Guild Wars 2

I HAVE FOUND THE SOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM.

ALL HAIL SHANKS R US

LAVISH PRAISE UPON HIS POST: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/SOLUTION-Black-Screen-Crash-Fix-Finally/4866436/quote

Shanks R Us.2489:

I’m posting here because I’ve finally found a solution to an age old problem. Although I don’t require support, I’m hoping the forum staff leaves the thread (if nothing else, makes a new thread with the information & stickies it) so that the many others facing this issue can find it. For many months, the lack of a solution to this problem was what was keeping me from playing the game.

What the problem was

You have an AMD radeon graphics card. Randomly, while playing the game, your screen suddenly goes black and your monitor says no input. The computer is still running and you can still hear music / background noise – kind of like what you’d expect to happen if your monitor was suddenly disconnected from your PC. The only way to gain access to your monitor again is to manually restart the computer.

Things you’ve probably tried
Note: If you haven’t done these, try them first.

-Updated drivers
-Re-installed GW2
-Ran GW2 in windowed mode
-Ran GW2 as admin
-Ran GW2 -repair
-Disabled some startup programs
-Tried using a different router / directly connected to modem

What worked for me

I’m not 100% sure if this will work for everyone else, but it did for me. I have had this issue for well over a year and have contacted ArenaNet about it multiple times. Nothing suggested has ever worked, up until this. I ran across this fix on a forum for another game; the user was complaining about the same issues I was having.

Here’s what you have to do:

Open up your AMD Catalyst Control Center
Make sure you have advanced view enabled
Click on “Performance”
Choose “AMD Overdrive”
Bring your GPU clock settings down, to around 750 MHz

This is what it should look like: http://i.imgur.com/jUQt8sR.png

What was causing the issue

After some tinkering, I found out what it was exactly that was causing the crash. Basically, fire. Whenever I had fire on my screen (either from players, like a flamethrower, or from a torch on the map) I could hear my GPU humming more loudly. When I turned away, it would calm down. Lowering my clock settings stopped this, and I have yet to crash since I’ve made these changes.

Hopefully this solves your problems!

Shankes. I love you, you beautiful person.

This post needs to be stickied.

Sir. you may be a genius. I did what you suggested, hopped on my engineer and started blasting my flamethrower. I even popped the shaders back up to max and did it (which was usually an insta-crash) and so far nothing. I’ll play around on my engy for a while and see if this trend of not-crashing continues.

Welp, I’ve now discovered it is -anybody’s- flamethrower. I joined up with a buddy who had recently made an engineer and was toting the flame belcher and whilst we valiently slew some jungle grubs my computer gave out on me. I can pretty confidently state that it is flames that cause me to crash. At least some of them.

Updating Main post with all information so far.

My bad then. I went to download dx9, it popped up the installer and immediately finished, I assumed it was because I had dx11 already on my system. I thought dx just had all of the previous versions along with and that’s what had happened. Either way, I have the latest of dx9 and dx11. :/

moonstarmac.4603:

If you are using Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1 my suggestion is to go to microsoft.com and download the latest DX 9 package and install it. I had this issue with my 6870 in other games, but after installing the DX9 package it was fixed.

I’m not able to install anything DX9 since my computer already has DX11 on it.

I’ve also tried every available driver for my graphics card I can get my hands on that comes from sites I trust.

I also just crashed on my Ranger during the quest “The Source of Orr”; during one of the cinematics of all things. So my crashes aren’t relegated to -just- my engineer, but busting out the flamethrower is the quickest way to test for a crash.

Ansau.7326:

Your problem is quite rare. As you describe, the issue seems to be the lighting of the flamethrower.
- Does it crash no matter which shaders option you choose?
- Have you tested different amd drivers to see if this problem happens in all?
- Have you tested if it crashes with another engi (different race, gender, hight…).

- yes
- just tried the omega drivers, going to try a different one now
- out of character slots – I’ll see if I can get on my wife’s account later

muslumgurseks.4951:

Have you guys tried to check whether or not you are running latest bios on your GPU and Mobo? Also reverting overclocks (aside from factory ones) might help.

I’m not sure why playing with the bios would be useful? I could be missing something but playing around with that isn’t something to be taken lightly.
I also am not overclocking my system, so nothing to revert there.

