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PC Crashes Randomly Whilst Playing


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My PC is crashing whilst playing GW2, I have no idea what is causing this.

I've searched high and low to try and find an answer with no luck, so I've filmed this happening and started my own topic. Video is on YouTube and can be found

. GPU/CPU usage and temps can be seen on the top left of the video, but they really aren't that high; sitting at 54 and 67 for the CPU and GPU respectively.

Btw when I say 'crash' I mean my whole PC restarts. Typically, the game will freeze (sound still plays) for 2 - 3 seconds and then my PC will restart. Occasionally, my screen goes a funny colour for a second prior to restarting. To me, this sounds like a graphics card issue, however I find that odd as I play lots of other games and have had no issues on them. I even do a bit of light video editing and have no issues with that.

I think having graphical settings on high exacerbates the issue as my PC seems to crash whilst spinning the camera quickly. Additionally, I only experience this issue in GW2, not in any other game.

Just to provide some more detail on the most recent crash, I was playing in the Human starter zone for about two hours on the settings applied in the video. I hadn't run into any problems during that time, and even took part in the massive swamp boss battle, again with no issues or crash. I then waypointed to the location in the video and turned around. This caused a crash. I logged on and reduced my graphics settings but crashed again whilst spinning the camera. Fortunately this place seems to be a reliable place to crash the game, hence I could film it. However, it is usually random and can happen anywhere. Previously, the game had been crashing about every ten minutes. I tinkered with the graphics settings, setting them all to low and then slowly bringing them up until the game felt stable.

I've just come back from a long break in the game so this has all taken place over the last 48 hours.

If anyone could help would be really greatly appreciated!

System specs:GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.CPU: i7700k (not currently overclocked)Motherboard: MSI Z270 SLI PLUSMemory: Corsair DDR4 2231MHz 8GB x2

If you need any other info let me know.

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@"Shaft Master.9261" said:Btw when I say 'crash' I mean my whole PC restarts. Typically, the game will freeze (sound still plays) for 2 - 3 seconds and then my PC will restart. Occasionally, my screen goes a funny colour for a second prior to restarting. To me, this sounds like a graphics card issue, however I find that odd as I play lots of other games and have had no issues on them. I even do a bit of light video editing and have no issues with that.

Yeah, that is the same analysis I'd make: a full restart like that definitely means hardware or driver level issues, and the symptoms reflect most likely GPU related.

Grab GPU-Z and make sure you see a PCI-E 16x connection for the GPU -- lower suggests it is poorly seated. Ensure the power cables are plugged in firmly. Ensure drivers are up to date. Hopefully one of those sorts it out.

As to the "only GW2" part, this isn't uncommon when the problem is effectively "barely over the line" for failure: some game, or handful of games, just happen to push the system in a way that others don't, and that triggers the failure. In many cases it will eventually spread to more things triggering it, but not always.

It can also be that, eg, GW2 is the only application triggering a bug in the driver supplied parts of the DirectX 9 stack, and so the GPU crashes but only for GW2 -- because it does something perfectly permitted by the DirectX 9 layer, but which also happens to trigger a driver bug.

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@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:Grab GPU-Z and make sure you see a PCI-E 16x connection for the GPU -- lower suggests it is poorly seated. Ensure the power cables are plugged in firmly. Ensure drivers are up to date. Hopefully one of those sorts it out.

Hey man,

Thanks for your help, I did everything you said and it looked like the problem was sorted, but the game just crashed whilst I was playing and forced a PC restart.

I downloaded GPU-Z and confirmed that I had a PCI-E 16x connection. I took my graphics card out anyway and remounted, reapplied power and made sure everything was in place. For good measure I plugged my display port cable into the other display port port on my graphics card. I downloaded latest drivers too. I also double checked I had the latest DirectX.

I also applied the latest BIOS update to my motherboard just in case that was the issue.

Again, if anyone could help would be really appreciated. I love this game but really don't want to play if it's going to force a restart like this as it's really annoying and also really bad for my PC.

Thanks!

