Guild Wars 2

I’m saddened to say I’m in the same boat: the game freezes intermittently on me. I’ve tried installing various video driver versions, applied the NVidia settings changes indicated in the stickied post in this forum, repairing the GW2 data files (using the -repair startup parameter) and disabling most background processes and applications, all to no avail.
A full reinstall and disabling all applications & processes are both not an option since this PC is also used for work. Considering many other posts mention having tried reinstalling without success this doesn’t seem worth the trouble anyhow.

Additional information:
- Specs: Alienware Area 51 with Intel i7 @ 2.97GHz, MSI GTX 670 OC, 6GB memory, Soundblaster X-Fi.
- I’ve played GW2 since day one and while I did encounter a few crashes in the first couple of months (3 or so) the game has been very stable overall. Since some time in May the game literally crashes each and every session. Sometimes after a few minutes, sometimes after two hours or more. They can also occur at any time of the day.
- My hardware has remained almost identical since I’ve started playing GW2, the only difference being a new video card. However, I’ve installed that almost immediately after purchasing the game so I’ve played on identical hardware almost as long as GW2 is out.
- No new drivers other than automatic updates have been installed since I’ve started playing Guild Wars 2. The graphics driver has been (automatically) updated but as stated I’ve tried reverting it to several older versions to no avail.
- I’ve monitored temperatures and while GW2 does fairly stress my PC nothing is out of the ordinary in that regard. At peak times GPU reaches around 60 degrees celcius. CPU is water cooled and its temperature hardly budges.
- Nothing on my PC is overclocked except my video card. The video card is implicitly overclocked (that’s what the OC in the specs stands for) and I’m unaware of any means to turn it off. But again: I’ve played GW2 on it since almost day 1, mostly without problems until a month or so ago.
- Only two other programs have ever crashed on my PC, being Path of Exile (which was still in beta back then so that’s not entirely unexpected) and Crysis 2 (which was due to a known issue in the configuration and has run perfectly stable after having modified said configuration).
I can run very taxing games like Witcher 2, Metro 2033 and aforementioned Crysis 2 at high or even highest settings without any problems. Recent games such as Bioshock Infinite run at high settings without any problems as well.
- The specific behaviour of the crashes has changed slightly since they started to consistently occur. Initially my screen went red, pink or white when GW2 froze, now it turns off just as if my screen saver would’ve kicked in. It seems everything continues to run in the background though, I can see my HDD indicator light continuing to blink for instance.
- There’s nothing whatsoever to be found in the Event log and no memory dumps are available either. Again, it seems my PC doesn’t crash per se and only the video output is interrupted. CTRL+ALT+DEL or ALT+TAB don’t work though, I need to hard-reset to get past the problem.
- I’ve encountered the problem with all my GW2 characters. I’ve even started a new one and the crashes occur with that character too.
- There’s no apparent connection between location or activity in the game world and the occurences of the crashes. I’ve encountered them in WvW, in capitals of various races and in other regions, in dungeons, while simply questing by myself or even when I was AFK. I’ve also encounterd these crashes at peak times for my server (Desolation) and just as well when there’s hardly anyone on.
- It should be noted that Guild Wars 2 is the only multiplayer game I’ve actively played on my current PC. The issue being network related (possibly combined with other factors) is therefore not out of the question.
However, it has only been as prominent as it is now since some time in May, as I’ve said before. My network connection is extremely stable overall.

That’s all I can think of for now. Any help or at least suggestions towards a solution would be greatly appreciated.