Guild Wars 2

hey, a friend of mine got a serious problem. Her client is constantly crashing to desktop leading to a a nice “send report window”. As I mentioned it happens, wen she travels to other areas, that means:
- traveling by asura portals
- changing instances (fractals)
- traveling to different maps by waypoint

I’ve attached her arenanet.log for further details. Help would really be appreciated.

system roundabouts:
windows 7, 32 bit
4gb ram
ATI HD 4xxx graphics card

On that note, why does “Best Performance” put the shadows on “low” rather than “none”?

Have similar issues as OP, but running the game in full screen mode and best performance does seem to have a positive effect.

Ashley, I’m currently running Win7-32bit, Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz, 4 gig RAM and 550 Ti video card with every … and I mean EVERY … GW2 graphics parameter set to the very lowest setting and I still regularly get out-of-memory crashes. Clearly a 64-bit OS and more RAM would provide more margin, but I would like to point out that the official GW2 minimum recommended hardware calls for much less capable hardware and only 2 gig of RAM. Apparently regular crashes to desktop don’t fall under ArenaNet’s criteria for minimum acceptable performance.

As far as I know she tried best performance, lowest graphics settings, too, yeah :/

I have this same issue only its gotten a little worse. now randomly it kicks me out about every 15-30 minutes or so and yes it is an out of memory crash however i have turned my graphics to best performance and it still occurs.

I have been getting these “Out of Memory” crashes since the game released. I crashed a few times in Beta but that was due to being Beta so I don’t really count those towards this issue. I have always run the game at lowest setting for everything and I get “Out of Memory” crashes at least 2 times a day.. so far I am on crash number 2 and have only been playing a mere hour and a half. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to portal somewhere, rez, change characters, just standing there, or capping something that I will crash. I would understand if its because of so many ppl in an area (i.e. WvW), but when I am literally JUST standing there doing nothing and I crash, is when it gets really annoying. What I fail to understand is how my bf never crashes and my computer is better. How does that make any sense? I love this game and I wish that anet would figure this out because the issue is getting worse and worse. I have gone to maybe a few crashes through out the week to this happening daily and multiple times.

So i have been playing for an hour or so and no crashes this is what i ended up doing… (make sure your graphics settings are at best performance not lowest settings)
and run a FlushDnS.

windows button on your keyboard and while holding it press the R key
type cmd
in the command prompt type ipconfig/flushdns

see if that works.

I experienced the same issue quite recently. I have been using “Best Performance” setting from the launch, but the problem only comes few weeks ago. Not everytime, but very frequently.

Any other tips than lowering display options and flushdns?

Same issue here but for some reason seems to be getting worse in last few weeks

Latest NVIDIA drivers / 32 bit windows 7
- approx 30% risk of crash to desktop every time I change areas

(Most recently crashed at end of long personal story quest – which means I need to do area again from the start)

Is this acknowledged as a bug/design issue or is the “fix” to run at video settings which are less than optimum visually or install a 64 bit OS ?

I did not buy GW2 to run it on reduced graphics when it has such wonderful art design

On related topic I wonder what is done with the automated error messages which my system is telling me that it is sending to Arenanet every time this happens ?

Sorkas.1865:

Same issue here but for some reason seems to be getting worse in last few weeks

Latest NVIDIA drivers / 32 bit windows 7
- approx 30% risk of crash to desktop every time I change areas

(Most recently crashed at end of long personal story quest – which means I need to do area again from the start)

Is this acknowledged as a bug/design issue or is the “fix” to run at video settings which are less than optimum visually or install a 64 bit OS ?

I did not buy GW2 to run it on reduced graphics when it has such wonderful art design

On related topic I wonder what is done with the automated error messages which my system is telling me that it is sending to Arenanet every time this happens ?

I had the same problem using the same system set-up. I’ve been posting how I fixed the problem on a few similar topics.