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@Shaft Master.9261 said:

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:Grab GPU-Z and make sure you see a PCI-E 16x connection for the GPU -- lower suggests it is poorly seated. Ensure the power cables are plugged in firmly. Ensure drivers are up to date. Hopefully one of those sorts it out.

Hey man,

Thanks for your help, I did everything you said and it looked like the problem was sorted, but the game just crashed whilst I was playing and forced a PC restart.

I downloaded GPU-Z and confirmed that I had a PCI-E 16x connection. I took my graphics card out anyway and remounted, reapplied power and made sure everything was in place. For good measure I plugged my display port cable into the other display port port on my graphics card. I downloaded latest drivers too. I also double checked I had the latest DirectX.

I also applied the latest BIOS update to my motherboard just in case that was the issue.

Again, if anyone could help would be really appreciated. I love this game but really don't want to play if it's going to force a restart like this as it's really annoying and also really bad for my PC.

Thanks!

Perhaps your pc has caught the rather nasty malware that uses up basically 100% of your cpu at all times we throw ingame or not and this causes your pc to overheat and then will subsequently shut down in order to prevent damage to either cpu gpu or both. This malware i speak of is very very sneaky and will not likely be caught by any anti malware or anti viruses due to its nature to inject itself into the Svchost.exe and is a pain to get rid of. If you would like more info on it the name of the malware is "winstarNssmminer". Basically it is malware that targets your pc and use your gpu and cpu in order to remotely mine Crypto currency.

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@"AncientYs.8613" said:Perhaps your pc has caught the rather nasty malware that uses up basically 100% of your cpu at all times we throw ingame or not and this causes your pc to overheat and then will subsequently shut down in order to prevent damage to either cpu gpu or both. This malware i speak of is very very sneaky and will not likely be caught by any anti malware or anti viruses due to its nature to inject itself into the Svchost.exe and is a pain to get rid of. If you would like more info on it the name of the malware is "winstarNssmminer". Basically it is malware that targets your pc and use your gpu and cpu in order to remotely mine Crypto currency.

Thanks for helping.

The reason why I don't think this is the case is because if you look at my GPU/CPU temps and usage, neither are terribly high temp nor are they maxing out at 100%. This also doesn't explain why this issue is isolated to GW2.

To be thorough, I have checked through all my processes and couldn't find "winstarNssmminer".

Again, thank you for helping! If you have any other ideas please let me know!

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@Shaft Master.9261 said:

@"AncientYs.8613" said:Perhaps your pc has caught the rather nasty malware that uses up basically 100% of your cpu at all times we throw ingame or not and this causes your pc to overheat and then will subsequently shut down in order to prevent damage to either cpu gpu or both. This malware i speak of is very very sneaky and will not likely be caught by any anti malware or anti viruses due to its nature to inject itself into the Svchost.exe and is a pain to get rid of. If you would like more info on it the name of the malware is "winstarNssmminer". Basically it is malware that targets your pc and use your gpu and cpu in order to remotely mine Crypto currency.

Thanks for helping.

The reason why I don't think this is the case is because if you look at my GPU/CPU temps and usage, neither are terribly high temp nor are they maxing out at 100%. This also doesn't explain why this issue is isolated to GW2.

To be thorough, I have checked through all my processes and couldn't find "winstarNssmminer".

Again, thank you for helping! If you have any other ideas please let me know!

I have gone back and watched your YouTube video on this issue and I can conclude it was not caused by the malware, still I had to mention it as a precaution. I would like to ask a question. Are you running the 64bit version of gw2? And do get any crashreport from gw2? This is quite a peculiar issue.. I'm afraid I can not assist as much as i wished. I hope your problem will be resolved.

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@AncientYs.8613 said:I have gone back and watched your YouTube video on this issue and I can conclude it was not caused by the malware, still I had to mention it as a precaution. I would like to ask a question. Are you running the 64bit version of gw2? And do get any crashreport from gw2? This is quite a peculiar issue.. I'm afraid I can not assist as much as i wished. I hope your problem will be resolved.

No worries man, thank you for the suggestion, I can't think of anything either!

