Blizzard, you changed something in WoW's interface for patch 2.4, and now it causes my video card to frequently and randomly Lock Up and crash windows.

The first time this occured was about 45 minutes after logging into patch 2.4 for the first time. I was in Shattrath, and my curser reset to the middle of my screen and become stuck as it was not accepting any input from the mouse. As i shut down WoW there was some very funking flickering and resisizing by my videocard as it returned to the desktop. Upon restarting WoW the game Froze as i first appeared in Shattrath, and then my computer bluescreened. The message said that there was a video error and the driver for dxdiag was stuck in a continuous loop, and so Windows had been shut down. I've never seen this error before for Any of the many games I have played with this Videocard, an ATI Radeon 9200+.

I was able to successfully restart my computer and log back into wow. However, upon returning to the game i saw that some sort of funky buff countdown timer had been added to every buff on my display, so I know some changes have been made to the graphical interface for patch 2.4. I then made my way to the new Throne of Kiljadean area in Hellfire Penninsula. Where I was able to participate in the madness for about 10 minutes, untill again my display froze, but this time my computer just simply restarted. I have had this happen before while running games that are unstable on older video cards such as Civilization 4. However, this has never happened to me before while running WoW. Not once, not even in highly populated, Ram or graphics intensive areas.

My computer is running cool, and well, very well. It's simply that WoW's client now runs unstably on my videocard after patch 2.4. If this problem isn't resolved, I'll have to quit WoW, as i cannot have it crashing or restarting on me every 30 minutes.

---

Q u o t e:


Please Follow the guy's instructions on page 5, and edit config.wtf. Then please play in lighting intensive areas such as shattrath for 20 minutes, then please come back and do your fellow gamer a favor and tell us if it's stable and it works. If it does, then there will be a 3rd step which may work.

I need to know if it works even for people who deleted their config.wtf and got the new 2.4 wtf. The fix may not work for the post 2.4 patch config.wtf , or it may, just need to know this specifically.

If it does not work for the post 2.4 WTF, then the blue poster on the other thread can design a fix for the new post 2.4 WTF.

---

If you can make it inside the game, you can simply type these lines to make them active:

/console pixelshaders 0
/console specular 0
/console m2useshaders 0

I'm not sure if M2UseShaders will override the other two settings but it's safer to throw that in.
Tell me if it works or not and I'll forward the reports on to the devs. For ATI Radeon 8500-based GPU owners (includes 8500, 9000/9100/9200), make sure you're at Catalyst 6.11.

---

Q u o t e:
what I found strange about the patch was it got to 240 meg straight away then started to download the other 21 meg of it .. was it a update from the previous patch or something like that?

---

Welcome to partial torrents. If another torrent uses the same file that the previous torrent was downloading, it picks up from there.

---

Q u o t e:
Thats all good for those who can actually make it into the game, i tried editing the config.wtf but i still cant get past 18% in the "update" stage of the patch dl.

---

You have another issue. I'm not sure why you're in the thread, but try downloading the patch you need from http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21079

Please do not hijack threads with offtopic issues.

---

Q u o t e:


I am using a Radeon 9600, I dl the patch earlier today and everything worked fine, went off game, came back to play and it started to dl the patch again then my pc crashes, goes to blue screen, however i was playing the game earlier with the patch already dl, so tell me how my problem is different here? because i think it relates quiet well to the subject at hand.

---

1. You're not in the game.
2. You're not using your video card for anything except the Windows GDI
3. If you're blue-screening on a patch download, your network driver is the culprit.

The game crashing should not make it revert to an earlier version. Only a System Restore or a similar utility is capable of that. You really should make a new thread. Continuing to post on this thread will make it a lot harder to track down shader-specific crashes. The Radeon 9600 isn't even on the same class as the 8500/9000/9100/9200. It's quite a leap above them, using shader model 2.

---

Q u o t e:
I'm having a tough time nailing this down too. When I crash, 90% of the time it's a CTD with a memory "cannot read block" error and an error submit window. The other 10% the PC just restarts. Up until now I've had almost no problems at all with WoW. A very rare crash when I'm running tons of stuff in the background was the most I had before.

I've updated all new drivers for all hardware, and followed many of the suggestions I've read here on the forums too.

