Guild Wars 2

The story behind this:
My old graphic card recently stopped working and I was forced to buy a new one (GTX 760), since then my PC started crashing while playing GW2. I’ve already seen some threads considering the same problem with different Nvidia cards, but I haven’t seen a working solution so far, so I hope to specify this error and it’s source better.
Also one thing to mention is that I only get those crashes in PvP, neither in PvE nor in WvW (most likely because I reduce the gfx-settings for WvW).
(I additionally use the SweetFx shader injector, but this is NOT the cause of the crash, since it makes absolutely no difference in the crashing intervals etc. I also disabled this for most of the testing)

The crash details:
The screen turns into a single color (I already had black, white purple, blue and pink…), the PC stops responding (hardcrash) and the soundcard plays the last miliseconds in a loop.
I also had some softcrashes where the screen also turned into a color, but the PC started responding again after a few seconds, the sound usually continues normal except a short stuttering (through one softcrash i even managed to get a GW crash-report, yay).

So where does the error come from?
It is most unlikely caused by the Rig (gfx-card/PSU) as some people have suggestet all over the forum, and I’ve found a few indicators for that. I personally think it is either a bug in the game or in the driver.

Testing 1: Why it is most unlikely to be the graphic card:
First of all, I’ve run Battlefield 3 and the Battlefield 4 beta on high/ultra specs (msaa turned off, of course) and I had no crashes there, while my Rig gets hotter than in GW.
Second, I ran some tests (GPU-Z logs attached):

• chkdsk and MemTest to ensure that the error is not caused somewhere other than expected
• FurMark to ensure the gfx-card can stand the temperature and the stress
• memtestG80 to ensure that the gfx-card memory is fine
• OOCT as another stress thest.

The results are:

• there have been no crashes while benchmarking/testing
• the HDD, RAM, gfx-card-RAM are fine
• the gfx-card can handle the benchmarks without problems

Testing 2: Why it is most unlikely to be the PSU:
Not knowing how to test the PSU better than to max out the Settings and additionally use SweetFx (also tried this without SweetFx, it makes no difference), I did this and played a few rounds of PvP. This should normally increase the power-consumption of the whole PC and if the PSU was bad it would definitely crash the System, at least in my opinion. Expecting the PC to crash i played for about 2 hours PvP, after that a bit WvW (on max settings) and some PvE (Mad Labyrinth zerging) and I didn’t get a single crash. The range of FPS was from 6 to about 50 (50 only in almost empty areas). At the moment I’m not quite sure if the game does not crash on these settings at all or just later (normally I have these crashes after about 2 rounds of PvP), but it clearly can’t be missing power of my PSU.

Logging the stats:
As I wrote I logged the benchmarks/teste with GPU-Z, but I also managed to log a hardcrash, as well as a softcrash and the normal GW running without a crash (I can’t detect a significant cause for the crash there, but one can see the softcrash beeing logged in that file)

The log-files are:

• GPU-Z Sensor Log_furmark.txt the FurMark log
• GPU-Z Sensor Log_memtestG80.txt the GPU-memtest log
• GPU-Z Sensor Log_ooct.txt the OOCT log

• GPU-Z Sensor Log_gw2_(crash) crash at my normal settings
• GPU-Z Sensor Log_gw2_(nocrash) no crash at my normal settings
• GPU-Z Sensor Log_gw2_ss_sfx_high_(semi-crash) softcrash with SweetFx, supersampling and high (not max) settings

• softcrash_report.txt the GW crash-report I managed to recieve at a softcrash

(note: these log files are a bit shortened)
The windows event-viewer only shows “error 41, Kernel power” and nothing more.

Additional information:
My Rig:

• Screen: LG 1980×1200
• CPU: AMD Phenom™ II X6 1090T Processor
• RAM: 4 × 4gb GeIL Enhance Corsa (DDR3-1333)
• Mainboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-D3 (Driver 327.23)
• Graphic card: Gainward GTX760 Phantom (2gb DDR5)
• PSU: Rasurbo GAP656V2 650W
• Case: CoolerMaster Elite 311 with 1 additional fan (so no heat problem)
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Tested settings:

• Normal: all settings on high, native sampling, maximum character limit and detail, effect-lod, best texture filtering, depth blur, high-res character textures, no vsync
• High: all settings on high, supersampling, maximum character limit and detail, effect-lod, best texture filtering, depth blur, high-res character textures, no vsync
• Max: maximum settings at all parameters, supersampling, depth blur, high-res character textures, no vsync, no effect-lod (+ SweetFx)

Some final thoughts
I personally think this is somehow a driver- (or engine) bug, since I am not able to reproduce this crash in any other way (by help of any other program, so far).
Definitely weird is that this crash appears (for me, until now) only in PvP (I should also mention that I play more PvE than PvP, using the same settings), and only on my normal settings (I also had a crash on a bit lower settings but the crash-interval was bigger, sadly I don’t remember the exact settings).
I’ll definitely try messing around with settings some more and I’ll keep posting the results (if usefull) in this thread, so we can find the cause for the crash.

