I accidentally deleted my original post while trying to quote a part of it.
Being groggy on the PC is like driving drunk, apparently.
SavageCelery,
Are your GPU drivers new as far as date, or new drivers as in from a different location? Did you get them from the manufacturer’s website? Do you know how to check a driver’s date?
Do you know how to run CHKDSK?
Do you know if your PC is overclocked?
These questions in order to save me some time typing out how to do all of these things, because I’d rather tell you myself than direct you to some website that you may not understand.
The following is rough recap of what I had posted earlier and accidentally deleted, in case it helps anyone:
“After not having any serious issues with the PC I build just over a year ago, I installed Guild Wars 2 on top of a new install of Windows 7 64-bit just before launch. I played fine for about a week (and spent a lot of time in game – and that being the only thing I was really using my PC for), when suddenly my PC began freezing/locking-up completely, as if I had a BSoD, but instead of the actual BSoD screen coming up, I just saw a frozen GW2 client and whatever else was displaying on my 2nd monitor, and there was a strange skipping audio sound coming out of my speakers.
I remember that I meant to reapply thermal paste to my heatsink, anyways, so I went through with that after my PC froze about 10 minutes into playing GW2 about 3 times in a row.
Lo and behold, maybe it was CPU overheating! I had noticed higher CPU temps than I’m used to recalling, and my PC went about a week without any lock-ups!
Then my PC started locking up again during GW2. It happened intermittently a few times, and it didn’t really become an issue (because I just ignored it the couple times it locked-up) again until the night of Sept. 17.
I was running the same dungeon all day (maybe about 12 hours) with no problems. At a certain point in the night, CPU temps all looked fine, I began getting lock-ups. Hoping it was just a couple intermittent ones, I rebooted, hopped in game, rejoined a new dungeon group (after losing the loot & xp from the first runs I had gotten disconnected from because of having the hard reset my PC – please fix this Anet! If you get disconnected and try to re-enter a dungeon your party is already in, the dungeon only shows as completely reset!), and began getting lock-ups every 10-15 minutes.
This is when I used 3 different fixes at once, so I’m not sure which one worked (noob mistake!), but I was just frustrated and wanted to get back in game! Like I’m sure all of you feel.
#1.) The first thing I did was return my CPU to its factory clock speed. I am using a x6 Phenom II 3.3 GHz CPU overclocked to 3.79/3.8 GHz. This is kind of tough to walk someone through, so I hope if you OC’d your PC, you know how to un-OC it.
#2.) The next thing I did was run CHKDSK (Kind of and accident. I scheduled one because I saw it as a repair suggestion and my PC locked-up, so when I rebooted it automatically ran. If you do not know how to run CHKDSK, please let me know."
#3.) Finally, I made sure to update my GPU driver (which funny enough is a Radeon – so I’m at least the 2nd person in the post to have a x6 AMD CPU and I have a Radeon card like the OP. I thought the locking-up might have also been a going bad/overheating video card) from the manufacturer’s website, and made sure NOT to get a beta driver, as well as download the most recent driver (don’t be embarrassed, I was originally using the GPU driver from the CD-ROM! noob mistake!). If you do not know how to check your driver date, please let me know."
I have still not had any lock-ups, but I am also unsure of what fixed the issue. However, none of these things are actually bad for your PC, minus maybe losing some speed if you return to factory clocks, so don’t be afraid to run CHKDSK or update your driver. Also, I am still not sure if it really was caused by my GPU overheating, I am starting to check GPU temps at the moment. I will let everyone know here if I continue to have the same issue later.
P.S. Sorry, I can’t seem to get any sort of formatting to work on this forum…
(edited by biffbiffson.1489)