World of Warcraft Black Screen Crashes

[backdoc77]

Just installed a new GTX 285 (evga) and I'm getting black screen crashes during gameplay usually within 15 mins. The monitor loses signal. Tower lights and fans still working but a hard reboot is required. My old GTX+ 9800 worked with no problems for 1 year. Before that I had 2 GTS 8800's sli'd with no problems. This problem only occurs playing world of warcraft and only after I installed the new GTX 285. Bioshock, Fallout 3, Crysis and COD all work fine. Thousands of posts regarding this issue but no solution. Wow blames nvidia and nvidia (evga) blames wow.

Things i've tried:
New Drivers
Old Drivers
New power supply (corsair 750w model# CMPSU-750TX)
Turned down video settings/resolution
Removed SB Audigy and used onboard sound
Increased VC fan speed.
Checked fans/GPU and CPU temps
Increased memory voltage
Downclocked the VC (decreased crash frequency - the only thing that helped)
Updated motherboard chipset driver (nforce)
Replaced power strip/Direct from wall outlet
RMA'd the card (i'm on the third one)
Tried 2nd PCIE slot
Updated Direct X
Swapped VC into 2 other systems (one of which was a fresh XP install)
Closed background programs
Checked the event viewer for clues
Removed mods/deleted cache/wtf folders
System File Checker
Wow repair.exe
Windowed mode

I'm at my wits end. Anyone else having this issue?

My Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 (3.33 Ghz)
Asus P5N32-E SLI Motherboard (680i chipset)
2 G Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 Memory (2.1 voltage) 4-4-4-12
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB sata
EVGA GTX 285 sc edition (01G-P3-1285-AR)(underclocked to stock settings 648/1476/1242)
Win XP Pro SP3 w/ all updates

 

[yh125d]

Completely delete WoW, interface, cache, addons, WTF folder, everything. Start fresh. You're already eliminated everything else, there must be some corrupted WoW file

 

[Axon]

I agree with yh. How did you install this particular instance of WoW? Was it a fresh install, or did you copy it over from another hard drive? Did you DL the client off a torrent or anything? I've found that, on machines where I copy WoW from one drive to another, small issues crop up. A fresh install, though painful, generally clears those issues up. YMMV, as always.

Also, in the game's sound settings, disable death knight sound effects. It's ridiculous what that one little feature does to WoW performance.

Finally, I can see that your a windows XP guy, so grabbing the RC of Windows 7 just to see if it helps might be a lengthy, but worthwhile, endeavor.

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: yh125d
Completely delete WoW, interface, cache, addons, WTF folder, everything. Start fresh. You're already eliminated everything else, there must be some corrupted WoW file

He listed that as done already...

One thing I didn't see was that if he flashed his motherboard to the latest BIOS?
or
If he took the boards settings and entered them manually (eg, memory timings/voltage, cpu voltage, bus speed, multiplier, pci-e frequency, etc, etc.)

All in all, did you try a completely different video card that wasn't from Nvidia?

 

[Stumps]

It's your computer trying to tell you that you need a life....

 

[backdoc77]

Originally posted by: Axon
I agree with yh. How did you install this particular instance of WoW? Was it a fresh install, or did you copy it over from another hard drive? Did you DL the client off a torrent or anything? I've found that, on machines where I copy WoW from one drive to another, small issues crop up. A fresh install, though painful, generally clears those issues up. YMMV, as always.

Also, in the game's sound settings, disable death knight sound effects. It's ridiculous what that one little feature does to WoW performance.

Finally, I can see that your a windows XP guy, so grabbing the RC of Windows 7 just to see if it helps might be a lengthy, but worthwhile, endeavor.

My main computer was a fresh install, but it's been awhile since I re-installed the game. The game was running awsomely for 3 years on my old sli'd 8800's and a GTX+ 9800 not a single problem till I installed the GTX 285. From the hundreds of threads i've read thru regarding this issue, reinstalling wow from scratch did not help. Same for Win 7. I could link hundreds of threads going back to 2006 on all sorts of hardware configurations (ati and nvidia). Lemme know if you guys are interested. This is one of the biggest threads

http://forums.worldofwarcraft....Rzw0vasQPFppQthw954ooR

 

[backdoc77]

One thing I didn't see was that if he flashed his motherboard to the latest BIOS?
or
If he took the boards settings and entered them manually (eg, memory timings/voltage, cpu voltage, bus speed, multiplier, pci-e frequency, etc, etc.)

All in all, did you try a completely different video card that wasn't from Nvidia?

My mobo has the latest BIOS from Asus. I entered the memory timings manually. Everything else is set by default in the BIOS.
I have not tried an ATI card.

 

[Axon]

Originally posted by: backdoc77
My main computer was a fresh install, but it's been awhile since I re-installed the game. The game was running awsomely for 3 years on my old sli'd 8800's and a GTX+ 9800 not a single problem till I installed the GTX 285. From the hundreds of threads i've read thru regarding this issue, reinstalling wow from scratch did not help. Same for Win 7. I could link hundreds of threads going back to 2006 on all sorts of hardware configurations (ati and nvidia). Lemme know if you guys are interested. This is one of the biggest threads

http://forums.worldofwarcraft....Rzw0vasQPFppQthw954ooR

Okay, so, if you don't want to try a fresh install or windows 7, your options are:

1. RMA that card
2. Buy a new card (possibly ATI)