Bad freezing issue - Blue Tracker

#0 - July 12, 2007, 11:45 a.m.

I've been having trouble for about the last 1-2 months, with freezing. This ONLY happens while playing world of warcraft.

My computer is reasonably new, an intel imac. It is more than good enough to play WoW.

I deleted all the WTF etc folders, tried running with no addons. Did not fix the issue.
I totally deleted every single WoW file, reinstalled WoW and dowloaded all the patches again. It still continued to freeze.
Then, this week took the computer into an apple store to be checked, there were no hardware issues.

This freezing seems to occur randomly. It isn't an overheating issue, it sometimes happens soon after I turn the computer on. Sometimes I can get away with periods of a few hours without it happening, but once it happens, often it will freeze again multiple times in succession.

I do not have any error logs or anything, it is causing a lockup where I have to turn my computer off. I am able to talk on vent for about 5 seconds after WoW locks up before I am unable to do anything at all. Most of the time the computer just "freezes" the current image, but sometimes it goes black, or even streaking colours. When it just freezes the current image is when it seems to be able to talk on vent for a few seconds, if it goes black or another random colour a weird "blip blip" sound comes from the speakers o_O

Tigerclaw

#26 - July 20, 2007, 1:13 a.m.

Flickers, graphic glitches and lockups are almost, almost always heat related or impending hardware failure related.

Capping FPS by using /console maxfps can help.

(/console maxfps 30) ... or 20, or whatever you want.

Making sure your air intakes/exhausts are clean can help.

Tigerclaw

#37 - July 29, 2007, 6:51 p.m.

If you suspect that your mahcine is overheating when the GPU is being exercised by WoW, some things you should try as experiments:

a) inspect air intakes and exhausts with a bright light and make sure they aren't clogged up - on iMac the intakes are at the bottom of the unit.

b) use SMCFanControl2 to manually crank up fan speeds in advance of running the game

c) set a low frame rate cap in config.wtf - the first line caps foreground FPS and the second line will lower it even further when in the background in windowed mode.

SET maxfps "20"
SET maxfpsbk "5"

You can also change either one of these in game chat on the fly:

/console maxfps X
/console maxfpsbk Y
(pick whatever X and Y)

d) make sure you have turned off full screen glow, aniso filtering, trilinear filtering, and multisampling in video options. Also try playing in window at a reduced resolution.

If after all of these steps you still see flickering or lockups, then the machine is definitely in need of attention, maybe there is a clogged or mis-seated heatsink affecting your GPU.

Justinkk

#40 - Aug. 1, 2007, 1:14 a.m.

Gwenith,

ATI doesn't have drivers for the Mac X1600 because if you have the latest OS X (10.4.10) you have the latest driver. You have to understand that with updates to the game there are also many times update to the graphics, which can cause more stress on the system. If your video card was near it's limits but not showing symptoms yet, it is entirely possible that it could be going past it's limit now.

Justinkk

#42 - Aug. 1, 2007, 2:40 a.m.

Gwenith,

You're not correctly understanding. It's not about the video card not being able handle it because it's not powerful enough, I'm talking about hardware on the verge of breaking, and then going over that threshold.

Tigerclaw

#51 - Aug. 9, 2007, 8:04 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I don't want to hear that your computer is old or whatever and that's the problem from blizzard.. and this is why.

i JUST purchased a Macbook Pro 15in laptop today.
* 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 1440 x 900 resolution
* 2GB memory
* 160GB hard drive1
* 8x double-layer SuperDrive
* NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM

Came home, installed wow, and in a matter of minutes, the same problem as everyone in this thread has reported. color flickers, crashing, locking up my entire computer to the point of forcing a restart. vent working where i can hear everyone, but no one can hear me and i can't move my mouse or force quit.
so i think it's an overheating problem. i get a fan, i put it next to my computer. it's very cool, no overheating, still locking up and freezing.

it's pissing me off. this machine runs wow so much better than my craptacular PC that i just replaced.
this issue needs to be addressed NOW.

If you suspect overheating, first thing to do would be to

a) turn up internal fan speed with the SMCFanControl2 aapplication
b) limit game frame rate with "/console maxfps 30" in chat - try any value you like

See if the machine acts better after that. If it's brand new you may want to consider exercising your warranty, the machines should not be acting like that out of the box.

Also, make sure you have applied the first MacBookPro update available on Software Update.

Tigerclaw

#60 - Aug. 11, 2007, 2:10 a.m.

Q u o t e:
all morning. nothing but problems. here's the same log i've sent blizz about 8 times.

WoWBuild: 16898

Local Zone: The Mechanar

Local Player: Jubella, 000000000079C3EF, (287.958,5.41146,25.3861)

Current Object Track: Merenewyou, 000000000301BE32, (287.122,9.85778,25.3872)

Locked Target: Merenewyou, 000000000301BE32, (287.122,9.85778,25.3872)

Last Enemy Target: Sunseeker Astromage, F01B4AE0000000C8, (289.243,2.90145,25.3862)

Add Ons: Atlas AtlasBattlegrounds AtlasDungeonLocs AtlasFlightPaths AtlasOutdoorRaids AtlasLoot BonusScanner Omen Perl_ArcaneBar Perl_CombatDisplay Perl_Config Perl_Focus Perl_Party Perl_Party_Pet Perl_Party_Target Perl_Player Perl_Player_Pet Perl_Target Perl_Target_Target Perl_TargetCastBar Titan TitanAmmo TitanBag TitanClock TitanCoords TitanItemBonuses TitanLootType TitanMoney TitanPerformance TitanRegen TitanRepair TitanRider TitanXP Trinity TrinityBars DBM_API

=========================================================
Assertion Failed!