I am running the 64 bit version of GW2. I can't find any crash report from GW2. I searched in my games root installation folder.

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@AncientYs.8613 said:

@AncientYs.8613 said:Perhaps your pc has caught the rather nasty malware that uses up basically 100% of your cpu at all times we throw ingame or not and this causes your pc to overheat and then will subsequently shut down in order to prevent damage to either cpu gpu or both. This malware i speak of is very very sneaky and will not likely be caught by any anti malware or anti viruses due to its nature to inject itself into the Svchost.exe and is a pain to get rid of. If you would like more info on it the name of the malware is "winstarNssmminer". Basically it is malware that targets your pc and use your gpu and cpu in order to remotely mine Crypto currency.

Thanks for helping.

The reason why I don't think this is the case is because if you look at my GPU/CPU temps and usage, neither are terribly high temp nor are they maxing out at 100%. This also doesn't explain why this issue is isolated to GW2.

To be thorough, I have checked through all my processes and couldn't find "winstarNssmminer".

Again, thank you for helping! If you have any other ideas please let me know!

I have gone back and watched your YouTube video on this issue and I can conclude it was not caused by the malware, still I had to mention it as a precaution. I would like to ask a question. Are you running the 64bit version of gw2? And do get any crashreport from gw2? This is quite a peculiar issue.. I'm afraid I can not assist as much as i wished. I hope your problem will be resolved.

Please note: the OP has a problem where the entire computer restarts. This isn't "GW2 crashes", this is "the entire computer crashes" level stuff. :)

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@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@AncientYs.8613 said:Perhaps your pc has caught the rather nasty malware that uses up basically 100% of your cpu at all times we throw ingame or not and this causes your pc to overheat and then will subsequently shut down in order to prevent damage to either cpu gpu or both. This malware i speak of is very very sneaky and will not likely be caught by any anti malware or anti viruses due to its nature to inject itself into the Svchost.exe and is a pain to get rid of. If you would like more info on it the name of the malware is "winstarNssmminer". Basically it is malware that targets your pc and use your gpu and cpu in order to remotely mine Crypto currency.

Thanks for helping.

The reason why I don't think this is the case is because if you look at my GPU/CPU temps and usage, neither are terribly high temp nor are they maxing out at 100%. This also doesn't explain why this issue is isolated to GW2.

To be thorough, I have checked through all my processes and couldn't find "winstarNssmminer".

Again, thank you for helping! If you have any other ideas please let me know!

I have gone back and watched your YouTube video on this issue and I can conclude it was not caused by the malware, still I had to mention it as a precaution. I would like to ask a question. Are you running the 64bit version of gw2? And do get any crashreport from gw2? This is quite a peculiar issue.. I'm afraid I can not assist as much as i wished. I hope your problem will be resolved.

Please note: the OP has a problem where
the entire computer
restarts. This isn't "GW2 crashes", this is "the entire computer crashes" level stuff. :)

Yes indeed. So I can safely assume as you have previously stated this is a hardware related issue. I am just at a loss here. The gw2 engine is too finicky and not at all stable so it can be a vast possibility of hardware related components that are interacting with the game in such a way that it results in the computer crashing. If op only has these crashes with Gw2 and not any other games then it's likely a stability issue. At this point it can be anything.

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My computer shut down twice yesterday, and both times it was during "zoning". This has happened very infrequently before (like several builds ago), and temperatures don't appear to be a problem. I've got some due diligence to carry out (per some of the previous messages above), but I'm going to test with a new (new to me, anyway) video card. I'll try to report back.

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@"crashburntoo.7431" said:My computer shut down twice yesterday, and both times it was during "zoning". This has happened very infrequently before (like several builds ago), and temperatures don't appear to be a problem. I've got some due diligence to carry out (per some of the previous messages above), but I'm going to test with a new (new to me, anyway) video card. I'll try to report back.

Yes, every instance of crashing has been shortly after using a way point or after a loading screen. Not sure if this helps identify the issue.

