanket blame the drivers, and/or the game. Games are only as stable as the drivers talking to the hardware, which are then only as stable as the hardware itself. You would be more likely to see a General Exception or Illegal Memory Access error with a game bug, not a full system crash.

The biggest problem to finding a solution is all the me too’s you will obviously get in this kind of thread, when these problems are as unique as the users system personalisations. You can’t just cram a bunch of people with problems in a thread. All tech support and warranty claims are handled individually for this reason.

Swordbreaker.2581:

If you run 3d mark vantage, if your system is unstable, it should hardlock on you as well. I would give that a try.

3dmark2003 back in the day was pretty good at demonstrating unstable overclocks xD

but these days, the benchmarks don’t even take much advantage of the memory controller. Theres not enough frequently changing framebuffer updates to really stress the card.

Unfortunately I do not own The Witcher 2 presently, but I will look into possibly borrowing a copy off a friend.

In the meantime, I’ve searched for alternative, more clinical means of testing VRAM. I’ve come across two tools available on the net for precisely this purpose.

memtestG80/memtestCL are utilities developed by people related to the Folding@Home project, designed to test the accuracy and reliability of VRAM for performing scientific calculations on graphics cards. My card passed this test.
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadUtils#ntoc2

The second tool, VMT, is one developed by a Russian chap, designed to test all available VRAM. It seems a lot more like memtest86+ for GPU VRAM. My card also passed this test.
http://mikelab.kiev.ua/index_en.php?page=PROGRAMS/vmt_en

Both of these tests should, theoretically, stress the IMC and VRAM of my card far more than any game, and at the very least, as much as Guild Wars 2. Far more VRAM reads and writes are being performed here than would ever normally occur during the course of playing a game.

As promised, I ran 3dmark Vantage as well and those tests completed without issue as well.

I’m sorry Squall, but unless The Witcher 2 crashes my system when I get it? I cannot agree with your conclusions that this is a hardware issue. I will gladly admit that I have still not completely ruled out the possibility of a software related issue that is not the fault of Guild Wars 2.

At some stage I will have to do a complete reformat of my computer and try to run Guild Wars 2 in as clean an environment as I possibly can. Additionally, I have an old 7800GT graphics card laying about that I can attempt to run Guild Wars 2 in, and see how that goes. That graphics card is from my old system before I upgraded (and has since been stored safely). It has been tried and tested for many years, and assuming that it has not been damaged somehow, should be 100% stable. If swapping out the graphics card still results in a system hang in Guild Wars 2 in a clean OS environment, while other tests on the card show the same results of running without issue, then I will be absolutely ruling out the Graphics card being at fault.

I’ll research those tools. Most of the common memtest utilities only use a basic write and read back test pattern using random access or contiguous, which isn’t all that taxing to the memory controller at all. I was using the usual tools when overclocking my cpu and video card, but, passed them all. And then crashed when tried Aida64’s MemBW test.

You’d probably get a heavier load on the IMC by using multiple instances of Luxmark, though i believe they prevent that to prevent Mutex collisions.

At the end of the day… theres always OCCT you could try, but i don’t recomend it. Too many 570’s die using that, melting the mosfets.

Since the last update i now have the black screen as im now calling “death”. I was playing 10 hours ago no probs, now its not working and saying the client is not responding on task manager, ive updated drivers etc all windows updates but still have the problem!

Any ideas would be great.

This problem is starting to affect more people.. including me.
crashes at exact same point in storyline. tried 6 times now.. definatly not a coincedence

Hey, if the card melts running it, I could always return it under warranty? :P

Psieonic.8132:

Hey, if the card melts running it, I could always return it under warranty? :P

yes, you can.

Depends on the sub-vendor, and they will often know if you ran a burn test on the card. Some will void warranty if you do >.<

One thing to ask yourselves is. How much memory is the game using?

