One wow freezing.

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10-18-2009, 08:54 PM
Ualaa

One wow freezing.

Pretty much since upgrading to my i7 920, Asus Motherboard and 12gb ram, I've regularly had one of my wow windows freeze.
Sometimes it is infrequent, at other times very constant. I'm running the same Radeon Sapphire 4870 X2 video card, one wow folder on a 150gb 10,000rpm Raptor hard drive etc.

With my mixed team of Priest, Mage, Druid, Shaman and Warlock, it seems the Mage and Warlock freeze quite often.
With my Paladin and 4x Shaman team, none of them freeze.
One of the druids on the druid team froze after an hour or so of tweaking macro's, both in ISBoxer Toolkit and the wow macro interface. Lasted a lot longer then the mix team before a freeze.

It is always one of the smaller (not main region) which freezes.
It seems to happen in or near inns or cities.

I've had this with both keyclone and inner space, so not sure that its due to one or the other.
Cannot seem to find anything for this issue on the wow forums.
Two guildies with vastly different systems from me, seem to have this same issue; in their case, they both 1 box wow, without any software replication going on.

When the wow freezes, right clicking on its tab and selecting "end task" only gets a window which says cancel to allow windows to deal with it or end task now. Clicking cancel doesn't do anything other then close the window, but selecting end task doesn't do anything either. Even going into task manager to end the process doesn't shut it down.

WoW was recently (a couple of weeks ago) installed via the Account Management download link.
The wow repair tool has not found anything.

Once one of the wow's has frozen, the others can be taken as far out of the game as the log in/password screen. If they're taken further out of the program then that, the computer freezes and needs to be reset via the reset button. I can start other applications such as firefox when one of the wow's has frozen but that's about it.

I'm running ISBoxer Toolkit, Inner Space and WoW as administrator, on Vista 64-bit (Home Premium) with Service Pack 2. I was running Keyclone as administrator prior to moving to IS. I seem to be getting this problem a lot more frequently the last couple of days.

Pretty much have 5x warcraft open, using minimal settings across the board for 4 of them, with view distance and view objects at the maximum for 1 of them via the virtual config files. Have InnerSpace, ISBoxer Toolkit, Firefox and a Word Pad document open, which shouldn't tax my system that much. IS has all 8 cores on each instance of wow.

I'm kind of lost here, not sure what would be causing this issue.
10-19-2009, 01:56 AM
Ualaa

The fans all seem to be blowing cool air.
According to the bios, the CPU is at 42c and the Motherboard is 40c.
According the ATI Catalyst software, the video card is 71c, but the card has always been around that temperature.

I've got six fans as wide as the drive bays, three on the front, two on the back and one on the side.
And then a 120mm fan on the top of the case. None of them feels hot.
10-19-2009, 02:24 AM
Ogloo

dude im having the same problem.. got the same computer specs and i dont know why my computer keeps doing this..
also, sometimes my screen just goes black.. everything running just screen is black.. have to restart.. sucks when it happens in arenas.
its always just 1 of them who just freezes.. so random.. not my computer struggling.
10-19-2009, 02:38 AM
Ogloo

problem is it happens like 2 times a day.. so its kinda hard to test.. like if a change is working..also higher settings are hurting my system more than normal
10-19-2009, 05:15 AM
alcattle

Do you get a WoW error box? What # error?

Still it sounds like a RAM problem. Run Memtest86.
10-19-2009, 05:16 AM
QuantumX

Hmm i'm about to upgrade my Q6600 with 8800GTS cars to an I7 920, ati 5870 anmd 12gb ram hoping all system lag etc would disappear on my 5 box.. so the above posts are a little worrying.

Any other people comments on 5 box with single system?

One thing i have found on my current system is that i have 2 x 8800gts cards connected to four monitors i have the 4th monitor in portrait mode with two accounts running its an old HP screen and i find if i try to interact with those direct wow crashes, but if i drag the game to another screen i can interact fine.
10-19-2009, 05:48 AM
Shibbyking

Try giving each wow copie an own wow directory...
i get freezes too, but thats duo my CPU cant handle Mayor Cities...
+ your pc needs to Read and Write to the same HDD and Map... i gues your bottleneck lies with mapping your wow dirs/Single HDD.
10-19-2009, 06:14 AM
jstanthr

turn hyperthreading off, if that fixes it, make sure that u got the affinity set in pairs and not skipping one, like 1-1,2; 2-3,4; 3-4,5; 4-6,7 ; 5-5,6. that made a big diff for me, or u can just leve threading off entirely and set it up as u would on a quad core
10-19-2009, 06:17 AM
Nolife

I've had similar problems. With my old Nvidia i could easily run 5 WoW's at once, but then i upgraded to much faster ATI Radeon with more memory and everytime i started up 5 WoW's 1 of them froze. It must be a problem with radeon card and the way it handles multiple wow's.
10-19-2009, 07:13 AM
jstanthr

i bought a 4850x2 with 2gb on it, i used it for like 3 days, sent it back and got a gtx280, ive been a happy camper ever since, and win7 is awesome, the 64bit one nywy, ive been using it for 3months now, and 7 is what vista shoulda been.
10-19-2009, 06:01 PM
Ualaa

Quote:

Originally Posted by alcattle

Do you get a WoW error box? What # error?

