Random Black Screen Crash

[Cirdann]

Hi all,

Just recently in the last few weeks, I have been experiencing random black screen crashes when playing WoW. Sometimes I can play for several hours and not see it happen, other times it will crash several times in the space of an hour. A few other players in my guild and on my server are also having the exact same problem so I'm not alone in this.

First of all, WoW will freeze up for a couple of seconds, then the screen will go black for a couple of seconds too (mouse cursor is still visible and movable throughout) then it will return to normal.
Then more often that not 5-10 mins later, the same thing will happen again, and it will black screen for good. Leaving me with no option but to reset the computer to reboot it.

As you can see, I am unable to Instance/Raid properly because I don't want to be a liabilty to the rest of the group. This is extremely frustrating because I've been playing WoW for 2 and a half years since closed EU beta without any problems whatsoever. I've tried updating my drivers etc, using the WoW repair tool (which verified as 100%) all to no avail.

Looking on the WoW Europe forums, I found an 18 page thread! regarding the exact same issue from what appears to be hundreds of users.Nvidia/ATI/Intel users are all affected.
Even worse Blizzard have refused to acknowledge the problem properly. This smacks of extremely poor customer support. (Their mentality seems to be "Who cares about a couple of thousand users when we have 8 million paying customers?")
I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard are staying silent on purpose, because of poor coding and include an undocumented fix in the next upcoming 2.0.10 patch.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=69833021&sid=1&pageNo=1

However, I managed to find a fix to this but its one I'm not happy with. Forcing WoW to run in OpenGL seems to solve this problem but I have a dilemma.

A) Smooth framerate but Unstable WoW (Direct 3D)
B) Poor framerate but Stable WoW (OpenGL)

Does anybody have any solutions they could offer to this annoying problem?

Thanks in advance.

Cirdann

[Kalos]

What graphics card do you use? Might be helpful as ATI cards have useless OpenGL translated performance compared to thier Direct3D mode performance, especially when compared to the much less steep difference acheived by Nvidia cards. Certain drivers are worse than others. There's nothing wrong with OpenGL if the right hardware is picked out for it; in some respects it can be superior to Microsoft's interpretation of how it should be standardised.

What strikes me as odd about this problem is that it effects the whole range, ATI/Nivida and Intel's low end intergrated. I don't suppose your card uses it's own memory systems, or does it rely on the motherboard's own ram to suppliment? It might be a programming error with WoW that doesn't like how certain cheaper solutions cache graphics memory data onto the system memory. It's a universal trick, one of the only criteria I can see being forfilled potentially by all three sides of the market, on thier lower end cards they don't have thier own dedicated memory onboard and simply take it off the mainboard's own supply.

Or it could be just a DirectX error, some form of incompatibility created by a half-assed patch by Blizzard.

[Lalaust]

If you download the latest ATI driver (and I'm guessing that you got an ATI card, cuz I had the same problem with my ATI card).

There is a software comming with, called ATI Control center, In that software there is a system recovery, so when the black screen appears - ATI resets the card settings and letting you play.

Or something. I'm not really into all that technologically stuff.

[Cirdann]

What graphics card do you use?

I currently use a ATI Radeon 9600 with the latest drivers.Not a great card but I'm holding off on any new hardware for the time being because I want a whole new system using Vista and a DirectX 10 graphics card. (Geforce 8800's are rather expensive atm. :smiley: so I would rather wait until the summer.

Lalaust - I will download and try out the ATI Control Centre.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Cirdann]

Just been testing WoW with the ATI Control Centre, and the VPU recover feature didn't help with the random black screens. :sad:

[Kalos]

It's a programming error with either DirectX or Warcraft. Considering DirectX is a standard basis, and doesn't change often, I think we can point the finger at a badly programmed patch making a bad change. There's now some form of incompatibility triangle between DirectX, the game, and the graphics card. If anyone of them is taken out of the loop, the problem goes away. So either, play in OpenGL, don't play WoW at all until it's resolved, or try a graphics card (Not a grand spanking new one, just an old PCI one you have lieing around if you do). Not nice options, but logically those are the choices to break the three corners of the problem.

[Penny]

I have the ATI AIW 9800 pro and the X1650 pro and have had these problems with both. I THINK I fixed it by turning off the "let the application decide" feature of the 2 graphics standards (opengl and direct3d advanced feature) and setting their features to "highest performance" figuring that auto-anything required smarts which weren't too smart at the moment and that 'best performance' means 'less dinking around trying to make things better', seeings how things weren't better...

no crashes/blue screen of death since then, but I've got my fingers crossed...

AND I ghosted back to a several month old image first, to eliminate the possibility of having picked something up recently.

[Cirdann]

I THINK I fixed it by turning off the "let the application decide" feature of the 2 graphics standards (opengl and direct3d advanced feature) and setting their features to "highest performance" figuring that auto-anything required smarts which weren't too smart at the moment and that 'best performance' means 'less dinking around trying to make things better', seeings how things weren't better...

