just_krik

Greetings to all

My problem is as following:

I have Dual-core Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz (still works fine)
with Nvidia Geforce (ASUS) 7600 GT and ASUS Motherboard.
I just did the cleaning of the fans and got rid of all the dirt inside the block (some hours spent, lol) - temperature, while WoW'ing is normal both for CPU and GPU.

The problem occurs at Dalaran and Wintergrasp.
When I enter Dalaran, after 1 minute my screen freezes - I can still hear ambien sounds and cast, but screen is frozen.
Only restart helps. Same at Wintergrasp. No problems at any other locations.

This is NOT overheating (checked it with utilities) and not old drivers - everything is up-to-date downloaded every week or so.

Please, help. Because I just can't play the game the right way, when I am not in Dalaran

 

Brekk

Your computer is old, that is an old CPU and a weak Video card. Your system is likely just not powerful enough to handle Dalaran and Wintergrasp at your current settings, with current addons.

 

Cowdrood

Buying a semi-new CPU and bargain bin video card will upgrade you more and cost less than keeping your current last-gen architecture up and running with most updated graphics. I would weigh your CPU bottleneck less than the age of your video card series when considering what to replace first. An unspecified parameter you may want to also consider is having enough ram.

Something like a year or so old Conroe core Intel CPU and either a 4850 ATi or lower 2xx series Nvidia video will be dirt cheap and, assuming your motherboard supports it all, will extend the life of your current setup for another year or two of bargain gaming.

 

Darkmantle

I run an AMD CPU at 1.7 Ghz with a radeon 9600 SE(special/shit edition) and with lowest settings I can still play wintersgrasp and navigate around Dalaran, so it isn't just a matter of the computer.

 

just_krik

It's not the matter of my low-end CPU and GPU.

I run wow PERFECT at medium settings, but at dalaran, wintergrasp I switch to minumum (everything). Freezes within 1 minute.

 

Gryzemuis

Software often fails miserably when it runs out of memory. In the case of Windows, that means running out of virtual memory.

How much physical memory do you have installed ?
Where is your pagefile ? (What partition ?)
Do you have enough free space on that partition ?
Is the partition not too fragemented ?

What I always do:
1) pick a partition with enough free space (2 GB or more). Better, create a separate partition just for this.
2) clean out that partition of useless stuff. then do a defragmentation on it.
3) go to the System Control panel. Advanced -> Performance/Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory/Change.
Configure the control panel in such a way that virtual memory is only allowed on that one drive. Then set it to "Custom Size". Set the "Initial Size" and "Maximum Size" to the same value. 2000 or 3000 or 4000 MB.

This will create a permanent swapfile on your disk. It won't fluctuate in size, so it won't get fragmented. Even if you fill up your partition, you had already reserved the space for the swapfile. Hope this helps.

 

• Goatbert

Has anyone else who increased their Texture cache seen WoW crashing a lot more with out of memory errors? Mine is hitting the 2GB per process memory limit when flying around northrend even on characters with no heavy mods loaded. This is at Ultra with Shadow quality set down to the second setting, texture cache was at 512mb and I set it down to 128mb and I'm still getting out of memory errors.

Windows 7 RTM 64-bit (though it happened under Vista as well), 8GB RAM.

I wish they would either make a 64-bit client available or make WoW LargeAddressAware, but a GM said they might never do that. Very frustrating.

 

Brekk

So it seems 3.2 broke the hack I've been using to replace that stupid Frost Dragon at the login screen with a blank black screen. Any new alternatives to fix this issue.

Nothing else, not even Crysis, makes my video card's temp shoot up like a rocket like that damn background.

 

dr_AllCOM3

It still works, just not on the PTR.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

sp00n

I'm only noticing that when my Recount.lua explodes in file size, i.e. it exceeds ~70MB. I then get a memory size too big crash while loading the character (others work fine) and never during game play itself. I too have that texture cache setting enabled (increased), but I'm not certain that those two ultimately are connected. I do log NPC in Recount in Ulduar, which I have never done before, so this certainly plays a part in it (still, I also have never seen this type of crash before I did change the texture settings, which was about the same time I enabled NPC tracking).

This is with Windows XP 32bit and 4GB Ram (3.5 available).

 

just_krik

It's me again.

Same problem with Dalaran.
And now with the zone around Coliseum

help me, please

 

sp00n

It doesn't for me now. If it does for you, could you please share which addon you're using or what you changed? (I used BlackLoginScreen until 3.2).

