Help! Game Crashing Display Driver

Age of Conan Support
1

As of last week, AoC launcher patches, allows login, and loads the character screen but then crashes immediately after loading the character into the game. I’ve been playing on Saga since Feb thru March (over 1 month) without any technical issues–until now.

The FPS plummets to zero. Black and white pixelated squares (~1/8") pop-up behind menus or sweep up from the bottom of the screen taskbar. The game flutters between the game and desktop before finally freezing completely.

The message “Display Driver” has crashed but recovered will appear over and over again during the brief few seconds before complete unresponsivity.

After hard boot (reset button), I had to reload my Nvidia GTX 465 driver in Safe Mode with Networking because otherwise the PC wouldn’t be able to load the Windows 7 desktop without pixelating and crashing the driver just like when loading the game.

I updated the driver to the latest version released in March 2018. Win 7 is loading but with some lag. I can use browsers and play video files but not game applications.

I tried opening another online game which I knew to be stable and the display driver crashed before launching the character screen; however, it recovered. I didn’t have to reboot. I did crash the application from the task manager to possibly prevent multiple driver crashes and freezing.

I ran system file checker for Win 7 64-bit from the cmd line, and it didn’t find any integrity violations.

I had been previously running driver 388.13 from last Oct 2017 and updated to 391.35. But it is still crashing. Should I try previous drivers? I’m still wondering if it’s really a driver issue since it worked fine in 388.13 just a couple of weeks ago, and the latest driver didn’t resolve the issue.

I have found old AoC forum posts and tech forums mentioning display driver crashes with AoC since 2008, 2013.

I’m not sure how to troubleshoot the issue on my end, and I’m concerned that the issue is somehow affecting all applications. It only seems to affect game launches.

AMD Phenom II X3 720 1.4 Ghz
8 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 465
MSI 880GM-E41
DX11

SimpleConfig.exe settings are DX9 by default, but I have a file for DX10 under AoC program files. I unchecked fullscreen as some said this caused issues. But I have been running AoC likely in fullscreen without issue before I tweaked this option.

This 2013 Troubleshooting Thread has reinstalling the game and verify (SimpleConfig.exe) as the last resort:
(won’t allow link) It’s on the age of conan forum archive “Read before posting! (most common issues)” by Kourose.

I’m still concerned that how will reinstalling AoC fix the crashing on other game applications? What is really changed or reset?

HWMonitor is 30s so it’s not a cooling issue. I may check the power numbers.

Is anyone else having similiar issues? Any suggestions or ideas what could be causing it and/or how to resolve this issue?

2

this part makes me think something else than the game is wrong. try running the game on a fresh installation of windows with the proper drivers if you have some spare hard drive. if it still goes wrong, it can be that your ram or graphics card is fried or overheating when under load. if not, it’s probably a software issue.

3

Surprisingly, Guild Wars 2 loaded fine for several minutes before it inexplicably black screened with buzzing before blue screening. “Reset the display driver.” 0X00000116 nvlddmkm.sys. Clean reinstall of display driver in Safe Mode didn’t fix the issue and now I can only start in Safe Mode. Auto-repair Windows initiated and failed to resolve the issue. Also starting to see red ticks on black screens. Not sure if the problem is compounded or shifted.

4

Your GPU is probably dying.

5

This sounds like it is a hardware problem, not software. Something is wrong with your graphics card. You say it isn’t getting too hot, so overheating can be ruled out.

You might try opening the computer up and re-seating the graphics card. It may have gotten a bit loose from the motherboard, or the power connectors may be loose.

More likely though it is just dying and you need a new Graphics Card.

6

To agree with others, sounds like your graphics card is dying. I had similar issue a few years ago.

7

It can be a lot of things. I ended up changing all parts of my computer and still had the crash until I replaced the PSU. Was the last thing I thought off :frowning:. It’s hard to check good functioning of the psu but it’s very critical for your system.

8

Like others mentioned, this could be a sign of hardware failure. Whether it is your processor, video card, or even motherboard will be hard to say. That’s not something we could identify for you unfortunately. If you wanted to try to contact us at help.funcom.com/, then we’d be happy to troubleshoot for you.

We did see driver issues in the past with 600 series Nvidia cards. I’ll give you the tips we have provided to players with those cards in the past. It may help you with the problem you’re having with the GTX 465.

  1. Make sure that you run the game in DirectX 9 mode.

  2. Uncheck ‘Enhanced Ocean Waves’ and ‘Wind in Trees’

  3. Set your Optical Range (view distance) to below 2000 meters.

  4. Disabling FXAA and FXAAHQ can also help with this issue.

If any of this helps you, then please let us know. Otherwise, I hope you contact us through help.funcom.com/ for tech support.