This is a detailed crash-report as I am experiencing this crash, so if there are any similarities or differences to your (colored/black/white/etc-screen) crashes post them, if possible with a good amount of informaion, or if someone knows a possible solution post it too

Im having the same issue and it cropped up since updating my Windows 8 to Windows 8.1.

I do know when I did update my graphics driver got updated to the latest version and I know I had to revert back to an older Nvidia driver when I was Windows 8.0 as it caused these same issues but even reverting it back now has no effect. Ive only noticed it happening when there is alot of bodies around in WvW and ive yet to see it occur in PVE. It’s definitely a graphics driver crash as sometimes if I wait long enough it will come back with the warning down near the clock telling me so but other times the machine is frozen and requires me to hit the power button.

I have the exact same issue you’re having, Authir. To match a bit:

Setup:
-Dual 27" monitors @ 1080p; game mostly played in windowed mode (results of crash the same)
-Intel 2700k OC’d @ 5.2GHz, Corsair H100 enclosed hydro cooling
-16GB G.Skill RipJaw series RAM @ 18xx Freq (OC)
-ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z Motherboard
-Evga GTX 670 4GB GDDR5 – Factory default
-Corsair HX850
-CM HAF X w/ all the extra fans.
-Windows 7 Professional x64, Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows 7 RT Edition x64
-Intel 520 SSD, Kingston HyperX SSD, extra media storage (14TBs on a couple media bays — JBOD)
-Creative Soundblaster Z-series

Needless to say, I’ve tried a multitude of things. I’ve gone as far as trying different operating systems aside from my defaulted ones above (different work environments), I’ve also tried custom sets of Nvidia drivers on top of the default provided ones. The crashes are completely random. I’ll go a full week without them, then I’ll get 3 in quick succession. I’ve been playing the game since a little after release, I didn’t have these issues back then. Of course, I have NO ISSUES on any other game.

On a rare case, my graphic drivers -will- restart themselves, but that’s very seldom. I also uses SweetFX, and I’ve enabled/disabled them—as well as with F.Lux, since that has known issues as well. I’ve also reset my Mobo settings to stock, I’ve underclocked, and gosh how many other things I can’t remember. I dislike my computer crashing, see. Whenever I play GW2 now, I shut down my media bays in fear of file corruption (yes, they are in constant use). But, it’s w/e. I’m just another voice out here, to add to the count!

I played GW on maximum settings for the last 2 days, no crash, just some framedrops and a bit low fps at some places. I’ll try reducing the settings next week.

I also looked closer at the crash report and the error-log is full with:
‘CtlText::Markup() ERROR: Invalid tag name detected. Context: “<”.’
I doubt somebody here knows what that means?

Ok, I recently updated to the newest graphic-driver (331.58), joined a PvP match and the game instantly crashed, blackscreen but pc still responding also no sound loop. Windows Eventviewer says that the display-driver “nvlddmkm” crashed. This is also my first crash on maximum settings… guess the settings don’t matter.

Authir.7431:

Ok, I recently updated to the newest graphic-driver (331.58), joined a PvP match and the game instantly crashed, blackscreen but pc still responding also no sound loop. Windows Eventviewer says that the display-driver “nvlddmkm” crashed. This is also my first crash on maximum settings… guess the settings don’t matter.

Just on that nvlddmkm error, I came across this last night when looking for fix to another issue, maybe it can help you.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/413110/geforce-drivers/the-nvlddmkm-error-what-is-it-an-fyi-for-those-seeing-this-issue/

On another note, I downloaded and installed the 331.58 drivers today and the game was rock solid all day, it didn’t crash once, and that’s unusual for me.

Hi, thanks for the link, haven’t found that so far. I just did a clean install of the driver as mentioned in the thread. No crash so far, hope that fixed it.