Ansau.7326:

Try using older amd drivers, like 14.9 or some betas. A lot of people have had problems with the omega drivers.

I’m actually using driver 14.301.1001.0. No Omega drivers here.

Keep throwing suggestions at me, please. I’m giving each a try at this point.

I am able to play with most of my settings up, except for Shaders. Setting Shaders to the lowest setting and running as an admin had fixed my problems up until logging on my engineer last night.

Update:

I had set my shader settings to low and have been running GW as an admin. Everything has been fine the past few weeks as I’ve been leveling my ranger/warrior/elementalist/ect. I haven’t touched my engineer. Tonight I decided to pop on her for a while to attempt the pvp daily for an engineer win. Less than 2 minutes into the match with my flamethrower a blowing my computer crashed again. I don’t really understand -why- my game is crashing. Lately I’ve been all over the place with my Ranger, including doing world bosses such as the Fire Elemental. Anybody who has ever done one of the bosses know it’s a giant zerg fest of all different classes. But I’m fine unless -my- engineer is running around torching things now.

Welp, I don’t know if I’ve solved my issue (you posted a link to this post on my issue*) but I don’t think I’ve crashed in a few days with some on off playing. I set my shader stat to the lowest setting in graphics and I ran GW2 as an administrator (I went into settings and configured it to always do this, but you can try with the right click, “run as…” option).
I don’t know if it was or the other or both, but my ranger hasn’t crashed, as mentioned. Give it a try?

*aforementioned post
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/PC-Game-crashing-computer/first#content

Welp, here’s an update. I downloaded a neat program called speedfan to monitor all of my hardware. I windowed GW, logged on my engineer, set graphics to autodect and started flaming things. My GPU temp jumped up to 60C, but remained steady there with my CPU at ~52C. My CPU usage bounced from ~27% to ~52% and the voltage from my power supply remained constant and at appropriate levels. Up until I crashed, at least. Upon reset of the computer, and reopening the program, all of the temperatures are at appropriate, low levels.

I’m at a loss. I got GW to play with potato settings with everything set to low the other night for about ~3.5 hours, but I still got one of my black crashes in there.

Well, the most common game is world of warcraft, which runs on max settings. Skyrim can also run on max. Shadow of Mordor can run on high. Titanfall runs on max settings. GW2 cannot run on medium.

I’ll try a memory test after dinner.

Initiaaly, yes, it does sound like my PSU is going, but if it were, -all- my games would be crashing my computer. last time it went I couldn’t play anything for more than 15 minutes. Unless the EVGA 600B is bias against GW, I don’t think it’s the PSU. I plan on picking up a multimeter later to double check, but I’m doubtful that my issue lies there.

I looked at event viewer, no useful information there, just letting me know the computer rebooted without shutting down properly first. I uninstalled the driver strait form the device manager. I’ll try again with the uninstaller tool tomorrow.

Well, I’ve exhausted my search-foo attempting to solve this problem. Whenever I try to run Guild Wars 2 my computer will inevitably have its audio and video cut out, the fans in the system rev up and then become unresponsive. Fans are still going, keyboard and mouse lights are still on, but I cannot do anything until I reboot my computer. GW is the only game I run on my system that does this – every other game from WoW on Ultra to Shadow of Mordor on High runs with zero problems.

computer specs:
AMD Radeon HD 7770
8 gb Ram
AMD FX-6300 six-core processor
All parts of my computer are less than 6 months old.

I’ve repaired the client, reinstalled it, then repaired it again.
I’ve run chkdsk, hard drive is fine.
I’ve reinstalled the graphic card’s drivers and updated them.
I’ve disabled every non essential program on my computer and attempted to run GW alone.

The crash initially only happened on my engineer – specifically if I was using my flamethrower at the time. I swapped over to my ranger, got a few hours out of her, then I crashed. Rebooted, crashed within 20 minutes, then again within 5 and now I crash right out of character select.

I’m out of ideas. What have I missed?

edit – Updates so far:
Have tried event viewer: no useful information.
PSU is fine.
GPU and CPU temps are fine and CPU memory levels aren’t maxed out during gameplay.
Can run the game with most settings on ultra -except- the shaders setting – must be set to low.
My flamethrower or another’s will crash me.
BIOS are up to date, Drivers are current (old ones or beta ones do not fix issue).
DX9 and DX11 are both up to date.