App: /Applications/World of Warcraft/World of Warcraft.app
File: /Volumes/F2/usrbuild/xb/build/WoW_6898patch2.1.3/WoW/Source/Mac/../../../Engine/Source/Frame/CSimpleRender.cpp
Line: 1949
Time: 2007-08-09 12.08.48 EDT

Assertion: texture

i can't target any friendly characters without this error.

That error has nothing to do with drivers, hardware, or lockups, and it is mod related.
See if it persists after setting aside your mods, interface and wtf folders.

Tigerclaw

#77 - Aug. 26, 2007, 6:13 p.m.

Generally speaking, these are some of the hardest things to troubleshoot remotely.

The hard lockups (especially if they are preceded by distorted graphics, or sound stuttering) have frequently turned out to be overheating related.

For experimentation to see if perhaps this is the case, there is one more thing you can do which is to cap the frame rate of the game engine. In the chat panel you can type

/console maxfps 20

to cap the engine frame rate to a lower level.

Note that we're not recommending this as a cure, it is a diagnostic experiment. If it demonstrates that your particular machine handles low frame rate settings OK but not high ones, or if you notice issues returning as you raise the frame rate cap to higher values, it means you are probably running into a heat related issue inside the machine. This could be due to improper heatsink assembly, insufficient airflow, or a chip that is just not up to specs somewhere.

Tigerclaw

#80 - Aug. 27, 2007, 4:42 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Tiger,

I have seen this issue 3 mins after a boot from cold state. I just don't see how it is heat related.

Also the fact that it has exhibited the exact, I mean exact same behavior on two different machines, one with ATI, one with nVidia. It usually happens like this:

* Graphics lock. The graphics went bad one time (I can't talk too much about this <g>)
* I took screen shot, so the system was still running
* After 10s or so, the sound comes back for a second or two
* Sound dies again
* Cursor starts rainbowing
* Cursor locks

Almost this exact same sequence every time. Do you think I'd be able to take a screenshot if there was a hardware lock due to heat? Do you think it would heat up enough after 3-5 mins to lock up, yet other times play for 7 hours ok with the fans going at 3K RPM?

It really depends on the scene. Honestly if you see the behavior described, it is indicative of the GPU getting lost, timing out, the driver attempts to reset it and continue - if it's not heat related there is something wrong with the hardware or driver.

We have seen this type of behavior in house, sometimes die to overheating, sometimes due to driver bugs.

It doesn't take 3 minutes to get to an overtemp condition if there is something wrong with the heatsink or airflow. Our belief is that if there was a reproducible error either in the WoW code or in the driver, we would see a lot more reports of this type of behavior than we do.

Tigerclaw

#116 - Sept. 7, 2007, 5:39 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Ok after a week of gameplay on 10.4.5 and Quicktime 7.0.2, I declare this hard lock problem not heat/hardware related.

WoW will run slower on versions prior to 10.4.7 and 10.4.8, because they lack the newer GL extensions. So this isn't strictly a software test, because the machine will also run cooler as a result.

Tigerclaw

#159 - Nov. 5, 2007, 2:31 a.m.

Please, if you have iMac freezing issues to report, do the About This Mac -> More Info... button to run the system profiler, and then click "Extensions" in the panel on the left under the Software heading. Scroll down to the ATI RadeonHD drivers and report the version described there.

Tigerclaw

#162 - Nov. 5, 2007, 2:57 a.m.

Q u o t e:
A total of eight pages of Mac owners/players reporting the same kinds of issues but with no resolution to the problem.

The bottom line: We can't play WoW without problems. Neither Blizzard nor Apple is taking ownership of this problem but the problems continue.

I am having almost exactly the same problems as 99% of the people in this forum thread. My iMac is only 12 months old, I've confirmed it's not overheating, etc, etc, etc.

It makes no sense for me to go on any further; both the symptoms and non-resolution of this problem persist.

BLIZZARD OR APPLE: ONE OF YOU OR BOTH YOU TAKE OWNERSHIP OF THIS PROBLEM NOW. FIX IT. I'M TIRED, TIRED, TIRED OF THIS BS.

Thank you,
Rorax

It's tempting to assume any problem with similar symptoms may have a common cause. What I have seen the most often on iMacs with ATI chipsets that freeze up, aside from software driver bugs in the most recent HD2x00 revision which you do not have, have been thermally related issues.

So I might ask first off if you have inspected the intakes on the bottom of the machine to make sure there isn't a dust buildup problem, or set a frame rate cap on the game to let it run cooler.

( /console maxfps 30 )

Tigerclaw

#164 - Nov. 5, 2007, 5:05 a.m.

Our perspective (based on the numbers we have handy) is that there isn't a WoW bug at hand, because if there was, there would be 100x more reports than we are getting - it would affect all the players, not just a few. What sort of problem only affects a few users consistently... hardware variations. We'd like to believe that every machine is perfect, what we've learned is that it's just not the case.

If you want us to look at your case, please don't invoke what anyone else has posted as support for your question. Start your own thread and we'll look at it. One detail at a time.

The first one I would ask for is a copy of your system profile, a copy of your config.wtf, and a list of specifically which suggestions / experiments you have tried. If you haven't tried some of the usual suspects, we might ask you to try them.

email address for any data you'd like to send us: [email protected]

Hardware lockups are incredibly difficult to troubleshoot remotely, please don't be angry with us for the approach we take to the problem.