I'm at a loss here. I can usually bang out problems like this on my own just by fiddling with things, but I've made no headway here. Sometimes I can go for an hour with no crashes, other times it happens 3-4-5 times in a row within 15 mins. Can't seem to find a pattern. Sometimes I crash RIGHT when I log in, other times it happens when I hearth.

Today though, the lag is making it difficult to even test the changes. I can't do anything ingame, no bank, AH, mail, flight masters, etc.

3 month old pc:
Nvidia 8800 ultra - 768mb
Gigabyte X38-DQ6 mb
Intel Quad Core Q6600 g0 @ 2.4 ghz (Reset all overclocking trying to get rid of the problems)
2gb Crucial ballistics memory
150gb raptor hdd (Just did a defrag yesterday, no-raid)
750gb storage drive (also defragged)
SB X-fi Fatal1ty audio (disabled all the fancy stuff)

---

That would be a different crash. Please post in a new thread. The error log in the window would help.

Reava,

Go to the last line (SET UnitNameCompanionName "0"), then hit Enter. Type in the commands. It would look something like...

SET UnitNameCompanionName "0"
SET Pixelshaders "0"
SET Specular "0"
SET M2UseShaders "0"

Save the file

---

Q u o t e:


Tried deleting the entire WTF folder

Tried adding the lines that you suggested

Tried editing the config folder in notepad

None of these work. Even with a fresh wtf folder, no interface and no addons, im stuck looking like this

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/vlad3060/WoWScrnShot_032608_095845.jpg

---

You're in the wrong thread if you're missing ground textures. Update your motherboard chipset drivers. http://www.playtool.com/pages/chipsetdrivers/chipset.html
If you have PC Cillin antivirus installed, it's known to cause symptoms like this. Add WoW.exe or the entire World of Warcraft folder to your exclusion list. Please post in another thread.

---

Q u o t e:
my comp only works for only 15 mins. then after that it wont start anymore. its just a big ol black screen of death.

i let it rest for 5 hours then it'll work again for less than 15 mins.

---

You did not post anything about your system specs.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/search.html?forumId=11110&characterId=51035521953&sid=1

This thread is being reserved for Radeon 9200/9100/9000 and 8500 users. It may possibly extend out to other DirectX 8 family cards if there is an issue with the code to the old shader models. Please post more information about your system if it matches that.

---

Q u o t e:
bump
1. At first i started by deleting the WTF folder...nothing just feezes
2. then i went to my config.wtf... change the pixelshader and specular...again nothing freezes again
3. then i went o console and typed in /console pixelshader o, /console specular 0, /console m2useshader 0...now i get a restart then a blue screen with a list of errors

---

You did not post any information about your system, nor the message in the blue screen. Your issue may not be related to this thread.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/search.html?forumId=11110&characterId=43109531166&sid=1

---

Q u o t e:
oh btw i tried to edit my Config file, turned pixelshaders to 0 and spectacular or w/e to 0 as well... no results =/ i did not delete the WTF folder after edit/saving it.. my wow crashes before i can even get into the game .. it crashes when i try to launch it.. get a black screen.. comp locks up

ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 64mb video card .. 512MB Ram, 2.20GHz Pentium 4 -M processer... (WoW worked perfectly before this piece of @@@# patch)

---

You need to update your Mobility Radeon drivers to Catalyst 6.11. We will test desktop equivalent cards on that driver and nothing else. If your manufacturer does not provide you those drivers, look up DH Mod Tool or Omega and get the equivalent drivers. It's not supported but it's the only way to update an old Mobility card.

---

Q u o t e:


I set this in the file and run the game and it crashes again. I open the wtf file and lo and behold, what I pasted in there has been removed. The "Set SET UnitNameCompanionName" is the only line that will stay in the wtf file.

---

You have a different card and a different issue. Update to Catalyst 8.3 or higher. Make a new thread if you continue to have issues.

---

Q u o t e:
Couple questions:

1) Is there an outside possibility that changing only one of the items (pixelshaders OR specular) will resolve the issue, or are they tied? I ask because I do not understand the mechanism causing the error. I'd rather ask on the slim chance there is an answer than guinea pig it.

2) It might be too early to know, but is there a potential or planned fix to the coding that will allow us to use the pixel shaders and specular features again? The possibility of it happening means I can live with lower graphics for the time being; if it's doubtful, I'll get a new video card ASAP.

Thank you.

