Guild Wars 2

Yesterday I upgraded my graphics card to the GTX 660 Ti, but when I try to play Guild Wars I’d go past the character selection screen and when ingame, after a few seconds my computer would just cut power and restart. (For those few seconds I’d still be able to move around the world, and the ‘crash’ normally occurs after a spell is done casting). I’ve tried limiting my framerate to 60, I’ve tried everything they said about the black screen problem (even though that’s not the problem). I would take a video but my computer won’t save anything when it restarts. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Intel® Core™ i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Computers turning themselves off or rebooting like this are usually a sign of either a heat-problem or a power-problem.

Since you say it’s happening within only a few seconds of getting ingame, I think it’s less likely to be overheating – it’s still possible, but then the graphics card must have a serious cooling problem or else it wouldn’t get to the critical temperature (the point at which the PC will shut down to prevent damage to the hardware) so quickly. It’s a good idea regardless to install some temperature monitoring software (like HWmonitor) to check the temps of all your components and make sure none of them are approaching the failsafe limits when you run GW2. If you don’t have 2 monitors, you should run GW2 in windowed mode so it continues to run at full speed while you alt-tab out to check the temperatures in HWmonitor.

The other possibility is that you’ve got a power problem, more specifically that your power supply either doesn’t have enough juice or isn’t stable enough to properly power the entire system at the higher CPU/GPU loads you get when you run GW2. Since this started happening after you upgraded the GPU (which is a component with a high power draw) your existing power supply might be insufficient to support the new card, especially if the graphics card you upgraded from was significantly less powerful and your system was originally a prebuilt setup.

To really determine if power could be an issue I’d need to know what power supply you have, both the wattage and the brand + model. If you look inside the case most of the time these things should be listed on the side of the power supply. If that’s not the case then you might be dealing with a cheap PSU. If your computer is a prebuilt system from Dell or HP or someone else, does the computer itself have a model number that I could look up?

For a GTX 660 ti the minimum requirement for the PSU is 450W and 24 amps on the +12V rail and the PSU should be at least halfway decent quality (because the cheaper PSU’s often list specs they can’t actually meet).

If your PSU fails those specs, that is most likely the source of your problem. Even if it seem to meet the specs though, the PSU might still be the source of your problem (it could be wear and tear, it could be a cheaper unit that’s highly unstable). The best way to completely rule the PSU out is to run a stresstest on your hardware (google OCCT – install that and run it).

What to do next hinges on whether the stresstest fails or passes. If it fails and you get the same reboot you get in GW2, it’s almost certainly a hardware-related issue – if it passes it’s probably a software issue, though outside of an auto-restart BSOD I can’t think of many situations where the PC would reboot.

I have had a similar problem this past week with my computer suddenly shutting down after being in-game for a couple of minutes and then it struggles to restart.

After speaking with someone from technical support, they found that the problem was an issue with my graphics card, which is also from Nvidia (555 I believe?), which was forcing the computer to shut down. They have me running two monitoring programs while I am using the computer, TechPowerUp GPU-Z and Real Temp GT. I am expecting a further phone call from them today or tomorrow to discuss the best way to proceed.

@Amarinth – You have some good points, and thanks for the suggestions. I ran a stress-test (Prime95) with Core Temp today and saw that each of my CPU cores were being pushed to ~80 degrees celcius, so I’m assuming my CPU is overheating. I’ll go get myself a new cooler tomorrow and hopefully that will fix the problem. Thanks

What Amarinth.8534 said pritty much sums it up.

Check your temps ..its unlikely though becouse if its happening really quikly then unless the GPU heatsink has fallen away form the chip, it shouldnt heat up that quikly.

The PSU is overlooked by alot of people when upgrading a single part, specialy if its a prebuilt computer. I personaly sugest a 600w minimum to be safe, bassicaly so that the PSU doesnt have to run full pelt all the time, it also then gives you room for more upgrades.
However if ur short on cash, make sure you work out the absolute minimum you need then add 20% ontop. So check what your PCU pulls at full load, and what your gpu pulls. Then add 20% and by the closest watt PSU . so if it works about at 465w, buy a 500 watt, if it works out at 410watt , buy a 450 watt. etc

Do you have Microsoft Security Essentials installed?