Right now sitting in Claypool I’m using 1.2GB, now if this is a 32bit game with Large-address Aware it should work to ~3.5GB, if not, it’s like 2GB or 2.5GB.

Skyrim had this issue and players came out with an EXE that would flag skyrim’s exe as LAA (Skyrim4GB was the app). Until Beth patched the skyrim EXE.

This could account for some of the crashes people are experiencing.

As for the OP’s, ya I get those sometimes too…even just sitting at the desktop. And by ‘sometimes’ I mean like maybe once a year….unless Nvidia releases an unstable Driver Set :P
And yes, this has even happened with World of Warcraft, though a driver update fixed it.

One thing you can do is if you get the ‘black screen’ just leave it, go get something to eat and see if the OS can recover.

Another thing, and I urge people to do this for ALL games, is run it Windowed. And if possible run dual monitor. I’ve played a number of games that would lock up (black screen), but the system was still responsive. I was able to at least perform a shutdown or in some chases kill the game’s process. Or in the case of a TDR, the one monitor with the game would go blank, entering into sleep mode, lose Aero. And get the Nvidia Drivers recovered from [yadda yadda].

And if you don’t have another monitor, then try enabling remote connections. If it happens you can access the computer remotely and try to shutdown that way. Most programs will crash-to-desktop if you switch to the RDP “Display Driver”.

Right now sitting in Claypool I’m using 1.2GB, now if this is a 32bit game with Large-address Aware it should work to ~3.5GB, if not, it’s like 2GB or 2.5GB.

Only on a 64bit operating system, and its closer to 3780MB that it hits the limit at.
On a 32bit operating system its around 1800MB, but by the point it reaches 1750, its probably going to crash the next time you change area’s.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Right now sitting in Claypool I’m using 1.2GB, now if this is a 32bit game with Large-address Aware it should work to ~3.5GB, if not, it’s like 2GB or 2.5GB.

Only on a 64bit operating system, and its closer to 3780MB that it hits the limit at.
On a 32bit operating system its around 1800MB, but by the point it reaches 1750, its probably going to crash the next time you change area’s.

You sure it’s 64bit. 32bit address up to 4GB (minus a bit). But applications are limited to 2GB for system stability (~2GB for system, ~2GB for application). Flagging LAA allows the app to use the full ~4GB that a 32bit program can use. That’s why it’s cautioned not to do this on a 32bit system, as you’ll run the risk of eating all the system memory; leaving none for the OS.

I’m in the same boat after the last patch.

I get random crashed every 5-10 minutes. Complete computer lock up.

I have all drivers updated. Every other game plays fine.

Intel R i7-2600k @3.70 ghz
8 GB RAM DDR3 1333mhz
Windows 7 64 bit
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560Ti

At least my gaming laptop can still play without problems, but would like play on the big screens again.

@Blaine I actually made a thread about this topic like on monday (trying to fix it and post a solution but Im making a list of all the things to try)but anyways How I have been researching Seems that using the Smartdoctor program from asus helps “solving” this problem by setting the memory around 880-900’s, and the engine 490’s -500’s. then click on set clock. If you want to try this, please report back if it worked for ya.

Please stop try to changes computer settings, you are more likely going to do more harm than good.

First, becuase of the error that every one is getting, is not to just one of the card makers(and by error the black sreecn with no BSOD) its mostly likely Guild Wars. So you are going to need to sit back and wait for them to fix it. Playing with your core’s speed is only going to void your warranty and maybe kill your card or whatever.

Now to all of you who think it is the system, please go play the game in pace. You are lucky so enjoy the game. A-net needs to make this right with the peolpe who can’t. And guess what A-net doesn’t need you to fight for them.

I’m sorry to all of you who want to play this game and can’t.

Same issue. ATI Radeon 5700 Series, but otherwise out-of-the-box Dell XPS Studio 8100. All drivers updated and Windows Updates applied.

No issues with highest graphic settings for LOTRO, TSW, SWTOR, and EQ2. Looking forward to the fix.