Still it sounds like a RAM problem. Run Memtest86.

Not getting any error messages.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shibbyking

Try giving each wow copie an own wow directory...
i get freezes too, but thats duo my CPU cant handle Mayor Cities...
+ your pc needs to Read and Write to the same HDD and Map... i gues your bottleneck lies with mapping your wow dirs/Single HDD.

I'm running InnerSpace + ISBoxer Toolkit. Basically I have a single wow directory, but it virtualizes my config file, so I can have separate settings for each wow as if I had multiple folders.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jstanthr

turn hyperthreading off, if that fixes it, make sure that u got the affinity set in pairs and not skipping one, like 1-1,2; 2-3,4; 3-4,5; 4-6,7 ; 5-5,6. that made a big diff for me, or u can just leve threading off entirely and set it up as u would on a quad core

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here.

The ISBoxer wizard has all 8 cores running each copy of warcraft, ie. let windows decide which cores to use and when. I can set it so only two cores are used for each copy of wow. I'm not sure how to turn Hyperthreading off.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nolife

I've had similar problems. With my old Nvidia i could easily run 5 WoW's at once, but then i upgraded to much faster ATI Radeon with more memory and everytime i started up 5 WoW's 1 of them froze. It must be a problem with radeon card and the way it handles multiple wow's.

It could be the Radeon. I had an Nvidia 8800 GTX, and then upgraded to the Radeon 4870 X2. I found with the Radeon, I could run higher graphics and still be smooth, but if I did not severely limit the background FPS some of the slaves would freeze when taking flight paths. I have been running the same card (Radeon 4870 X2) for more then a year now, with the Q6600 and background FPS limited to 10, without freezing issues. Having upgraded the processor, ram and motherboard, and I'm getting the random freezes.
10-19-2009, 06:08 PM
Ogloo

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuantumX

Hmm i'm about to upgrade my Q6600 with 8800GTS cars to an I7 920, ati 5870 anmd 12gb ram hoping all system lag etc would disappear on my 5 box.. so the above posts are a little worrying.

Any other people comments on 5 box with single system?

One thing i have found on my current system is that i have 2 x 8800gts cards connected to four monitors i have the 4th monitor in portrait mode with two accounts running its an old HP screen and i find if i try to interact with those direct wow crashes, but if i drag the game to another screen i can interact fine.

the system is amazing, it owns anything this should not discourage you, its some sortof messup/virus/bug with files we are using..

if you want to upgrade to a single system you should go ahead.. ive had perfect FPS, smoooth running even in huuuge WG batltes.. and even now its good, but once every 3 days it like gets owned.
10-19-2009, 06:27 PM
Ualaa

Ya.. I'll second that the system is amazing for wow.

Without crusader aura on the lead character, I cannot make the slaves lose follow with everyone on epic flying mounts. The toons run smoothly on the ground mounts in Dalaran, without even a hint of choppiness.

I like to have warranties, so usually go to the same computer store for new systems and upgrades. They have a 4 year "instant product replacement" plan, where if something goes for any reason, they replace it free of charge. Well, technically not free, as I'm sure the price is a bit more then it would be without their IPR plan.

Anyway, kind of funny... when I had the i7, motherboard and ram put in, windows did not like the new motherboard, so the operating system was reinstalled. They actually put windows vista 32-bit on the system. Using the airship as the log out point and running icecrown dailies, the system was a lot smoother then the Q6600 with 8 gigs of ram and 2gb of video memory. Given that a 32 bit operating system can only use 4 gb of ram (and that I have 2gb of video ram already), my i7 920 could only use 2gb of the ddr3 ram... but it was noticeably smoother then the Q6600 with 8gb of 800mhz ram. Of course the system had a heart attack when I had all five toons hearth to Dalaran.

