black screen of death

[oddball820]

<p>well im having a problem whn i log in im fine as long as im not moving. once i try to tun within seconds i get this black screen of death and cant do anything. i end up having to manualy reboot my computer. i have no idea what is causing this but im new to the game and so far it doesnt seem to like my computer. heres the specs on my computer i dont think its because of insuficient hardware.</p><p>CPU- intell E8400</p><p>MOBO- evga 780i</p><p>VIDOE- evga 9600GT SSC x2 in SLI</p><p>HDD-320gig seagate barracuda/ 150gig raptor</p><p>RAM- Corsair dominator PC8500 1gig x4</p><p>POWER- pc power and cooling 610watt</p><p>i think thats the important stuff. i have tryed updating all my drivers and get nothing if anything graphic driver updates made things worse. i tried reinstalling the game and that didnt do much. please someone tell me im not alone with this problem. i just wana play more <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[TSR-DanielH]

Greetings,Lets have you disable any extra background applications as a first step to make sure it isn't a conflict.1. Select the START button.2. Select RUN, then type in "msconfig" (for Vista, type msconfig in the search bar at the bottom of the Start Menu)3. Press OK4. Select the STARTUP tab.5. In the list, uncheck all boxes EXCEPT for SCANREGISTRY and SYSTEM TRAY. If you use Windows XP, please note that SCANREGISTRY and SYSTEM TRAY will not be listed - just uncheck the entire list.6. Hit apply and then OK. Restart the computer and try the game again.You can re-enable those start up applications by following the same steps but checking the ones you want to turn back on.<p>If you are still experiencing the same issue, please reply back. </p>

[Pheonicks]

I tried what you suggested...Still experiencing "Black screen of death"

[oddball820]

should have mentioned earlier im running vista home premium. i tryed what you said and it didnt do anything. i also seen someother threads i tryed some of that stuff too. i deleted all ini files and tryed not using multiple cpu support. still got nothing.

[TSR-DanielH]

<cite>oddball820 wrote:</cite><blockquote>should have mentioned earlier im running vista home premium. i tryed what you said and it didnt do anything. i also seen someother threads i tryed some of that stuff too. i deleted all ini files and tryed not using multiple cpu support. still got nothing.</blockquote>Lets try disabling the extra CPU core to run the game with just one for testing purposes.1. Start the game up and hit control+alt+delete2. Open the task manager and then go to the 'processes' tab3. Right click on the eq2 process and select 'set affinity'4. Remove the check marks from every box except for CPU 0Once you've done that go ahead and close the game before reopening it.  Try to cause the black screen again once you've done that.  Let us know how it turns out.

[oddball820]

<p>well tryed this one and lasted alittle longer at first then i crashed tryed it again right after and crashed as soon as i entered server.<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[oddball820]

i been watching my FPS and they seem to stay right about 120-150. except in certain areas they do go down to around 50-60. like POF SS or COF i noticed that it goes down around there and i also crash alot around there. i can run around BBL or DLW or any of the lower zones just fine, i can even hang around the crowded areas like freeport harbor with no problem. any one got any ideas?

[Pheonicks]

<p>I am experiencing the same thing as you.  I have tried what is written above as well with no success.  I can't stay in game for more than 30 minutes...that being my longest stretch.</p>

[oddball820]

seems like more and more people are coming out with the same problem maybe they will fix it fast as most of the people seem to be suspeneding their accounts since they cant play.

[Pheonicks]

<p>Looks like I will be suspending mine as well.  I am now crashing in town when that didn't happen before.  No sense paying for something that you can not play.</p>

[oddball820]

<p>ok so i been having this crashing problem awhile now and i was looking through everything on my computer to try to figure it out and i found that everytime i crash windows is puting an error entry in the event log. here what it says happens.</p><p>Unable to initialize the security package Kerberos for server side authentication. The data field contains the error number.</p><p>if theres more info that someone needs let me know. if anyone can make heads or tail of this great. maybe this has nothing to do with the problem. also i been having problems at dog something or other lake in commonlands. currently i cant even log in. all this is weird cause i was on for hours and hours yesterday and didnt crash at all. thanks for any help.</p><p>i also seem to be getting this in the event log when i crash.<span ></span></p><p>The WUSB54GSSVC service terminated with the following error:</p><p>The parameter is incorrect.</p>

[Zodepi]

