Guild Wars 2

So for now the devs can only guess that people have hardware problems, but I find that highly unlikely to be the only issue. When I first installed the game on a brand new system i built it ran fine for a night of solid gaming, then errors popped up the next day. I had done a very basic windows (no bios updates for my asus p979x mb) install just to get up and running in a hurry. Installed no drivers besides intel inf and lan & gtx680 vid drivers. Installed gw2 from known good copy on external hd. No errors found in memtest86+, but i did indeed find file system errors on my 2 brand new ssds. The system seemed to run flawlessly in everything except gw2. Tried recopying game from good version. Immediate crashes, still couldnt play at all.

I tried a secure wipe and reinstall. This time I used mb shipped drivers (on included dvd) instead of downloading, installed all drivers from the disk. Allowed windows updates to complete, copied over gw2. This time I got errors right off the bat.

Another reinstall, went back to barebones install same as first time, only inf lan and grpx drivers install. Played for a week with no issues, then started crashing again. Recopied gw2 known good version from other older pc that has never had issues with the game via external hd again. Game still immediately crashed on first attempt to load. Definitely thinking its a driver issue at this point, possibly introduced by conflicts from windows updates I allowed to come thru after that week.

Internet research turns up issues with newer systems chipsets & constant file corruption, relating to which intel RSTe (rapid storeage tech, enterprise) drivers are installed. Turns out older versions included in win7 are much slower, and new versions need to be installed at initial windows installation. Old versions particualrly cause problems with faster ssds. The drivers cannot be updated after install, or rather they can be updated but you wont benefit from them. There is also a conflict between older mb bios versions and the newest RSTe drivers. Solution, flash bios, install latest RSTe at windows install. The below link may not completely apply to everyone, but it might help some of you. Pay attention to cisco guy’s posts. Most people probably installed the old drivers, not knowing any better, like myself

My conclusion is that I was fine untill i updated some drivers that conflicted with the old rste drivers. old drivers worked with other old drivers but not old rste with new. Gw2 is super sensitive to this, although i probably eventually would have acquired windows file system errors that screwed other programs too.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1668485

Now my only issue with the game is that 3d output wont initialize on game startup in stereoscopic mode unless i open another 3d vision application first. This one for sure is a gw2 issue.

I wish I understood your solution, but unfortunately I am a bit slow. Could you please make a very noob-friendly explanation, as I believe in you and I havent tried this “fix” yet :-)

Ok, there is a way to check if you have the rste drivers installed properly. Go into bios, and set sata config to raid, not ahci. Reboot. If your system bluescreens/crashes immediately on windows boot then you dont have the new rste drivers. If you dont have/arent using sata this is probably not your issue… it’ll probably only happen to newer pc builds.

Basically the fix will involve wiping your drives and reinstalling windows. I will assume you’re running windows 7 or 8. If you are completely noob at installing operating systems it might be good to find someone who’s done it before…. otherwise,

- go to http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?lang=eng&changeLang=true&DwnldID=20940#help

- download the rste driver, extract/unzip it and put it on a usb flash drive.
- go to your motherboard manufacturer’s website and download the latest bios version. Also recommend downloading all motherboard drivers for sound, lan, usb3, whatever else your board may have, but not the RSTE drivers they include, especially not if u have the same MB as me, the asus p9x79. Put all those drivers on the usb with the rste driver. Follow thier instructions on how to flash your bios. Might be a good idea to go into bios first and make note of all your settings, timings etc, because they will get wiped. After flashing bios, go into bios, hit f5 to restore default settings, then change whatever settings you had back to what they were. If in doubt just leave them all on default. I like to turn off all features I dont use though, like bluetooth etc.

-in bios, find sata configuration and set it to raid. You can return later and turn it back to ahci if you are not running your hds in raid, but it wont really affect you either way. The purpose here is to force you to install the driver at the right point.

- insert win7 disk and boot from it. may need to set boot order in bios so that dvd comes before hd. Some people like to download a win 7 install package, put it on a usb and install from there. That is faster, not counting download time, and you can put the rste driver on the same usb drive… im not going to go into how to do it this way, but you might be able to figure it out.

- As win 7 setup boots it will tell you that a driver is missing. Insert the usb drive (make sure it is a known usb2 port, not usb3. 2 is usualyl a white port, and 3 is probably blue), and browse to the folder you put the rste driver on. Click ok. Next step is semi important or your system might not boot correctly without the usb drive plugged in. After the driver is installed and you get to a screen that asks you what drive to install windows on, hit the back arrow in the upper left of the screen, then remove the usb drive. Go forward again. Hit f5 to refresh. Delete all partitions on your intended win7 drive. Format the drive, and select that drive for win install. From there you should proceed as normal with windows install. Do not allow windows to turn on automatic updates just yet. After it finishes, install intel chipset drivers first, then vid card, lan, usb3, audio, whatever is left (im using latest nvidia beta drivers 306.02 btw ), turn on windows updates, and allow all of them to complete.

Copy/download new version of gw2 and hope that you had the same problem that I did. Hope it works for some of you!