The i7 with 12gb of the faster ram, the game is very smooth pretty much everywhere. Aside from the freezing issue, I'm very happy with the upgrade.
10-21-2009, 02:16 PM
-silencer-

For freezing, I'd bet that hard disk performance is the issue, especially in character-heavy areas like BGs and cities. Get an SSD and link the WoW/Data directory there, or just put the whole WoW folder in it. With a big SSD, put the OS and WoW on it. Even better, RAID0 two or more SSDs. The main issue is to massively reduce the seek time for random access reads, since that's what'll be slowing you down in busy areas - fetching every texture of equipment on every character that enters the area. One cheap (~$100) 32GB MLC SSD is a HUGE improvement over multiple 10k rpm Velociraptors in RAID0 for us. I know because I've used both to host WoW on my i7/12gb machine.

For black screens, I'd bet that videocard heat/cooling/power is the issue..

The bottom line? All multiboxers (and even single instance WoW players) should host WoW from an SSD. They're cheap enough now for providing what we need the most - many small file random access reads. The $100 spent here is far more important than getting a 10k rpm hard drive for WoW.
10-21-2009, 02:56 PM
Ualaa

I could go with a low end SSD now.
I have a post by Jak3676 bookmarked.

It basically recommended going for a decent SSD if you were putting the operating system on it.

My original plan was:
-- This Year: i7 920, 12gb new ram, x58 Motherboard.
-- Next Year: SSD (something like the generation 2 - Intel X25-M (34nm) 160GB $2.75 $440) and put Windows 7 & Warcraft on it.
-- After SSD Upgrade: Nvidia GT300 with lots of video ram & 2nd 30" monitor for dual monitor set up.

I've done the i7 / ram / motherboard upgrade this year.
Unfortunately wow randomly freezes, yesterday not even once in 12 hrs of play time, the day before every 15 minutes until I gave up on the game after 3-4 hrs of the crap.

The SSD I'd like, is supposed to be $440(us) from the linked thread.
I've seen it at my local computer store for $900(can) which even with the exchange rate and shipping it here, is rather exhorbitant.
Usually I do random warehouse work in the fall/winter/spring, but am on short term disability at the moment, so cash is rather tight.
I have very lucrative seasonal work from mid June through late September each year, and generally do upgrades then.

I could easily pick up a low end SSD now, but is it really worth it.. when I'm planning on a high end SSD in just over half a year?

Having visited every inn, in the game yesterday without any freeze issues, yet freezing around Honor Hold and Valgarde Keep constantly the day before (as I was adjusting macro's/hotkeys to use the auto FTL of ISBoxer instead of my cast everything at my target's target)... Well it's annoying when the freezes happen, and as far as I can tell, the same toons in the same area can freeze one day and be very smooth and problem free the next.
10-21-2009, 03:11 PM
-silencer-

Yes, get a cheap SSD now, and put WoW on it. When you get a higher-end SSD, put the OS on it. I'd bet you won't see any noticeable increase in performance from WoW on a low-end SSD to a high-end SSD since the high-end SSDs generally only increase write speeds and large sequential reads - two aspects of the SSD that don't matter for us while playing WoW. The higher-end SSD is better for the OS since there will is always reads & writes going on with the OS swap space. Leave WoW and other read-heavy games on the low-end SSD.
10-23-2009, 02:28 AM
kraemder

one wow freezing

Well this may not be your problem but I had an issue with a mod causing clients to freeze. It turned out to be Automaton. I loved that mod so much but apparently one update bliz did something that made it lethal for my boxing.
10-23-2009, 04:01 PM
Ualaa

I typically have quite a few addons enabled, even if only for a specific toon.
I can mess around with addons, that's something else to try.

Master Only:
Atlas Loot
Auctioneer (AH Alt only)
Deadly Boss Mods
oRA2 (Raid toon only)
Postal (AH Alt only)
Quest Helper
Recount

All Toons:
Cartographer
Clique
Cooldown Count
Dot Timer
Fubar
Grid (and GridCustomLayouts)
IS Boxer
Jamba
Mappy
Move Anything
Outfitter
Pitbull
Prat
12-06-2009, 06:54 AM
Ualaa

Kind of an old thread.

The random freezing was fixed last Tuesday, by a new graphics card.

Picked up a GTX 275, as an experiment, to see if the graphic card was the issue. Have not had a single freeze since, and the week or two prior to the change of the graphic card I was freezing every 30-45 mins (and occasionally every 5 mins, like when I was making the BE guild).

Have logged quite a few hours, in the neighborhood of 12-14 hrs a day this week; not a single freeze, even in places that would normally freeze one client pretty much every time like hearth x5 to Dalaran.

If anyone else is having random/consistent freezing with a:

i7 920
12gb Ram
4870X2

Try an Nvidia card if you can.