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@Shaft Master.9261 said:

@"crashburntoo.7431" said:My computer shut down twice yesterday, and both times it was during "zoning". This has happened very infrequently before (like several builds ago), and temperatures don't appear to be a problem. I've got some due diligence to carry out (per some of the previous messages above), but I'm going to test with a new (new to me, anyway) video card. I'll try to report back.

Yes, every instance of crashing has been shortly after using a way point or after a loading screen. Not sure if this helps identify the issue.

Not specifically. There is no common known pattern to these failures, mostly because they are so rare, and generally, so hardware specific.

The one common factor that crash would be coincidental with would be the maximum load on the PCI-E bus as GW2 ships all the model and texture data for the zone into the VRAM from system memory. I wouldn't expect that to cause significant power drain compared to when running around the zone.

Does that mean anything? shrug no idea.

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@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

Yes, every instance of crashing has been shortly after using a way point or after a loading screen. Not sure if this helps identify the issue.

Not specifically. There is no common known pattern to these failures, mostly because they are so rare, and generally, so hardware specific.

The one common factor that crash would be coincidental with would be the maximum load on the PCI-E bus as GW2 ships all the model and texture data for the zone into the VRAM from system memory. I wouldn't expect that to cause significant power drain compared to when running around the zone.

Does that mean anything?
shrug
no idea.

Hey Slippy,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the help that you've given, really do appreciate replies and acknowledgement of the issue even if it's not fixed yet.

I've lodged a ticket with support so hopefully some of the GW2 tech staff can have a look at it. Fingers crossed!

:)

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@Shaft Master.9261 said:

Yes, every instance of crashing has been shortly after using a way point or after a loading screen. Not sure if this helps identify the issue.

Not specifically. There is no common known pattern to these failures, mostly because they are so rare, and generally, so hardware specific.

The one common factor that crash would be coincidental with would be the maximum load on the PCI-E bus as GW2 ships all the model and texture data for the zone into the VRAM from system memory. I wouldn't expect that to cause significant power drain compared to when running around the zone.

Does that mean anything?
shrug
no idea.

Hey Slippy,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the help that you've given, really do appreciate replies and acknowledgement of the issue even if it's not fixed yet.

I've lodged a ticket with support so hopefully some of the GW2 tech staff can have a look at it. Fingers crossed!

:)

Please do share with us when you have found the solution as I'm sure many others who experience the same or similar issues will find it helpful. Thanks and here's to hoping it will get fixed soon ~

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@Shaft Master.9261 said:

@AncientYs.8613 said:Please do share with us when you have found the solution as I'm sure many others who experience the same or similar issues will find it helpful. Thanks and here's to hoping it will get fixed soon ~

Will do man. Thank you for all of your help too! Really appreciated.

Yeah, I'm sorry that I don't have any better answers for you! My day job is doing this sort of stuff, in a different context, and it's nice to share those skills. Sadly, in both cases, sometimes the answer ends up being the sad one:

Congratulations! You have discovered an excitingly new and previously unknown problem! Unfortunately...... ;)

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@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:Yeah, I'm sorry that I don't have any better answers for you! My day job is doing this sort of stuff, in a different context, and it's nice to share those skills. Sadly, in both cases, sometimes the answer ends up being the sad one:

Congratulations! You have discovered an excitingly new and previously unknown problem! Unfortunately...... ;)

Could the issue be with my PSU?

If the power demand from my GPU reaches 100%, would that cause a PC restart or would it simply throttle the GPU? I don't suppose there's anyway to test this?

I tried throttling the power limit on my GPU through MSI Afterburner to 60%, however it still caused a PC restart. However I'm not sure how effective MSI Afterburner is as this is an OS level change not a BIOS one.

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@Shaft Master.9261 said:

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:Yeah, I'm sorry that I don't have any better answers for you! My day job is doing this sort of stuff, in a different context, and it's nice to share those skills. Sadly, in both cases, sometimes the answer ends up being the sad one:

Congratulations! You have discovered an excitingly new and previously unknown problem! Unfortunately...... ;)

Could the issue be with my PSU? If the power demand from my GPU reaches 100%, would that cause a PC restart or would it simply throttle the GPU? I don't suppose there's anyway to test this?