I set the graphics driver settings to "performance" etc where applicable, still got black screen crashes.

Also the latest WoW patch (2.0.10) hasn't resolved this problem either.

[Kalos]

It appears to be limited to ATI cards. Just like Nvidia cards aren't recommended for Half-Life 2 on the whole, the same appears to now apply to WoW. Can't say why Nvidia Geforce designs appear to be immune to this spat of problems, but let's hope ATI cracks open a patch or something.

It appears there was a recent graphical change in the WoW world. Average frame rates are down for some people, suggesting more rendering time. Either there is more work (detail and effects) being rendered now, or Blizzard tweaked the rendering process and now it works worse. I'm leaning towards B, if there's crashes now in what was once fine, they've changed something fundamental, to which the ATI firmware utilised and con't run well without.

This is only guess work now, but there appears to be no option but to wait for the big powers to realise there is a problem and to resolve it in one form or another. Or borrow a Gforce card if stability and good frame rates are necessary. Radeons have historically poor OpenGL support, which is really not helping the work around.

[Penny]

I set the graphics driver settings to "performance" etc where applicable, still got black screen crashes.

Also the latest WoW patch (2.0.10) hasn't resolved this problem either.Yes, I found that my efforts reduced the crashes but didn't eliminate them. I can go a couple of hours straight with no crashes then have a slew of them in a row. All I can say is....

damn.

Here's something from ATI about the issue:
Link (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=22632)

[Cirdann]

It appears to be limited to ATI cards. Just like Nvidia cards aren't recommended for Half-Life 2 on the whole, the same appears to now apply to WoW. Can't say why Nvidia Geforce designs appear to be immune to this spat of problems, but let's hope ATI cracks open a patch or something.

Unfortunately, people with Geforce 5x/6x/7x/8x cards are also experiencing this problem too. Even players with brand new desktops/laptops which is rather worrying.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=69833021&sid=1&pageNo=21

21 page thread on WoW Europe Technical Support forum now with still no proper blue response (I don't regard "submit your DXDIAG" as a valid response from Blizzard). :shocked:

Here's something from ATI about the issue:
Link (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=22632)

As stated earlier in this thread, OpenGL does fix this problem, but I refuse to use it because ATI cards are terrible with OpenGL performance. WoW is unplayable with framerates dipping down to 10 fps.

[Kalos]

Unfortunately, people with Geforce 5x/6x/7x/8x cards are also experiencing this problem too. Even players with brand new desktops/laptops which is rather worrying.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=69833021&sid=1&pageNo=21

21 page thread on WoW Europe Technical Support forum now with still no proper blue response (I don't regard "submit your DXDIAG" as a valid response from Blizzard). :shocked:



As stated earlier in this thread, OpenGL does fix this problem, but I refuse to use it because ATI cards are terrible with OpenGL performance. WoW is unplayable with framerates dipping down to 10 fps.
The main benefit is, Gforce cards can put out better OpenGL performance, infact better peformance in OpenGL in most games than Direct3D. That's why I recommend them frequently, something that can work good in two modes is better than being forced to do it the MS way as the only way to get any decent framerates out of the card. It's got the point where $30 dollar FX cards are running rings around $200 Radeons in OpenGL.

[RagingSeraphim]

I run a nVidia GeForce 9600 GT and just updated the driver to the one released in April 2009. I still have the problem. No mouse pointer. No display. There's sound, but after a while I hear static from the speakers. I've just been hard booting the computer because I don't know what else to do. So no. nVidia computers are NOT immune.

[Kalos]

I run a nVidia GeForce 9600 GT and just updated the driver to the one released in April 2009. I still have the problem. No mouse pointer. No display. There's sound, but after a while I hear static from the speakers. I've just been hard booting the computer because I don't know what else to do. So no. nVidia computers are NOT immune.
Did you switch it to use the alternative OpenGL mode though? It is a DirectX fault, if it is the same one as this thread discussed.

It isn't that Nvidia graphics cards (graphics cards, not 'computers', they only design and make a single chip out of the thousands in the box) are immune to the problem, just they have a workaround that didn't kill performance, unlike the ATI cards at the time which ran like dogs when placed in OpenGL.

EDIT: I've been back over the original 2007 epidemic, and compared notes with your problem. You have something else wrong with your PC, it ain't this bug. You are black-screening on bootup of the game, with audio. The original black screens in this bug are not predictably instant, rather a semi-crash in the middle of the application to a black screen.

Your problem could be a simple loose video cable (try switching between monitor inputs and graphics card outputs). If you really think it is this, try putting the -openGL in the commandline startup, might as well just to rule it out, as if that doesn't work then it is certainly NOT this same problem.

It would be prudent to state your full system specs, as well as your graphics card manufacturer (Nvidia design graphics cards and the main GPU unit, they don't actually manufacture them for the masses).