CapRev.1806:

Please stop try to changes computer settings, you are more likely going to do more harm than good.

First, becuase of the error that every one is getting, is not to just one of the card makers(and by error the black sreecn with no BSOD) its mostly likely Guild Wars. So you are going to need to sit back and wait for them to fix it. Playing with your core’s speed is only going to void your warranty and maybe kill your card or whatever.

Now to all of you who think it is the system, please go play the game in pace. You are lucky so enjoy the game. A-net needs to make this right with the peolpe who can’t. And guess what A-net doesn’t need you to fight for them.

I’m sorry to all of you who want to play this game and can’t.

Just lol at this comment… Wait for Anet to fix it…. Arenanet is not the main responsible of this error. This happens in WoW, Diablo 3, League of Legends and other games. Well at least those companies in their forum had the courtesy to reply in the thread where the players were posting about having those errors, like saying “hey guys we are looking into this” that way maybe us players wouldn’t have to go all over the internet trying to find a fix or try any crazy crab “solution” other ppl has tried. But hey Im very sorry If I sound upset ‘cause no official word about arenanet has been said about this error since last week when it started. I mean who says gamers need to play games? We just need to sit back and be happy for ppl that can play and feel sorry for us who can’t just while Arenanet works on it.

I really don’t understand people arguing that people should fix their machines to run the game when it seems to be the game itself is causing the problem. One does not go buy a Ford expecting to be able to pull the car apart and put it back together again or tweak it just to get it to run. It is Ford’s obligation that the machine will run reliably to satisfy their customer base. It is ANET that has failed to recognize or discover a problem that seems to affect quite a few people including me. It is solely their responsibility to provide a working model on all machines stated within their min specs requirement.

As of today, I played the game in best performance mode which is pretty necessary to avoid getting rolled by zergs not rendering in time to scoot away, and the game crashes to black screen with sounds still going or a loud buzzing sound. Then I switched back to auto-detect and played the game for hours with no crashes. I will continue to play in auto-detect mode for a few days to see if the games graphic settings is the culprit. Then I’m going to start turning down features one by one to identify the offending setting if it turns out to be stable in auto-detect.

illutian.7630:

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Right now sitting in Claypool I’m using 1.2GB, now if this is a 32bit game with Large-address Aware it should work to ~3.5GB, if not, it’s like 2GB or 2.5GB.

Only on a 64bit operating system, and its closer to 3780MB that it hits the limit at.
On a 32bit operating system its around 1800MB, but by the point it reaches 1750, its probably going to crash the next time you change area’s.

reason its lower then 4GB/2GB is block allocation used by apps.

You sure it’s 64bit. 32bit address up to 4GB (minus a bit). But applications are limited to 2GB for system stability (~2GB for system, ~2GB for application). Flagging LAA allows the app to use the full ~4GB that a 32bit program can use. That’s why it’s cautioned not to do this on a 32bit system, as you’ll run the risk of eating all the system memory; leaving none for the OS.

Yes im sure. Large addressing only makes a difference by default on x64, and allows the app to use up to 3.8GB. Without large addressing its more or less 1.8GB on x64.

on 32bit, it usually hits the limit at 1.7GB, and Large Addressing only makes a difference if you configure set increaseuserva in bcedit

increaseuserva Megabytes

Specifies the amount of memory, in megabytes, for user-mode virtual address space. This variable can have any value between 2048 (2 GB) and 3072 (3 GB) megabytes in decimal notation. Windows uses the remaining address space (4 GB minus the specified amount) as its kernel-mode address space.

Rhizo.5089:

One does not go buy a Ford expecting to be able to pull the car apart and put it back together again or tweak it just to get it to run. It is Ford’s obligation that the machine will run reliably to satisfy their customer base. It is ANET that has failed to recognize or discover a problem that seems to affect quite a few people including me. It is solely their responsibility to provide a working model on all machines stated within their min specs requirement.

one does not own a ford expecting it to run completely without maintenance, either by the owner or a garage.