<p>I've been getting the black screen of death about 5-10 minutes into the game as well that has been plaguing me for the past few weeks.  It almost seems to be timed rather then any sort of in-game action, as I can get the black screen of death by selecting a character and jumping into the game, just standing and not doing anything, and can get it by just sitting at the character selection screen.  When that happens I have to manually reboot the system and haven't seen any log files in the EQ install directory, so I'm wondering if that may be why there isn't any crash logs?</p><p>I'm wondering if it's a conflict issue?  Anyhow, system spec's are:</p><p>Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550</p><p>nVidia GTX 280</p><p>nVidia 790i Ultra motherboard</p><p>Realtek sound on board</p><p>Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio card</p><p>Windows XP Professional (Presently)</p><p>4 Gig of DDR3 RAM (PC3-8500)</p><p>1,000W ATX power supply</p><p>I've poked around in a number of forums trying to fix this issue and have tried a number of things without it going away.  Some of the fixes seem to work for the dual core machines, but I haven't had any luck with getting them to work with the quad.  Anyhow here are some of the things I've tried:</p><p>- Clean installs of both Vista Ultimate and Windows Professional XP (Presently on XP Pro now)</p><p>- Backing down video drivers from 178.24, to 178.13, to 177.41 with no success.  Even tried the beta 180.43 drivers which didn't help</p><p>- Uninstalled drivers for the sound card and left it uninstalled for the various video driver changes.  Didn't help.</p><p>- Changed sound settings in game to Miles and crash still occured.</p><p>- Changed resolutions in game. 1920x1200 is native for my monitor.</p><p>- Enabled and disabled multi-core support with no change in the crashes.  Although I did notice that when it was disabled in-game, it seemed to always push the game to the number 4 processor. </p><p>- Tried the set affinity trick which didn't help.</p><p>- Totally reinstalled the game from scratch twice. </p><p>- Checked memory with the Memtest program, and it looked good.  No bad sticks.</p><p>- Checked drive for bad sectors, none found. </p><p>- Disabling Anti-virus software (Kaspersky Internet Security) when starting the game.  And moving the EQ2 client and launcher as fully trusted programs.</p><p>- Disabled autorestart, but still got the black screen of death.</p><p>- Running in full screen or windowed mode didn't make a difference.</p><p>Some observations with the crashing issue I've been having:</p><p>- I do not believe it's a heat issue, as the GPU is around 65-70C when the crash happens.</p><p>- Crash happens if I jump right into the game and do something, or if I just sit at the character selection screen.</p><p>- No crashes when running things local on the machine, and not connected to EQ2, so I would not suspect bad power or memory (in addition to heat) as it would probably be crashing then too. </p><p>- When disabling multi-core support via the in-game option, I noticed it would always push the game to CPU number 3.  When I was trying out the set affinity trick, it would go to the processor I designated (0).</p><p>Right now I'm at a loss as to what could be causing it.</p>

[Zodepi]

<p>Just a quick follow up on this.  Wanting to see how another online game worked, I downloaded a trial for WoW and it worked fine.  Was playing for over an hour this morning with no crashes.  Trying EQ2 again, and the same black screen of death hit approx 5 minutes after logging on.  Starting to look like it's something the EQ2 program does that is generating a conflict of some sorts.  Although at this point I'm not sure if it's the processors or graphics that are doing it, or perhaps a little from each? It's starting to look to me that the new hardware on my system, and the drivers to support it, may be what is feuding with the EQ2 software.</p><p>EQ2 ran fine on my old system before it gave up the ghost.  Now the new system can't run it without the black screen of death hitting shortly after logging in.  I can run Fallout 3 locally without the system crashing.  And after this morning's test, I can run another MMO online without the black screen of death hitting.  Oh, and I can run the Legends of Norrath card game without a black screen of death, using the stand alone client.</p>

[Zodepi]

<p>Well, after all that troubleshooting, I think I inadvertantly fixed the problem I was having with the black screen of death I was having.   I couldn't say if it was the original poster's problem.  But I was about to reseat my video card and on a whim I moved my monitor connection to the other DVI port on the video card.  And it seems to have cleared up the black screen of death problem.  Looks like I had a quirky DVI port on the card, although. </p><p>I did have to use Miles audio setting instead of Sound Blaster X-Fi, as that was still crashing me after swapping ports.  But once doing that I've been up and running for close to 3 hours now.  In addition I also crashed when I had multi-core disabled.  Enabling it seems to have also cleared up crashing.  Not sure if Intel Core 2 doesn't play well with the disabled multi-core in the game?</p><p>Anyhow, it appears my black screen of death issue was resolved.  And feel like a "DOH" in what it was that I had to do to fix it.</p>

[oddball820]

<p>well im glad that you fixed your problem. thank you for the info on everything. i have to tryed about everything other then the windows reinstall with no progress. it seems to be a video card thing with me so i will try the other dvi port and see if that helps, but im not holding my breath. ill post back if i have any luck or not.</p>

[Zodepi]

<p>Hopefully you can get it figured out and back up and running soon.  I know how frustrating it was trying to figure it out. </p><p>Anyhow, just a few other things to pass along since swapping the DVI ports (new card coming from vendor).  The Soundblaster X-Fi driver problem appeared, and I switched to the Miles in-game sound.  However, as others reported, there can be a memory issue with it.  I found that if I ran the game in Windowed mode, and had a browser window in the background, that it seemed to help the crashes related to this.  By doing this on my system configuration the game went to crash-less. Every now and then if I toggled to the browser and back to the game, the memory issue with the Miles sound setting wouldn't appear.</p><p>Also, I wonder if there is an issue with the Intel CPU chip's and hyperthreading?  I ask because I recall other threads where people with dual cores disabling multi-core support and/or disabling hyperthreading on the chip sets.  For me, I found the opposite to be true, in that the game ran more stable with multi-core enabled.  Since the Intel Core 2 doesn't utilize hyperthreading, I wonder if that particular issue might be related to that?</p><p>Anyhow, just wanted to toss out a few add-on comments as I was going through and 'un-fixing' my troubleshooting fixes.</p>