Go to your start bar, in the Search Programs and Files bar, write “View Event Log” and press enter. If you see anything near the time that your computer crashed that says “Microsoft Security Client OOBE” or something like that, follow the steps on this page:

Try to uninstall MSE, because there are known issues with it cause BSOD and hard reboots. Also, try this process:

run ‘services.msc’ and hit enter (don’t type the quotes)
scroll down to find ‘program compatibility assistant service’ (PcaSvc)
right-click and open the ‘properties’
change the ‘startup type’ from ‘automatic’ to ‘disabled’
save and reboot

BTW, if you uninstall MSE, make sure you use another firewall/virus protector. Avast is a good free one you can try, and there are no major known issues with it, like there are with MSE.

Amarinth.8534:

Computers turning themselves off or rebooting like this are usually a sign of either a heat-problem or a power-problem.

Since you say it’s happening within only a few seconds of getting ingame, I think it’s less likely to be overheating – it’s still possible, but then the graphics card must have a serious cooling problem or else it wouldn’t get to the critical temperature (the point at which the PC will shut down to prevent damage to the hardware) so quickly. It’s a good idea regardless to install some temperature monitoring software (like HWmonitor) to check the temps of all your components and make sure none of them are approaching the failsafe limits when you run GW2. If you don’t have 2 monitors, you should run GW2 in windowed mode so it continues to run at full speed while you alt-tab out to check the temperatures in HWmonitor.

The other possibility is that you’ve got a power problem, more specifically that your power supply either doesn’t have enough juice or isn’t stable enough to properly power the entire system at the higher CPU/GPU loads you get when you run GW2. Since this started happening after you upgraded the GPU (which is a component with a high power draw) your existing power supply might be insufficient to support the new card, especially if the graphics card you upgraded from was significantly less powerful and your system was originally a prebuilt setup.

To really determine if power could be an issue I’d need to know what power supply you have, both the wattage and the brand + model. If you look inside the case most of the time these things should be listed on the side of the power supply. If that’s not the case then you might be dealing with a cheap PSU. If your computer is a prebuilt system from Dell or HP or someone else, does the computer itself have a model number that I could look up?

For a GTX 660 ti the minimum requirement for the PSU is 450W and 24 amps on the +12V rail and the PSU should be at least halfway decent quality (because the cheaper PSU’s often list specs they can’t actually meet).

If your PSU fails those specs, that is most likely the source of your problem. Even if it seem to meet the specs though, the PSU might still be the source of your problem (it could be wear and tear, it could be a cheaper unit that’s highly unstable). The best way to completely rule the PSU out is to run a stresstest on your hardware (google OCCT – install that and run it).

What to do next hinges on whether the stresstest fails or passes. If it fails and you get the same reboot you get in GW2, it’s almost certainly a hardware-related issue – if it passes it’s probably a software issue, though outside of an auto-restart BSOD I can’t think of many situations where the PC would reboot.

I’m not sure if you’ll see this since the thread is ten days old now, but that was a very informative post, thank you for the information. My friend has been having a similar issue with the game, and we may have to try some more thorough checks. However, the strangest part about his problem is that his PC runs somewhat higher-end games without issue (such as Planetside 2 and CoD: BO2) so I’d imagine the same problems would happen while playing those games if it was due to a heat or power issue. GW2 is the ONLY game that causes this on his PC, and so far he hasn’t really been able to play because of it.

I don’t know if this will help diagnose the problem or not, but every now and then he will get the game to play for twenty minutes or so only to get a BSOD (instead of a straight computer reboot without a BSOD like in this thread). I’ve had him check his dump files and he’s received stop errors 09c and 0124, caused by ‘hal.dll.’ According to my own research this is pointing to the likelihood of hardware issues as well, but again, the weirdest thing is that these only occur when he plays GW2. His PC is only about a year old, he bought it pre-built from newegg, and has been pretty consistently stable since he’s owned it.

Its odd but a 09c 124 BSOD is what OC’ers often see when they dont have enough or have to much voltage going.
Increase/decrease Vcore or QPI/VTT he will have to test to see which one it is.

Though im not sure how much control u will have over those options as the CPU is not a K version.