Also there are many people running the same cpu, and the same gpu, with the same OS and have no problems at all. What logic are you going to apply to that? Something like this could actually be traced all the way back to the PSU. Not having enough peak amps can cause the card to fail when it begins to pull %100 load.

If I bought a brand new ford that I had been waiting years for but couldn’t run it long enough to back out of my driveway and then had people saying it’s my fault I’d be pretty kitten

I’ve been having this problem too about a week into release. At first I would just get a crash error but I could always tab back in and keep playing as long as I didn’t change zones or view a vista. Now I’ve just given up on this game because I get a black screen every minute. I don’t even have enough time to buy something from the trading post when I log in before I crash.

I’ve tried every solution in countless threads, done countless hardware tests and nothings fixed this problem. I can play other new, hardware demanding games on all high settings. People with brand new computers and all brand new hardware are getting these crashes.

Count me in on this problem too. Lastest build and lastest nvidia driver 306.97. GTX 680 on Dell U3011

I really wish some one from the support team would make a comment or at least seem like they are doing somthing. ive messaged them 4 times about this and gave them all the info they needed according to their forum posts. i bought it today hopeing to play with friends but instead i have to wait for tomorrow or according to some of your posts a week or a month to finally play a game we all paid $59.99 for. feels great just throwing that kind of money into the wind….please support team help.

most of these sound like cards who are having vrm/fet related issues due to load.

if you nVidia users google around a bit you will find many 560/570 series factory overclocked cards are having these issues with various games, they are fine in some/most games but others that really push the whole gpu (imc and the works) cause errors.

the 5770 user, i would suspect his issue could be the dell PSU if hes still using the stock one, they where not really designed for a decent or even half decent videocard…..(saying this as a tech whos seen hundreds of such systems with issues over the years)

I dont like to say this but I gotta Agree with Squall here, most of these sound like system stability issues not anets fault…

also note: i have a slew of friends who nvidia and amd hardware and none are getting this, polled them just a few moments ago, some are getting transparent ground/walls/rocks but thats culling issues with umbra…..not their gpu’s.
3 of them sent cards back for replacement because they where of the batch of 500 series with bad vrms/fets that couldnt deal with the load.

try downclocking the gpu and ram using afterburner or precision and see if it helps it cant hurt

this could also as a friend of mine just pointed out be motherboard chipsets overheating, thats harder to test without opening the system and sticking a finger to the chipset heatsink.

This black screen thing is really killing me (sometimes literally, because I’d restart the game after a crash and find myself dead.)

the screen would flicker and then just freeze and go black. The cursor would still be there though, and the music would still be playing. I’m not very good with like computer stuff, but I believe I have an nVidia GeForce GTX 660m.

Based on what I’ve read on the forums and stuff about this issue, I’ve changed the multi GPU thing to Single Display. But sadly, didn’t work.

So I don’t know, am I supposed to change some other settings, or something?
Or get my graphic card fixed, if it’s even broken?

And I JUST bought my laptop like a month ago so I’d say it’s pretty new. I only bought it cuz running the game on my Macbook was too laggy. With the new computer the game runs smoothly, almost perfectly, except for one little issue: the black screen of deaathhhh.

So yeah. I don’t really know what my point is, really. I guess I just wanted to say something. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one with this issue. Kind of like an unspoken moral support kinda thing. Not that I’d wish for anyone else to have to experience this. But yeah.

the screen would flicker and then just freeze and go black. The cursor would still be there though, and the music would still be playing. I’m not very good with like computer stuff, but I believe I have an nVidia GeForce GTX 660m.

This is classic TDR, though you’re one of the lucky ones since it didn’t crash the system in the process. Since its a laptop gpu, monitor the temperatures with hwmons onscreen display. Precision and Afterburner do not work properly o laptop chips and Unwinder in his usual arrogance, refuses to do anything about it.