It absolutely could, and the usual behaviour is that the electronics get less electricity than they expect, so things get really weird. That frequently results in crashes of some sort or another, and a whole machine reset is definitely possible. All it would take is the voltage to the CPU sagging enough that it stops working quite right -- and since everything comes from the one "source" of power, too much load from one component can hit others too.

It looks like http://openhardwaremonitor.org/ is able to monitor some voltages, and so presumably there are other, similar options. You /might/ be able to see if that is showing signs of, eg, the 12 volt line delivering lower voltage or whatever. I'm afraid, though, that once we got to "yes, it can cause problems" you hit the end of my personal knowledge in the area. I know it can cause issues, I don't really know how to diagnose them.

I tried throttling the power limit on my GPU through MSI Afterburner to 60%, however it still caused a PC restart. However I'm not sure how effective MSI Afterburner is as this is an OS level change not a BIOS one.

I don't know either, but I would expect it to be fully effective. The GPU power draw would be caused by, basically, the GPU chip working really hard. If you throttle that down forcibly, it should reduce the maximum power draw. So, I'd expect that to have eliminated the problem, if it was PSU related, but ... hopefully someone a bit more expert than I am will be able to confirm that.

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@Shaft Master.9261 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:Yeah, I'm sorry that I don't have any better answers for you! My day job is doing this sort of stuff, in a different context, and it's nice to share those skills. Sadly, in both cases, sometimes the answer ends up being the sad one:

Congratulations! You have discovered an excitingly new and previously unknown problem! Unfortunately...... ;)

Could the issue be with my PSU?

If the power demand from my GPU reaches 100%, would that cause a PC restart or would it simply throttle the GPU? I don't suppose there's anyway to test this?

I tried throttling the power limit on my GPU through MSI Afterburner to 60%, however it still caused a PC restart. However I'm not sure how effective MSI Afterburner is as this is an OS level change not a BIOS one.

This could be a psu issue as well. In your specs you mentioned a gtx 1080 and usually to power that graphics card and the cpu together requires a decent psu let's say about 500watt and maximum 550watt. Also did you check your case to see if it has sufficient airflow? Because this can also contribute to overheating of individual pc components and lead to higher gpu and cpu Temps. Also the psu plays a major role in making sure your pc functions as it should. As for Msi afterburner try setting a fan curve, at 50% gpu usage set the fan at 50% speed then at 60 to 80 set Fan speed at 100% just to make sure your gpu is cooled down and does not thermal throttle.

Ps: if all else fails. I think it is time for you to consider replacing your current psu with a new one, because your pc restarting like that during game play can be a sign of a psu that is dying and unable to supply power to the gpu and cpu.

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@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:It looks like http://openhardwaremonitor.org/ is able to monitor some voltages, and so presumably there are other, similar options. You /might/ be able to see if that is showing signs of, eg, the 12 volt line delivering lower voltage or whatever. I'm afraid, though, that once we got to "yes, it can cause problems" you hit the end of my personal knowledge in the area. I know it can cause issues, I don't really know how to diagnose them.

Cool, well I'll try looking at that to see if I can identify any voltage drops!

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@"AncientYs.8613" said:This could be a psu issue as well. In your specs you mentioned a gtx 1080 and usually to power that graphics card and the cpu together requires a decent psu let's say about 500watt and maximum 550watt. Also did you check your case to see if it has sufficient airflow? Because this can also contribute to overheating of individual pc components and lead to higher gpu and cpu Temps. Also the psu plays a major role in making sure your pc functions as it should. As for Msi afterburner try setting a fan curve, at 50% gpu usage set the fan at 50% speed then at 60 to 80 set Fan speed at 100% just to make sure your gpu is cooled down and does not thermal throttle.

My PSU is currently rated at 600W so in terms of raw power I think it is OK. HOWEVER, it is quite old so maybe that has had some detrimental effect on it? I think it is around eight years old.

Here is a pic of my PSU. Which wattage is the most important? I can see it goes all the way down to 540W which I think is skirting the edge a bit in terms of power delivery.

What do you reckon?

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