window swapping causing crash

[ghonosyph]

Been having an issue lately where my wow windows glitch out graphically after periodically swapping, causing both wow lock ups and computer crashes. The only way I've found to remedy the graphics glitch is by turning on vertical sync on all windows or restarting all 5 wows.

My graphics settings are on fair with view distance at high on all 5 windows, and I've made sure the graphics card drivers are up to date (gtx 470)

Anyone else seeing an issue like this? I,ve found that it happens often when I alt tab to get to my vent window or firefox sometimes the alt tab picks up a wow window and then I start getting the glitchy graphics

[Lax]

If you're getting crashes that affect your entire PC (blue screen, system-wide freeze, reboot, etc), it is an OS kernel, driver or hardware issue.

Your description certainly sounds like an issue with your video card or its drivers. Sometimes it helps to revert to an older version of drivers, if the newest ones don't solve your problem. Make sure it's not a heat issue by using something like CPUID HWMonitor (free and awesome) to monitor the GPU temperature (and others). If it's overheating, it can do strange things like you're mentioning, and of course it is possible for heat to physically damage the hardware and make the problems permanent.

[ghonosyph]

nah, definitely not a heat issue, as my tower is built like a jet engine lol :) also, i've always got core temp and nvidia pro temp gadgets running on the left hand monitor to control /monitor the heat... im never topping 78degrees on the card.

I'll try to roll back my drivers tonite to see if it helps, :) thanks for your reply lax! :D

EDIT: " If you're getting crashes that affect your entire PC (blue screen, system-wide freeze, reboot, etc), it is an OS kernel, driver or hardware issue."
It only did this once where it locked up then crashed the pc(no bsod just restarted). Mostly its just an innerspace window issue where the rest of the system is fine, its just when i swap to certain windows after alt tabbing some (ie i alt tab to do other stuff and tehn mouse swap the wow windows)that the window i bring up wont "load" completely and i've gotta reswap back to the one before it, then turn on vertical sync, which drags down the system and caused the crash. again, i'll try to roll back drivers and see if it helps :)

[MiRai]

It only did this once where it locked up then crashed the pc(no bsod just restarted).
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/automatic-restart-windows-7.htm

You would have most likely seen a blue screen.

[ghonosyph]

I've been messing around with settings and what not, still seeing this issue! :(

I shut off the bsod auto reboot, but have yet to get a crash. I did notice that when this problem happens, the ram monitor on my nvidia gadget shows that its spiking out at 1gig. Not sure exactly what it means but /shrug lol

[RSM72]

I got similar problems with IS for some time now on my former gtx 480 and current gtx 580. One thing I noticed is that graphical glitches occur alot more often if the card is operating near its physical memory limit. Thus I see almost no crashes/glitches while instancing or questing in remote areas (memory usage on the card is considerably lower there) but as soon as the team enters high population areas (eg. Orgrimmar) the problems start.

Toggling vertical sync was one of the fixes I discovered (either switching it on and off worked). Currently as a temporary workaround I hotkeyed the macro "/console gxRestart" to reinit a clients graphics engine (/ReloadUI works too but gxRestart is much faster). I even got a key to do that on all clients so I wont have to restart the clients every so often. The only downside to this is that all clients end up full size on my main screen and I have to cycle through them once so the slaves move to the secondary screen.

I got the 580 replaced by my retailer and I replaced the systems memory but the problems did not go away.

EDIT: can you try to describe what kind of graphical glitches you see? All effects occur instantly after swapping clients - what I have seen so far is:
- flashing interface on a slave client
- master client stuck at 25% size and not responsive
- master client overlayed with several 20-25% sized copies of itself most of the time flashing interface on top of that
- random bitmaps on parts or the whole master client (while it renders fine as a slave if i put it back there)

- random triangles originating from the center of the character (depending on the viewing angle - but I think this is a bug in wows DX11 engine)

[ghonosyph]

yep, all of that seems to happen. I can swap to another screen and it goes back to normal usually, I've read some fixes which say to turn down view distance(for single boxers experiencing something similarly) and also to try deleting cache/wtf folders and restarting.

Of all the quick fixes i've found im pretty dissappointed with the new 470 so far for multiboxing. i've got 8 gigs of ram and enough cpu power to push most of my playing to the max LAG FREE, except this little hiccup causing me issues.

i should be able to run this card with all my wows open on at least good settings but for some reason the higher settings cause this problem more frequently. I've since turned everything to low, bumping up only projected textures and view distance. I see 30 fps on all 5 screens, perhaps i need to throttle down the fps on the alts screens to 15... will try this tonite and report back :)

also, thanks rsm for that reload macro :) i'll be implementing it soon :D

[RSM72]

Anything new on the cause of your crashes?

[ghonosyph]

No updates as far as cause or cure.

I did notice that shutting off aero themes and using a basic has improved the performace some where the problem rarely happens, one thing I found was that while window swapping I would often mouse over my start menu bar to click over to firefox or some othe program and then the wow's would lock up or see the graphic glitch issue. From what I've played with it seems that something is causing the issue when you try to incorporate other stuff while window swapping.

Careful movement of my mouse Has lessened the problem occurrance