Dear ANet Team!

Now, after having played flawlessly until the 11th of October (apart from some minor bugs when it comes to skill points), it isn’t even possible for me to start my game client any more.

Starting with the last update/patch, the game started crashing on a regular basis, especially when switching maps from Lion’s Arch to elsewhere. Also when changing to PvP maps (mists as well as WvWvW) the came crashes to desktop with the option to send a crash report to ANet. Apart from the crashing, also black screens are part of the daily business.

Repeatedly trying to repair my client didn’t do the trick (I even have the feeling it made it worse, judging from first just having some crashes and now not even being able to start the game).

Also cleaning up my registry of all kind of GW2 related entries and a fresh download of the game didn’t help either.

Attached you will find all relevant log-Files with the request to PLEASE fix this issue.

Thanks a lot and kind regards!

Exact same issue

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Guild-Wars-2-Random-Black-screens-crashes/first#post439218

Hello all,

I had similar issue after installing recent patch my game started crashing with a black screen, sometimes leading to a full computer restart.

I upgraded my Nvidia video driver to 306.97, but the problem persisted. Googling the issue led me to guildwars2guru.com forums. There I found solution that helped me.

Here are the steps described by NCsoft technical support to resolve any possible video driver issues. The post was originally maid by “jpublic”.

By following the steps outlined below, I managed to resolve the issues so far. I played the game with GPU-Z running and my temp did not get above 60 C.
Hope this helps.

copy of the instructions —--
At this time, we would like to ensure that you have a clean installation of your video drivers by first uninstalling them using a free program called Driver Fusion. The intent here is to allow Driver Fusion to scan your PC for left over drivers from previous installations. These left over files can often cause issues with rendering 3D applications, even if you have installed the most recent drivers revision.

To do this:

1. Please download the latest driver from the following website and save it to your desktop, but do not install it yet:
http://www.geforce.c...s/results/48847

2. Download Driver Fusion by visiting http://treexy.com – Click “Products” then select “Driver Fusion.”

3. Click “Download for Free” and save it to your desktop.

Once you have both files on your desktop, we will need to remove your currently installed drivers. To do this:

4. Navigate to “Control Panel” in Windows and select “Uninstall a program or Add/remove programs” depending on your operating system.

5. Locate and remove the following from the uninstall list: (We recommend removing them in this order)

Nvidia 3D Vision Controller Driver
Nvidia 3D Vision Driver
Nvidia PhysX System Software
Nvidia Graphics Driver

Once the removal process has completed, please double click the file “Driver_Fusion_X.X.X” to start the installation process.

6. Choose the default installation options and once installed, start “Driver Fusion.” (Note, you may have to provide administrative rights if you have User Account Control enabled)

7. Left click and highlight the following options:

AMD – Display
Intel – Display
Nvidia – Display

Do NOT check any labeled “Chipset.”

8. Once selected, click “Analyze.” This will scan your system for any AMD, Intel or Nvidia drivers and list them for you to review.

9. Once you’re list has compiled, select “Delete” to remove these entries.

At this point, you will need to reset your computer to complete this process.

Once you return to Windows:

10. Right-click the driver file you downloaded in step 1 and select “Run as Administrator.” (note, if you are on Windows XP, you will not have this option, just double click the file)

11. Once the setup file is loaded, select “Custom (Advanced)”

12. Checkmark “Perform a clean install” and click next to start the installation process.

13. Once completed, restart your machine again.

Once you return to Windows:

14. Right-click on your “Desktop” and select “Nvidia Control Panel.”

15. Click “Adjust image settings with preview” and move the slider to “Performance.”

16. Click “Apply” to save your changes.

Once completed, try logging in and playing. Should this not resolve your issue, please generate a new Game Advisor report so we can review the installation.

