Nvidia Drivers & WoW Freezing Up
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I have been having problems with WoW freezing up after a few minutes. At first I thought maybe my graphics card, an EVGA Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT, was overheating. I thought it would be unlikely, but I ruled it out by monitoring the temperature.
Then I remembered I had updated my graphics drivers. So I began testing drivers out. This is what I’ve discovered:
All drivers listed on Nvidia’s website that are the 18x.xx series will cause WoW to freeze. In order to get access to other drivers, you have to look at their Beta and Archived Drivers page and search for drivers based on your video card. I am currently using driver 178.13 and WoW has not locked up once.
If you are having freeze up issues with WoW, I suggest you use the 178.13 driver.
Blizzard is there something with the game that you guys can look at to fix this issue for Nvidia card users? Its obvious that WoW and the 18x.xx driver series do not work well together.
UPDATE 6-12-2009:
After a couple of days of running fine the freezing problem came back. Since then I have noticed that the game may run fine if not minimized or ran in windowed mode. If I launch the game in full screen, and never minimize or change it to windowed mode, it seems to run without issue…mostly. If I change to windowed mode or minimize the game eventually it will freeze. The audio may or may not continue or get stuck in a loop when this happens. This looping audio also applies to Ventrillo when WoW freezes. I’m going to keep testing.
UPDATE 8-6-2009:
The freeze up problem got horrendous last night, so I thought I would try a different approach. I went into the device manager and completely uninstalled my Nvidia video drivers. I then restarted my computer. I then installed the latest drivers from Nvidia, the 190.38 driver. All my problems stopped. So obvious it was a corrupted driver that was causing the problem. I suggest anyone else having this problem do the same as I did.
UPDATE 9-16-2009:
The problem remains…I uninstalled the drivers and the card in the device manager screen, then rebooted in safe mode and ran a driver cleaner. I then rebooted and did a fresh install of the drivers. Ran fine for a day or so. But the problem came back. I have no idea whats causing it. I’m about ready to order a new card…
UPDATE 9-26-2009:
Problem solved. I ordered a EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked. My game has not frozen once since I installed it a week ago. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Geforce 9500 GT is a piece of crap. Don’t buy it.
17 Comments
annoying situation
June 4th, 2009
at 8:29am
I hope that this is the real solution.I ve tried several things with no success, blizzard has to do something about this whole situation
good..but still
June 4th, 2009
at 9:14am
ok i tried with the 178.13 driver
wow ran a lot better..i mean the distortions didnt come so fast
but eventually after 30 minutes of play, they came again : /
Tham
June 4th, 2009
at 9:37am
Dang dude. I’m sorry they didn’t work for you.
I let WoW run on and on and on last night with the 178.13 driver and it never froze for me. That’s why I posted this.
thank you anyway
June 4th, 2009
at 9:45am
anyway thanks =]
i know it has something to do with the driver and blizzard
its just that 9500GT is relatively new model so an 2 year old driver for example doesnt exist : /
the last lag though was funny..the textures were like thermal camera or something
Tham
June 5th, 2009
at 5:38pm
WoW is still running fine. Not one freeze yet. Even had a 10 man Ulduar raid last night.
temporaly fixed
June 7th, 2009
at 7:14am
ok, with some changes and by purchasing a retail of WoW(i had trial version) i can almost paly normal..problem comes once in an hour
blizz
June 11th, 2009
at 8:06am
i ve sent an email to blizz the responded after one day, and after i sent some files they asked me for they havent replied for like 2 days now..
come on blizz i am paying for this stuff!
danny
June 19th, 2009
at 4:11pm
Tham >> What OS do you currently use ?
Thamelas
June 19th, 2009
at 4:16pm
Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Service Pack 3 screwed up my machine twice…don’t get it.
danny
June 20th, 2009
at 4:30am
I’m running Vista, but I still have problems with freezing. I’m going thru 16x.xx drivers now. Hoping i’ll find it someday.
damien
June 21st, 2009
at 6:03pm
Currently having the same issue, tried everything from increasing fan speed, lowering GPU, reducing gfx, help someone.
This is a brand new machine I’m using yet I’d rather go back to a 5 yr old computer which was more stable
Florin
July 8th, 2009
at 12:19pm
Have you found anything new about the problem?
Thamelas
July 8th, 2009
at 3:50pm
Well I’ve been using the most recent drivers now for about 2 weeks and it hasn’t froze up once. I don’t get it cause I used them before and got freeze ups. I can suggest that you try reinstalling your drivers. Maybe that will solve the problem. I know I reinstalled them a few times.
rmx
July 28th, 2009
at 9:01pm
I’ve tried completely reinstalling drivers, safe mode with Driver Cleaner etc, and still get freezes once in a while. Really frustrating. I had a working driver a while ago, updated my driver as Windows Update suggested without really thinking about it would be an issue, and started getting freezes in WoW exactly as you describe. Being dumb I tried updating with the latest off nVidia’s site instead of rolling the driver back and now I have no way of knowing what driver it was.
Thamelas
July 30th, 2009
at 10:48am
We’ll I’ve started using the most recent drivers now. Everything will run fine for a while. Then the game will hiccup and the graphics may or may not go screwy. Usually I can minimize the game and then bring it back to full screen and it fixes itself.
Also, I play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. If I don’t totally shut down my system and restart it before I play WoW, then WoW will get all screwy.
Thamelas
August 6th, 2009
at 11:00pm
Still not solved. See the bottom of my blog entry.
SAC
December 15th, 2009
at 6:23pm
just got a new card, jaton video-498PCI-DLP (nvidia9500). in testing the cards performance ran smack into this “issue”, now looking for help on it. i tested it on halo, and flightsim 2004, both this happens in. even in my dvd player sometimes.
what do i do?