It's been a frustrating weekend to say the least. About every hour I have to restart my entire system because the video locks up while playing. There's more to it than just this, so let me explain.

Several things happen and I can tell when I have to restart. First off, there will be missing textures on the screen, such as the ground missing, objects are black, etc. Also panning around will cause extreme stuttering which isn't normally there. Next the whole UI will flicker and I won't be able to see my character or UI. If I minimize and maximize the screen, it'll be black and I can't do anything. Most of the time the system is locked up at this point and a hard reboot is needed.

If I attempt to close out of the WoW window , a few things might happen. I have seen it go to a static screen as if I changed the channel on an analog broadcast on TV to a non-existing channel. Sometimes it'll go back to the desktop after this, but it'll be in 640x480 and say that the video driver stopped responding. Sometimes after the static screen it goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor and never recovers.

I have also gotten the error #132 and #134 that has been reportedly lately too, but upon trying to send or cancel, the system locks up.

Something that may be of importance but I haven't been in this area to test to see if it's there. While flying through dragonblight, wow often crashes. Turning down the draw distance helps this but doesn't permanently fix it. Something interesting happens though when trying to restart wow. My whole system restarts itself, and tells me it recovered from a serious error, but no error in the event log. So to avoid the system crash, I restart the whole system after wow crashes.

I use an exact copy of the wow folder on my laptop without any issues.

System is hooked up to my 52" TV through DVI to HDMI adapter. Video and sound are both carried through the HDMI cable. Resolution 1152x648

Things I have tried:
Wiped all ATI software out using uninstaller, then driver cleaner. Reinstalled software.
Tried both basic drivers and full software suite.
Tried an earlier driver..
Disabled all addons.
Started from a fresh wow folder.
Started from a fresh OS install.
Ran Memtest - Passed
Ran Seatools/Chkdsk - Passed
Ran the wow repair tool - No problems.
Played in Full Screen mode.
Played in windowed mode.
Turning the settings down.
Underclock the GPU.
Turn the GPU fan speed on High - Only runs at 50c while playing
Tried an ATI fix that stops it from cycling the clock during 2D and 3D so that the clock remains constant. Seemed to help with the dragonblight crashes.
Updated all system drivers and BIOS.


System Specs:
Motherboard - Intel DG35EC
Processor – Intel E8400 3.0GHz
Memory – Kingston 4GB Dual Channel (2x 2GB)
Power Supply – Antec NeoPower 550w (42A on 12v)
Video Card – Asus EAH 4870
Operating System – Windows XP 32-bit
1 IDE HDD
1 Sata Optical DVD-R/RW

A side note - I have returned this video card twice because the fan has died on it, and also had some artifacts. I noticed on Monday that the fan started acting up on this one and I could hear it raising and lowering even though I had it set at a constant level. I've since downloaded Rivatuner and keep it up high and I haven't heard it do it again. I am really at my end here for this card and I'm about to invest in the GTX260 if I don't find any answers. I'll post error logs in separate post.

Hi Lazyshaman,

Since you have the oddball error 134 message along with an ATI card, it might be a crash that we and ATI are looking into. Have you tried the PTR to see if the same type of issues happened? The d3d9ex mode should help out. You can also try this as a workaround for the live version - http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=93502