Just to be totally clear: the fix below worked to fix my out-of-memory errors on a 32-bit windows system with an NVIDIA graphics board. I’m not as bold as to claim this will fix it for everyone, but I recommend people with a similar system to give it a try. Having gotten the disclaimer out of the way, let me quote myself:

I’ve had the same problem for a while, and found some advice for it that helped me get rid of it. If your issue is caused by the same factors as mine was, it might help you too. If you’re running Windows 7 on 32-bit with an NVIDIA graphics board, you might want to give this a try.

usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=9583842&linkID=9240697

(You’ll have to copy/paste that link into your browser manually.)

It describes how to make more system memory available to applications. It’s a support page for a different software product, but the actions it describes are related to general Windows behavior and also benefit GW2.

Here’s the relevant part:

To enable the 3GB switch on Windows Vista™ or Windows 7:

1. Right-click Command Prompt in the Accessories program group of the Start menu. Click Run as Administrator.
2. At the command prompt, enter “bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072”
3. Restart the computer.

Read the link carefully though, you might need to undo this change if your system starts misbehaving in other way. The link also has 3-step instructions of how to turn it back off.

Also, setting your resolution to “Windowed Fullscreen” in the in-game video options appears to improve things, if you’re not running like that already.

I hope this helps someone.

Thanks Manasa Devi – I will try that tonight.

- Update – Proposed fix has worked well – no crashes in 3 days !

My game was running fine before the last big patch few days ago, ever since I got that patch, my game started to crash at map loading screen on a frequent bases.

Did the new patch increased the requirement for system memory, cuz after the game updated, when I alt-tap out, everything else seem to react slower than usual, indicating that there is not enough memory, which has never happened before this patch.

I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and suggest running the game in windowed mode if you haven’t already. To OP, what processor do you have? If it’s anything like AMD Anthlon 5500+ or something, it’s probably a processor problem that occurs with a select handful of people due to multi-core processing conflicts. This has happened on other games, such as Borderlands, causing users to crash when moving to another area at the loading screen.

I’ve got the same problems here; the game crashing to desktop when changing zone. It always happens after playing for a longer time in different zones, so before entering any dungeon I completely restart GW2 to prevent possible crashes during the dungeon. That workaround works well for me, except for Fractals which sometimes crashes on me no matter if it’s the first thing I do after starting to play.

For some reason, it seems to help to alt-tab every now and then and wait for windows to write a swap file. I alt-tab back to GW2 when I no longer hear read/write actions made by the harddisk. Doing this seems to allow me to play longer without crashes.

My system’s a Core2Duo with 3GB of memory and Vista 32bits.

I have the same problem from time to time.

And it cannot come from an “out of memory” problem or 32 bit limitation.
My system is in 64bit, I have a quad core processor and 8gb of ram. Whenever I play, only GW2 and mumble are running.

I have the very same problem since August.

The only thing that helps my PC is turning off graphics to minimum.

Worst thing is that client refuses to restart after such a crash, disables half Windows functions that usually leads to hard reset. I’ve noticed there are few posts about that problem on the forum as well. With no solution.

Try disabling multi/dual core processing via task manager for gw2 and try running it in windows mode.

GW2 is more CPU reliant, and is more optimized for single core processing.

Hope to hear back from people who actually try to take people’s advice and not whine about it and continue to complain about a perpetual problem in isolated incidents.

I do not think going to single core is a viable option. I did not upgrade my system for 32 bit to 64 bit to go back to my old configuration.

Meia.6907:

I do not think going to single core is a viable option. I did not upgrade my system for 32 bit to 64 bit to go back to my old configuration.

What version bit of Windows has no relevance to the processing unit installed on your machine. I’m talking hardware configuration; you’re talking software configuration.

Instructions:
Fire up guild wars 2
Fire up task manager
go to gw2.exe or whatever and right click → set affinity → check off all other cpu except for 1 or 2. (not cpu1 or cpu2, just whatever is here).
Run the game. See if it helps.

I just heard from someone that the link in my earlier post didn’t work. I can’t get it to work properly with this forum’s external redirection warning system. You’ll have to copy/paste it into your browser address bar. I edited my earlier post to make this clear.

Update on this one – I tried the change in Windows 7 (32bit) suggested by Manasa Devi earlier here and I have had zero crashes when changing zones now for 3 days – i.e. issue is resolved !

Thank you !