Frequent/Constant lockups

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1

Hi all,

I’m having a rather infuriating issue where my game system is frequently locking up. By locking up, I mean the game freezes for 5-30 seconds, sometimes the screen goes white, and then unfreezes. The severity of the issue is remarkably inconsistent and not very reproduceable, sometimes I can play for hours without issue, sometimes I am incapable of doing anything as one lockup ends right as another starts. This issue first started at the end of Dragonflight, then completely went away until 1-2 weeks ago.

The issue recently escalated to where the character selection screen cannot even load; after launch, the game immediately locks up, remains locked up for 15-30 seconds, and then outright crashes with the error “World of Warcraft was unable to start up 3D acceleration.” To combat this, I switched my directX version by adding the -d3d11 to the additional command line fields in the game settings. This brings the issue back to the previous severity - I can launch, login, and usually play, but the lockups still happen on occasion and sometimes render the game entirely unplayable. Does anyone have any idea what I can do to help this?

Here’s my high level system specs: Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Eight-Core Processor; Card name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

Here’s my dxdiag: https://pastebin.com/3HGztc0x

Here’s a list of things I’ve tried:

  • Updated graphics card drivers
  • Clean install of graphics card drivers
  • Update AMD chip drivers
  • Update BIOS
  • Set graphics settings to preset 5
  • Clear shaders cache
  • Disable all overlays and addons

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

2

Your GPU stops taking commands from Windows and then Windows reboots the driver for it.

It’s in your error report here:

Fault bucket LKD_0x141_Tdr:6_IMAGE_nvlddmkm.sys_Ampere, type 0
Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Response: Not available
Cab Id: ef32b6b0-5694-4d3b-be35-f19e659c4d2d

Problem signature:
P1: 141

Common causes are:

  • Corrupt driver.
    • Don’t rely on “clean install.” Use DDU to remove all driver copies.
  • Interfering programs.
    • Usually these are listed in the error report, but I don’t see any.
  • Overheating components.
    • Use HWMonitor to review temperature spikes.

I think it’s just too many driver remnants if I had to guess.

3

Hey - thanks for the reply! I’m not great with error codes, so I’m very thankful for the help!

I used DDU to do a full uninstall of my graphics drivers in safe mode, and reinstalled the latest through Nvidia Geforce. Also downloaded HWMonitor to keep an eye on temps, and launched the game attempting to keep other apps to a minimum. I tried first back on DirectX 12, and got this warning on launch: "There is a known GPU driver issue that can cause very slow first time game launches while shaders are built for the first time. This process can take several minutes”. My login screen was the same chain of locking up for ~15 seconds reptitively; after a few minutes I crashed again, with the same unable to launch 3D acceleration error from before. I put the -d3d11 back on the command line arguments as was able to log in again, and quickly was able to reproduce a lockup by flying into a new zone (I’ve noticed that’s a frequent trigger to force a lockup; especially flying into the Ringing Deeps or Hallowfall). Temps all look good - staying at or under 60 deg C, except the GPU hot spot in the 70s.

All that to say, the three common causes you listed there don’t seem to be addressing the heart of the issue. Any guesses on other subtle issues that could be causing this? If it helps at all, the GPU is about 1 year old and CPU about 6.

Edit: My character unexpectedly changed in this thread; Pohatu and Makuta are both me

4

  • Did you physically reseat the GPU?

  • Have you tried removing the more demanding monitor?

  • Any chance the power supply is failing?

Use benchmarking tools to see if hardware is underperforming:

5
  • I did try physically reseating the GPU, along with moving it to a different PCI/E port and a thorough dusting.
  • I also removed the more intense monitor
  • Gosh I hope it isn’t a failing PSU. My PSU is only about a year old; aside from the WOW lockup issues, my PC is running smoothly and the PSU fan is still working as expected.
  • I ran the UserBenchmark suite; everything came back looking good and the only hardware that came in a bit lower performance than expected was my boot SSD with Windows installed (WoW is on a separate SSD)
  • Also ran the Heaven benchmark; here’s the result:
    Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0
FPS: 173.2
Score: 4362
Min FPS: 9.5
Max FPS: 367.9

System

Platform: Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit
CPU model: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Eight-Core Processor (3193MHz) x8
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 32.0.15.6603 (4095MB) x1

Settings

Render: Direct3D11
Mode: 2560x1440 fullscreen
Preset Custom
Quality High
Tessellation: Disabled

I’m feeling at a bit of a loss here…Given all of the above, the issue is persisting unchanged. I haven’t tried a full un-install and re-install of WoW yet, I can try that overnight tonight - in the meantime, do you have any other ideas?

6

Unfortunately, no. All we know is that your GPU stops working, gets a reboot, then starts working again. As for what’s causing it, I don’t think I can do any further troubleshooting for it specifically over a forum.

7

Thanks so much for the help; I really appreciate it. I’ll chime back on the thread if I find the root cause