A Screenshot Of My Problem
January 15, 2008Here is an image of what happens in game to me:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2313/2195526488_0ceb8da078_o.jpg
This is one of the “better” ones. Somtimes the whole screen would get jaggy, polygonal shapes or would go all yellow. Only way to fix it, and it’s a short fix, is to restart the game.
Yes this happened during an arena match too.
EXACTLY! Same thing happens to me. I went online to grab a screenshot for you last night and now my system hoses up COMPLETELY when I log into WoW. I can’t alt-tab or even CTL-ALT-DEL. I actually have to do a hard boot on it. /cry
I’m worried, as you are, that my graphics card is hosed. What tests did you run to rule out certain problems? How much does a new graphics card cost, ya think?
I also wondered if it was a virus, but I’ve done all my scans and came up empty. I keep trying to find others who have this problem and you’re the one who’s described it best. I saw on a Blizzard forum that they are claiming it’s a driver problem and refuse to debug it. However, it IS awfully weird that this started getting serious for us both at the same time, doing the same things.
Are you still seriously thinking of getting a whole new computer? Ugh. Mine is only 1.5 years old. If I do need a replacement, I’m going with a Mac.
BTW, I found a thread on this problem on the user forums for WoW. It is apparently a fairly widespread problem and has happened during the same timeframe as our worst problems started (since the end-of-year patches). Here’s the link:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=65459761&postId=696842517&sid=1#344
Wow, kind of nice knowing there are others having the same problem. I was thinking of getting a new computer but now I may hold off for a day or two before I push the “buy” button.
Have you tried the smooth mouse option? I think I may reinstall the card I bought and try that. If not maybe I’ll take the computer of of the little cubby it’s in and place it outside where it can get some good air circulation. Though with a fan on the card and 2 fans running in my machine, overheating doesn’t sound logical.
Macs are good, I have a G4 laptop and I love it. I decided to go with a PC since they are a little cheaper and I can upgrade it if necessary. Not so much with an iMac and the Mac Pros are insanely expensive.
No, I haven’t tried smoothing on the mouse. I’m going to try it when I get home. I’ve copied a bunch of recommendations on things that might fix the issue and will try them one by one. If you’re interested in the list, go to the About page on my blog and email me. I can post it on Google Docs for you.
That would be great! Thank you.
You may have heard much of this before, but I figured I’d throw my .02 out there anyway in hopes that it might help… I had a similar issue a few years ago, once in WoW, once in DAoC, and in my experience, “crystal” artifacts like that grey spike coming from one of the characters is indicative of a failing graphics card, or bad RAM.
There are a few tests you can run yourself using free/demo software that I might suggest. First one is Memtest x86, available from http://www.memtest86.com/, and you should set it up on a bootable floppy/cd to run at start up, immediately after your bios check, before going into Windows. This will check your RAM for any errors – if you discover any (Simplest way to tell is that you’ll see red on the screen if there are any), swap sticks around until you find the faulty one, and replace it.
Next is for your video card – 3dMark06 from http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/. This will stress yoru video card, and if you get any of the same graphical glitching that you get in WoW, then your video card is probably going bad.
The last one is a bit more complicated, and I never fully figured out how to use it. SiSoftware Sandra, available from http://www.sisoftware.net/ tests pretty much anything and everything on your computer (Though I prefer Memtest for the RAM testing, since there shouldn’t be anything loaded yet).
Hope this gives you a little more to go on!
[...] the last patch. At first I was getting streaks of graphics running off of random objects, like the image above. Then the textures of things like grass, dirt, and mountains started tiling into repeated [...]
I wish I had more help to offer you but from what I can tell you both have NVidia video cards, different models, but it might have something to do with the latest drivers, I have had issues in the past with various games and such, and sometimes it was recommended to download an older version of a driver, at least one that worked right…I know it sounds backwards from what everyone on the net says, always update your drivers, but sometimes I have seen that isn’t always the solution…
If it doesn’t help, at least you tried right?
Sean,
What you’re saying really doesn’t sound that strange. Back when I was playing DAOC there was an issue where after a patch we were asked by Mythic NOT to update our video card drivers because they had not figured in how to get current updates of video cards to work with the recent patch. If I can recall, it had something to do with when Mythic first started developing the patch they were using older drivers and programing. When the newest DirectX when in, they would have had to do double the work to update the patch with the new DirectX which ultimately would have delayed the patch we were all anticipating even more.
I did try this as well.. reverting back to DirectX 9 but I was still having the glitching.
Thanks for the help