And in terms of increased texture size and memory allocation crashes, I can confirm that the higher setting was responsible for my WoW crashing when the Recount.lua grew bigger in size. I just removed the line from my config.wtf and could enter the game without a problem, while having a 200MB Recount.lua sitting in my saved variables. Of course, I encountered a "memory block too big" error in WoW itself, but that's okay, it doesn't affect game play.

 

dr_AllCOM3

Nah, doesn't work on live anymore. The PTR crashed when using the black screen, on live it's just ignored. Maybe it's related to model changing countermeasures.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

just_krik

maybe the freezes are connected with lots of people in the area

Dalaran, yesterday - near Coliseum

What can I do?

 

Allev

Krik, you may be better served on the official WoW boards. Typically there are actual resources there for crash problems where people are dedicated to finding and fixing problems-- this thread isn't really a "fix my crash" thread as much as it is "fix my performance".

Either you believe your low-end hardware is causing a performance issue which gets overwhelming, causing you to crash (in which case the fix is better hardware); or, you believe it has nothing to do with your hardware, which is an issue that can't be fixed by performance-- in which case you need official help, where someone might have a real fix for you as opposed to extremely anecdotal evidence here.

This thread (and much of EJ) is more valuable as "knowledge useful for everyone". Everyone can reap benefits through general optimizations of the game. Blizzard's tech support staff (and community contributing on the official forum's tech support) will be much more interested and capable in solving a specific problem that may be specific to your machine.

 

Arvak-

Completely reinstalling the game files might resolve certain inexplicable performance drops during raid combat if your install base is older than, say, a few years. If not that, it's definitely worth checking the integrity of the partition and making sure there isn't any accumulated file fragmentation from the gradual expansion of data volumes and swapping of addons.

 

Tinwhisker

I usually defragment WoW's volume after every major patch and I can confirm that pieces of patch.mpq and other files get scattered all over the place.

You're a lot of DPS, you know that? You wanna' earn 14 achievement points the hard way?

 

Sillia

Last night at Razorscale in Ulduar, my frame rate dropped to ridiculously low levels (seconds per frame, not frames per second). The frame drop didn't begin until the encounter began, and as soon as she died it returned to normal. I haven't had this problem anywhere else, and it did not appear anyone else had the same problem as I did. In addition, I have the majority of my effects turned low, and it didn't happen before 3.2. Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing it?

 

zootlewurdle

Have you ruled out add-ons, specifically ones that may kick in during combat? After 3.2 I had massive FPS issues during any raid encounter. Was perfectly normal all other times. Turned out to be an add-on for me, specifically in my case it was a DoT timer.

 

Sillia

I haven't really... definitely sounds like it though. The strange thing was that it only seemed to affect Razorscale, it seemed perfectly fine for the rest of uld that night.

 

• Goatbert

I'm still getting huge memory usage and frequent crashes in Northrend if I'm traveling around (Doing dailies, etc.) even after putting my texture cache back to default (32mb)

With no heavy addons loaded (ie, nothing like QuestHelper or Auctioneer) but still with a 70mb LUA load (by far not my highest) I was able to cap WoW on memory and crash it just by mounting my level 70 mage on his flying carpet in Valliance Keep, flying him up over Wintergrasp into and through Dalaran, remounting him and flying up through Storm Peaks. LUA memory in the crash was at 70mb, so its not addons taking up the 2gigs of memory - its like it is caching models or some other memory intensive thing and just not releasing until it hits the 2gb process wall.

Any ideas? I'm going to post this in the official bug report forum once I gather some more data, but I'm wondering if others are seeing similar behavior?

 

EasirokThunderpants

This is a pretty common issue for many raiders in my guild. Most encounters in Ulduar are not a problem, but Razorscale does this, and even worse is the pull for Thorim. I would say nine out of ten times on Thorim pull we end up with from one to three disconnected people at the instant we engage the jormungar and pals. In fact, it happens so frequently that we just have a preist MC one of the humanoid mobs right away so we delay the start of the event timer until everyone is back in.

I am convinced it is an add-on issue, but not sure which one (or ones) it might be. If you figure out what is causing your problems on Razorscale, then please share that with us - it might be the very same addon that is interfering with Razorscale and Thorim for us.

 

• Tecton

We had real issues with disconnects on Thorim until we ordered a stop to charging into the room, and we've had nothing since then. Possibly entirely coincidental, but I remember reading another account of this solving the problem for another guild.

 

maddfez

I had this on XT hard mode this week. Turned out to be Raid Tracker exploding - was over 200 MB before I finally got d/c'ed. Once I disabled it I've had minimal problems.

 

bobxii

We had the DC'ing fixed by not charging as well. CHARGE, DISCONNECTOR OF WORLDS!