Showing Posts For nelno.4627:
NEVERMIND! THIS DIDN’T WORK!
POSSIBLE FIX FOR THIS ISSUE: I reverted to 306.02 BETA drivers with a clean install, no 3D Vision stuff checked in the install, no reboot, crashed once more, then let GW2 Autodetect settings (from character screen) and set frame rate limit to 30. I was afterwards able to play for around an hour with no issues — that’s a huge improvement. Some combination of the above may have fixed the problem for us.
Problem machine specs:
Win 7 Pro 64-bit
Nvidia GTX 285 running 306.23 (now 306.02)
Core 2 Duo @ 2.66Ghz
4 GB RAM
1024×768×32
Older Dell
Issue description:
Wife’s GW2 would freeze with a black screen. Generally (perhaps always?) the hardware cursor was still responsive. Sometimes the game would recover. Other times I would have to alt tab and the “Guild Wars has experienced and unrecoverable graphics error” dialog would be there. Sound was still playing fine and the client appeared to be still connected — I could see her character on my machine and from her machine you could still hear the world interacting as normal (NPCs greeting, etc.). Selecting OK on the dialog would close GW2 and log her out. This would happen regularly. Sometimes 15-30 mins in between occurences, sometimes back to back.
I tried turning off SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) on our router. This had no effect.
She had some really old Nvidia drivers installed prior to this (26×.x something). I can’t remember if these were getting the crash, but I think so. I upgraded her to the 306.23 WHQL drivers and these were definitely the ones crashing constantly.
Tonight I downloaded the “legacy” 306.02 drivers from NVidia’s site and installed them (I chose “clean install” and I unchecked both 3D options). I did not reboot (install doesn’t require it, so I didn’t bother on the first try). I then ran the game and the same crash happened immediately after logging my character in to her machine. I then ran again. From the character selection screen (gear icon in upper left) I set the renderer settings to “low” and logged in. I wish I hadn’t done this because it threw off my test… I can’t be sure exactly what fixed it. I was able to log in my character and move around, but this looked horrible, so I chose “Auto detect” for the settings. This chose some medium-to-high settings, but the framerate seemed much, much improved. I also set the frame rate limit to 30 (prior to this her machine was usually around 15 – 20 fps with nothing going on). I then played GW2 for about 1 hour on her machine, participating in as many world events as possible, without any issues. The frame rate was pretty decent, dipping in battles but maintaining 30 fps when just running around — this was a big improvement.
Since I fuddled with the in-game settings after installing the 306.02 drivers I cannot say for sure what fixed it for me… but I had fuddled with all of the settings multiple times prior to that while trying to stop the crashing, to no avail, so the drivers really were the main difference.
I’ll try to post another update if this continues to work (I have my suspicions that I just got lucky… )
UPDATE: a day later and GW2 is still crashing all over the place on my wife’s machine. It’s currently locking up immediately after logging in. I’m not sure how I was able to play for an hour after the driver change last night. Perhaps it’s related to location or particular effects being rendered.
(edited by nelno.4627)