---

We're not sure yet. We tested a general Windows XP SP2 system with a 9200 but did not get it to crash. What areas are you all in? If you can, copy and paste your config.wtf file along with the character's location. More information (like how long you can stay in the game before you crash) would be helpful.

Catalyst is the name of ATI's drivers.
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeon-prer300-xp.html

---

Q u o t e:
K looked at some of the responses. Didn't see if you covered my issue.

I'm on a Powerbook G4 Mac Laptop.

Graphics card is ATI Mobility Radeon 9700.

What is happening is that every so often my action bar buttons become pixelated like they have video drop out or sometimes they black out or clear out.

Last time it happened so much it crashed my computer (and that hardly happens ever on my mac). So yea don't know what to do cause a lot of the issues here seem PC based.

---

You're on the PC forum. Try heading over to the Mac forum to see if there are any known issues for your setup.

---

Q u o t e:
bump
freeze then blue screen

Radeon 9200
128MB

---

If possible, please post the blue screen message. If the system is restarting, stop it from doing that.

• Right-click on "My Computer" and choose “Properties”
  
• Click on the "Advanced" tab
  
• Click on the "Settings" button in the “Startup and Recovery” box
  
• Uncheck the "Automatically Restart" option
  
• Click "OK"
  

Wulfdog, please post the entire error log. I cannot view it if it is only a portion of one.

---

Q u o t e:


i am having problems also but i cant even get into game i have tried to post my problem but with no help from blizzard. i have tried to call blizzard but they are closed but when they open and i try to call back i get your call cannot be completed at this time. and then i check forums and blizzard seems to tell everyone that everything is ok on thier end its just everyone else's computers. i need some help with my problem. i get this error message after download during install base\world\maps\Azeroth\Azeroth_30_41.adt and then it tells me the game needs to be repaired to i do that and nothing is wrong please

---

Why are you in a thread about video cards and crashing, when you just have a patching problem? Run the repair utility to have it check your current install. If all else fails, reinstall.

Check this thread - 2.4 Freeze/crashes with Radeon 9000/9100/9200

---

Q u o t e:
Didnt feel that my problem warranted a new thread, so here goes.

While my error isnt causing the game or my computer to crash, it is making it totally unplayable:

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5787/wowscrnshot032608183309da0.jpg

The game starts skipping initially, a few seconds later the framerate plummets, and then that happens. At this point im at probably 2-5fps.

Very old system, fairly bare bones: P4 2.8, FX6200 256mb, 1gig DDR PC3200 400mhz.

1024x768 res, video on low across the board. Ran fine until this started happening. Ideas (besides finishing my new build)?

---

That's a video card communication issue. It can be caused by any of the following: mobo <--> video card communication died somewhere (bios update and chipset driver update should take care of this), PC Cillin antivirus is preventing some of the game data from being loaded, or your power supply is insufficient for that type of system. You'll want to post on another thread if you continue to have issues.

---

Q u o t e:
My 512mb 7300LE Nvidia video card is crashing like crazy, this was happening since 2.3 like once every 3-7 days but it happend 4 times just yesterday, I have the latest drivers and my game doesn't crash on any other game WC3 and Oblivion.

---

Wrong issue. Post in another thread or make a new one.

---

Q u o t e:
well I played for 3 hours straight without a problem then with my radeon 800 pro PC=E

and all I did to fix the problem was swap some ram sticks around into different spots

who knows maybe they had dust on them or they were a bit loose / or maybe they only work comparable to wow in certain spots it cold have been anything

the biggest problem is sorting out what the hell the problem is with this patch

if it is a RAM issue with wow and the new patch ohhh boy. there is gonna be some problems

---

FYI, all memory operations are dealt with via the memory controller and the memory sticks themselves. A software cannot do something outside of that scope. If WoW does something invalid, you'd hit an Error 132, not a system freeze.

---

Q u o t e:
I'd like to add that turning off Pixel shaders gave me a significant improvement in FPS I've lost since the patch. Video card is a geforce 7000m.

---

That may not be surprising. World of Warcraft is making use of the shader hardware, which your 7000M lacks (both in quantity and horsepower). Thanks for the report. I'll keep this in mind for lower-end and integrated cards.

---

Q u o t e:
Same here until I removed 2 sticks of memory [down from 4gb to 2gb]. No more freezing, CTD's, etc.

Vista 32bit
8800GTS 312

---

Did you try a memory test with all 4 sticks in? Otherwise you describe my home system and I haven't had a single freeze yet.