2 Wow on 1 machine causes bluescreen with dualcore and 8800

[lilbopeep]

I have a Core 2 duo and a Geforce 8800GTS video card. Both of these have problems with wow in that the multithreading and driver problems can cause random crashes. I resolved those problems by disabling multithreading and antialiasing.

Since then I can run a single instance of wow all day and never have a problem. My system is stable with weeks of uptime.

The problem is that if I launch 2 instance of wow I get blue screen crashes and loud static through the speakers when it does so.

It can work for a few hours, or crash every few minutes, no predicting it.

I disabled all the multithreading and such in wow and have 2 seperate directories with lowered video settings for my dual boxing.

1 runs in 800x600 with sound on and video set at half quality and 1 runs in 800x600 at reduced detail and no sound enabled.


Between the blue screens and the disconnects on auto follow I find it impossible to dual box on one system.

I mean I have 2gigs of ram and a high end PC that is stable, yet I can't figure this one out.


Anybody else have a similar setup hardware and video card that has *not* had problems?

[keyclone]

make sure you don't have sound in the background and disable hardware acceleration for audio

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Have you tried disabling hyperthreading in BIOS?

[lilbopeep]

Have you tried disabling hyperthreading in BIOS?

1. Sound

Sound in background works fine with 1 wow instance running. For my separate dual box installs I have sound completely disabled in one and I run them side by side in a window. With this same sound card I used to be able to dual box easily before I upgraded my motherboard, cpu and video. I am pretty sure from the core dumps that it is a video driver issue.


2. Hyperthreading

The core 2 duo does not support hyperthreading therefor I have no way to disable it. Also my previous machine did have hyperthreading and it never caused a problem dual boxing.

The Core 2 duo has 2 separate cores as a function of hardware, and it cannot be disabled. It is a 2 core system not a virtual one like HT is. As well, if I force each instance of WoW onto separate physical cores the situation does not improve.

I have scanned my memory in 12 hour burn ins and no problems. System is rock stable in other games, and running wow in a single instance.

The only thing that has changed is motherboard, video, and CPU so I can only assume it is the video driver getting stuck in an infinite loop and blue screening.

I have core dumps I've captured if anybody has access to the windows debugger.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My bad. On my Core 2 Duo system here, it's called "Multi Core Support." Yeah, it'll defeat the purpose of having the thing but it might at least tell you whether that is part of the problem.

You might also consider disabling all your onboard devices one at a time if you have a good BIOS that lets you do that. Things like TPM module and that Flash Cache (aka "Robson") module if your system has those. Also, if you have it, you might try disabling SpeedStep and/or changing your CPU C-state power management to off/disabled. These may not be root cause in and of themselves but the drivers associated with them are common culprits.

And I assume you've been monitoring your temperatures?

I'm sorta grabbing at straws here but it's difficult to diagnose BSODs without a memory dump to work from. :P