Regards,
Loxy
NCsoft Technical Support

Sorry, but DriverFusion doesn’t remove anything that the nvidia drivers own uninstaller can’t. Unlike the Catalyst package, which leaves behind a bunch of processes…..

To support a previous post, according to my logs, the first time this issue occurred on my system was on Oct 11th. I’m an early start player who’s played pretty much every day since I activated my account.

Hope that helps. (Hope someone’s listening…)

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Rhizo.5089:

One does not go buy a Ford expecting to be able to pull the car apart and put it back together again or tweak it just to get it to run. It is Ford’s obligation that the machine will run reliably to satisfy their customer base. It is ANET that has failed to recognize or discover a problem that seems to affect quite a few people including me. It is solely their responsibility to provide a working model on all machines stated within their min specs requirement.

one does not own a ford expecting it to run completely without maintenance, either by the owner or a garage.

We are not talking about general maintenance. We are talking about lemons.

Jhon.2064:

To support a previous post, according to my logs, the first time this issue occurred on my system was on Oct 11th. I’m an early start player who’s played pretty much every day since I activated my account.

Hope that helps. (Hope someone’s listening…)

Same here. My ArenaNet.log includes some minor crashes before the 11th of October, but those were mainly network based and some random crashes that happened only once.

Since the 11th of October (in the Logs the 13th because I didn’t really play on the 11th and 12th) the crashes with “corrupted file” /“corrupted archive” and some confusing other errors started occuring, increasing in number until my client didn’t start at all any more and was just showing crashes on client startup (what it still does).

Yesterday I tried again to repair my client resulting in a bluescreen (DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL). Knowing that this error can have different sources, I didn’t think of GW2 causing that error first, so I started checking my system for hardware and/or software/driver issues, but didn’t find any.

After that, I tried again to clean my registry of GW2 related entries and started a fresh download of the client again (over night). This resulted again in a bluescreen (MEMORY_MANAGEMENT).

I started a memtest but didn’t find any hardware related errors until now. I will run a memtest again over night to be completely sure though. Still I have to mention, that the whole system is new (bought it about two months ago) and the system NEVER showed any kind of that behaviour before, running different kinds of “high end” games. It only shows it since the 11th of October and only with GW2.

What I noticed when reading my Logfiles (please see some posts above) was, that all crashes since the 11th of October show a Memory usage of about 60-80% (of 8GB RAM). Another thing I noticed is, that some crashes are caused by the game not being able to write to certain memory addresses.

I hope that helps a bit in finding the problem and fixing it.

It does not mean your memory isn’t faulty, if memtest passes.

But its more likely to be a issue with the configuration of the memory controller and dram timings.

The varying crashes does imply a hardware issue, either configuration wise or hardware itself.

I know that an error free memtest doesn’t necessarily imply a healthy hardware or softwar configuration and I won’t claim that my system is perfect because I can’t prove it. The bluescreens can even be caused by driver issues (I updated many drivers after the GW2 client started crashing to fix the client crashing, maybe I caused my system crashes with those updates, I will rollback today and see if it helps).

But even if those bluescreens have nothing to do with GW2 itself, there are still the “normal” game crashes 64bit system users are suffering from, since ANet patched the crashes for 32bit users.

My game started crashing on the 13th of October (first time I played after the patch). The crashes were limited to map switching, but the number of crashes increased with every try to repair my client until I couldn’t even start it any more.

My Logfile is talking a lot about currupted files, 30 to be precise, and every time after repairing the client it’s the same all over again… I never come past repairing and afterwards trying to log-in. Then the client crashes, I get offered to send a crash report and repair my client and the fun starts all over again. repairing → client crash → …

And that’s an issue many other users have since the last patch and this shouldn’t have anything to do with the hardware itself (or at least I hope that, because otherwise there would be many users out there with faulty hardware…)

This is not a software related issue guys, it is a hardware issue..

Remove the cpu/gpu fan and clean it, until you see no more dusk in it..

Goodluck..