Freezing in Battle for Gilneas
 

As the title says, my comp freezes up in Battle for Gilneas EVERY time. I have tried all the advice given on a similar thread on the official forums to no avail. Advice included :

Disabling addons
Clearing WTF
Clearing Cache and Data/Cache

Even with no addons enabled, my game stutters HEAVILY and eventually locks up. The only workaround I have found is to run the game in Windowed mode(not windowed fullsceen). This prevents the eventual lock-up but the stuterring remains.

Here is my current list of addons :

Align
Auctionator
Bagnon
Bartender4
ButtonFacade (and skins)
dMedia (req. for Infinity Plates)
GemHelper
Gnomish Vendor Shrinker
Infinity Plates ( VERY outdated but I have tried disabling it, no effect)
Lose Control
Masque
Media (req. for Ouf_NIN)
MSBT
oGlow
OmniCC
oUF_MovableFrames
oUF_NIN
Postal
Raven
rChat
ReforgedTooltip
SafeQueue
StAddonManager
TellMeWhen
TSM ( several modules )

My first guess was mad outdated addons, I went after Auctionator and updated it, disabled Infinity Plates and MSBT. None of these worked. I also disabled every addon that I didn't need in a BG ( auctionator, align, TSM etc etc. ) Nothing. I even disabled EVERY addon and went with full default UI, still stuttering heavily

At this point I realized this couldn't be an addon issue could it ? Why would it only act up in a single bg ?

IMPORTANT I have reinstalled Windows 7 followed by a fresh WoW install also ! This was followed by updating my GPU drivers

Has anyone else had this problem ?

What hardware do you got? You sure the drivers are up to date?

Laptop

i5 480m 2.6 GHz
1gb Radeon 5730m
8gb G.SKILL
80gb Intel SSD

Yeah the drivers are up to date. This wasn't happening before 4.3, I'd like to add that

I would post this issue in the Blizzard Tech Support forums. If it's causing problems on a completely fresh install down to a complete reinstall of the OS and drivers plus the game, it's far our of reach of what problem any addon can cause.

On a side note with laptop craphics cards, no matter how much memory it has, the GPU will always be lower quality than in desktop systems since they're required to run with lower power. It sounds strange, but on my laptop, I observe an increase in GPU performance if I plug it in as opposed to running off the battery even though my power settings are the same in both profiles.

Yeah I try to have it plugged it all the time. I'm going to post on the official forums now, I've never had a problem this annoying

Thanks for the help :D

I smell some sort of OS issue mate, drivers or something.

I would format my machine, meaning clean the hard-drive and install fresh W7. Backup files before you do that! Then you can try with a fresh installation. If you don't want that I guess you could a reinstall on WoW only but up to you, not sure how pro you are at computors. :P

It says he already tried that.

Did you try turning down your graphics settings?

/edit: it looks as if you shouldn't have to with your specs, but it's worth a shot. But definitely post this in the Tech Support forums on the WoW site, though.

I read it first, then I forgot and replies with that lol... silly me! :'(

But really if that didn't help then I am not sure... sounds like hardware and that's not fun!

Try turning down settings, especially sunshafts, those can cause crashes.

Made the post on the official forums. Hoping to get this fixed :D

Keep us updated.

Have you tried running Memtest86 or the Windows Memory Diagnostic? If the memory is fine, I would like at the power supply next.

As far as PSU goes, I'm on a laptop.

It's not a heat issue either, temps are completely normal when this happens

I haven't ran a memtest EVER, what does it check for ? RAM stability ?

Turning sunshaft off SIGNIFICANTLY reduced stuterring but didn't prevent the lock up. Song/videos in the background continue playing however, but I can't alt tab out or pull up task manager

Out of curiosity, have you tried putting everything to the lowest possible setting to see if the error is still there or not? :P

You can run window mode, like 800x600 or something just to test, lowest graphic settings would mean less computing by the CPU and less memory usage I believe. Worth a try to see if it still happens or not...

Also a memory test will check the memory (RAM) units and see if they act properly, it will write to it, read it back and expect the proper data to be returned, if corrupted the data won't be properly returned or there will be other events firing from the system indicating problems. The point is it will and hopefully detect problems, so you can replace the RAM stick(s) that are faulty with new once and fix the issue.

Also note that laptops use the RAM for graphics too, not like stationary machines where the GPU has it's own memory unit, so it acts like a bottleneck since the data goes trough the main motherboard and not directly between GPU and its own memory. Anyway, enough offtopic lol!

Did support say anything yet?

I think you are forgetting that this problem only happens in Battle of Gilneas, which compared to some other areas is not very demanding of the GPU/CPU.

It is most likely either a problem with corrupted textures (would be weird considering he did clean install), a driver problem or a problem with addons.

Try to disable all addons and test again.

A crash log would help. Not sure about Windows, but for me it's World of Warcraft/crash.log.

Also remember the event viewer, it may hold some more info about the crash itself.

SOLVED

It only happens when I'm in a bg while having a livestream/youtube video running in the background. The stuttering is a LOT heavier with a livestream than a video. It is VERY VEEEEEEEERY subtle on other maps(it's still there, just hardly noticeable), but for some reason on Battle for Gilneas, it just gets REALLY bad and locks up

And here I was thinking you only ran WoW and had these problems, lol!