Is my graphics card dying?

[Sonic Doctor]

Okay, so I've just started playing WoW ten days ago. I've been playing it on the lowest setting because all I have is an integrated graphics card: Intel(R) G33/G31 Express Chipset Family

For the first five days I played and nothing happened, then after that at least once a day I would be playing and then the screen would blip and go black and come back and do it again, so I did ctrl alt del, and when I got to the desktop, there would be a yellow triangle alert in the tray and it would say that the driver had stop working but it had now recovered, then the triangle disappeared. So brought the game back up because it was still running, and it came back up just fine and I played on. That happened for four days, once a day.

Today though when I was playing, it did the same thing but when I applied what I would normally do, it didn't work. Whatever sound was being played at the time started repeating and until it just started going into a grating "Eeeeerrrrrrr". I did a hard reset, and tried to load the game back up again, but as soon as I got back into the world it did it again. Including that time, I tried two more times, and on the last and fourth time I waited to see what would happen before I did a reset. After waiting for about a minute it went to a blue screen error.

I don't know if this means anything but this is the "problem details" that Windows gives me, and if I check for solutions if finds nothing(no big surprise for Windows, it never finds crap when a computer errors):

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: 84CDC438
BCP2: 8E60FDE0
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 0000000D
OS Version: 6_0_6001
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini071111-01.dmp
C:\Users\The Doctor\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-105409-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Users\The Doctor\AppData\Local\Temp\WERCBC6.tmp.version.txt


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Also, I updated the graphics drivers and that didn't seem to do anything, the error still happens. Please help, I'd like to know what the heck is going on.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Update: After I did some updates for Windows, I decided to try and see if one of my other characters would work.

I found out my other character a Night Elf Hunter loaded up just fine when I got into the game world, I did a few things to see if it would stick working fine and it did.

So, I thought maybe that the problem had subsided so I started up my main again: a Dwarf Paladin, and right as it got into the game world it crashed again, luckily not the whole computer this time, it booted my connection, so now from what I can tell this is possibly a connection/graphical issue together.

Now that I think back, I think I have had this same issue back when I first did the trial 10 months ago, and this problem has occurred in the same city, Stormwind. So, I believe that it is possible that it is a problem that my connection(even though it is fast cable) and my integrated graphics can't handle the ton of player characters that are in the city at the moment.

The reason I say this is that I was in Stormwind two other times with my main character and experienced no problems.

So if anybody has anything to add that might help please say.

 

[Tharwen]

Those intel chipsets are generally pretty bad at running games, so it's possible that it's simply run out of memory.

Open the Windows Event Viewer (in Vista or 7 just type 'event viewer' into the start menu) and go to custom views > administrative events. See if you can find the specific crash in that list and there might be more information on it. Can you post that here?

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Those intel chipsets are generally pretty bad at running games, so it's possible that it's simply run out of memory.

Open the Windows Event Viewer (in Vista or 7 just type 'event viewer' into the start menu) and go to custom views > administrative events. See if you can find the specific crash in that list and there might be more information on it. Can you post that here?

Well, I've done what you said. I hope this doesn't mean anything and that every computer is like this but it says that since I got the computer two years and a month ago, it has had 40,854 warnings/errors. Rounded up that comes out to 54 warnings/errors a day.

Now back onto the matter at hand: As I said, I was able to start up and play my Alt character with no problems I played for a couple hours, but it crashed again.

I remember what time it was when it happened, and there was one warning and three errors that correspond with that time:

Source Display: 7/11/2011 11:40:20 PM Warning: Display driver igfx stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

When that warning comes up the computer freezes, then the errors.

Source Eventlog: 7/11/2011 11:43:57 PM Error: Audit events have been dropped by the transport. The real time backup file was corrupt due to improper shutdown.

I'm not the one that shut it down, it went to a blue screen and shut itself down.

(Apparently the computer went back in time one second with this next one, I am listing these in order. I guess I should expect that since I named my computer "TARDIS Computer")

Source Eventlog: 7/11/2011 11:43:56 PM Error: The previous system shutdown at 11:41:00 PM on 7/11/2011 was unexpected.

Duuuurrrr, computer is be smart, it is on the problem(Sorry couldn't help myself.)


This is all the information there is, if I click the details tab it is all just a bunch of numbers and random letters.

I don't know what the say, it is normally what my computer does. Meaning it doesn't give clear answers to what went wrong.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Update:

Well, I looked at the WoW website and it lists my graphics chip set as not supported. I find this situation incredibly stupid, because if my system in that respect isn't supported, there is absolutely no reason why I should have been able to play for five days and then poof I have problems.

Yes, when I got my computer 2 years ago, all it came was this standard graphics set, but it makes no sense that it can't run something like WoW on the lowest settings. Heck, I played Lord of the Rings Online for many months before this and it at the lowest settings is pretty much the same as WoW, it isn't the same graphics style, but it of the same graphical level.

I won't accept that it is just that my chip set isn't supported, because I should have gotten the error from second one that I started playing, not days into playing.

This is why I've turned my back on computers, crap like this makes no sense.

 

[Tharwen]

Don't worry, I have 17000 events in a year. Anyway, I'm going to be honest and say that those errors don't really help much.

I think your chipset just can't cope with intensive processing. Sorry...

If that's the case, they say it's unsupported because they can't stop the random crashes without lowering the game's requirements specifically for your chipset.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Don't worry, I have 17000 events in a year. Anyway, I'm going to be honest and say that those errors don't really help much.

I think your chipset just can't cope with intensive processing. Sorry...

If that's the case, they say it's unsupported because they can't stop the random crashes without lowering the game's requirements specifically for your chipset.

I'd accept the situation if it just wasn't so insane. It makes no sense for the game to run fine and smooth at the lowest setting and then poof, it just can't anymore.

I'm assuming it is something with the latest minor update or something, because it updated something 4 or 5 days ago and that is when the problems started.

I've actually done some searching about the being able to play one character but not another and then not being able to play any. I found one person that said that there might be some add on problems or corrupted textures and the person said to use the repair WoW program that is in the all programs section of the start menu.

I ran that and it actually said it repaired something, so I thought cool it might work again. But when I hit the desktop and the launcher came up it had to re-download something(it does it every time after I try the repair program), so what I'm thinking is that there is something in the latest small update that has rendered the game unplayable, something that the repair program sees as broken.

 

[Tharwen]

I don't really know what to do...

Try the WoW support forum?