World of Warcraft: Once and for all. HELP!

I have been having the issue below since the first expansion (Burning Crusade). I have been back and forth between these forums, Blizzard forums, telephone support and email support to no avail.

The issue is as follows: During the game for no apparent reason the entire computer locks up. Sometimes I can still hear sound, sometimes not at all. The only way to do anything is to hold the power button down until it shuts off. Many times after powering down and back up, the game lock up right at the login, sometimes at the character selection or right when I enter the world.

The only temporary resolution (albeit unacceptable) was to delete the Cache and *** folders from the WoW folder. This seemed to work as an immediate fix until the problem happened again. Now it seems with the latest patches and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, this temporary fix doesn't even work. I even went so far as reinstaling my entire operating system.

Every time I have removed the folders indicated above I have also repaired disk permissions in Disk Utilities and even removed any instance of "blizzard" or "warcraft" from the ~/library/preferences folder as instructed by blizzard.

This is just speculation but I've noticed that the computer locks up when I swing the character's view around too quickly (holding the right mouse button and turning fast). Also, this last time the problem showed itself after adjusting the graphics in the game and being asked to restart it for the changes to take effect. Note that this the ONLY time I have ever set the graphics in settings so all of my previous encounters with the problem have nothing to do with that.

The problem only happens when playing The World of Warcraft. There have been many threads in blizzard with people complaining about the same problem. I'm at my wits end. Currently the came is vanilla (no mods or adjustments to any of the settings) and the game locks up as soon as I enter the world.

System Specs
MBP 17" 2.15 Ghz Intel Core Duo (~2005)
Mac OS X v10.4.11
2 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM
ATY, RadeonX1600, VRAM 256 MB, EFI Driver 01.00.086

If someone can help me resolve this I will make your bed for a week. Not good enough? I'm open to negotiations. =) Thanks in advance guys.

MBP 17", Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Dec 27, 2008 1:55 PM

23 replies

Rod Hagen

Level 7

32,000 points

Jan 3, 2009 3:14 PM in response to My Last Confession

Hi again, MLC,

Now that we know that your Mac has an "Invalid Node" HD problem we can discount other possible causes for the present.

No point in pursuing other avenues until the "Node" issue has been resolved. It was probably caused by a forced or improper shutdown or some such at some stage.

Cheers

Rod

Jan 3, 2009 3:18 PM in response to Rod Hagen

hey Rod:

Well "at some point" is basically every day. Since WoW is crashing the computer, I am forced to hold the power down to shut down.

So now it's a chicken / egg issue. If the node issues are caused by the forced shut downs, but the forced shut downs are caused by WoW, shouldn't I expect this to happen again after the reinstall? In fact, I only did a reinstall of the OS a month ago and already these node issues are present. Something in WoW is messing things up no?

Rod Hagen

Level 7

32,000 points

Jan 3, 2009 6:46 PM in response to My Last Confession

The node issues may have already been present when you did the last re-install, MLC. If so, then the problems would be likely to re-emerge pretty quickly unless you thoroughly erased and reformated the drive before the installation. If this is the case , then fixing the nodes may permanently resolve the issue.

That said, I've seen quite a few people report problems with WoW of one kind or another on the AD boards (hence my comments elsewhere in the thread). It may be that there is a code problem leading to instability, or it may be that it is allergic to / in conflict with some other piece of common third party software or system "enhancement".

Cheers

Rod

buz

Level 4

1,205 points

Jan 3, 2009 7:44 PM in response to My Last Confession

MLC .... mls (my last suggestion) 😉 would be to find your copy of Apple Hardware Test and run it. The chicken and egg thing could as well be the egg and chicken thing. WoW is merely an application that stresses your setup to a point it cannot tolerate. There are other apps that will do the same thing. There are tests that run mathematical algorithms that will test your cpu to it's limits and beyond as well as tests utilizing graphics that will test your gpu to it's limits. A little googling will produce these. Best place to start though is the AHT that came with your computer. If you don't have it, Apple may well be able to supply you one.

Regarding your internet connection - it could be either way .... from the router out to the provider or .... from the router in to your computer. In either direction, the router itself is a part of the equation. I know for a fact that there are 'known' definite issues with Wow and customers who have Comcast as their internet connection. There are stickies at the WoW forums regarding the Comcast issue.

Remember my son and his (according to Wow standards) antique MDD - 1Ghz, 2GB ram, 9800 Pro video card - and WoW plays acceptably all day on a 1.5 MB DSL connection - wirelessly at that. The OS on the MDD is 10.4.11.

It isn't WoW, and no I don't work for Blizzard!!

Jan 4, 2009 2:41 AM in response to buz

I have formatted and reinstalled the OS. I ran disk verify after the reinstall and everything checked out OK. I'm installing WoW now. I noticed that when I reboot the system normally, there is something in the trash. When I open it, there's a folder called "Recovered File" and there are some blizzard files in there.

My initial concern was that I had just reinstalled the OS a month ago.. why would doing it again yield any better results? I do not, however, think I did a format and re-partition last time. As mentioned by someone earlier, the Node issue probably persisted through the last install since I didn't format. Only time will tell. I'll keep you guys posted.

FYI~ I initially did the Hardware Test supplied ont he OS installation disk and it actually said there were no errors two passes in a row. It wasn't until disk verify was run that I noticed the Node issue.

Jan 4, 2009 9:25 PM in response to My Last Confession

UPDATE

After reformatting, re-partitioning and reinstalling the OS and WoW, I crashed again almost immediately. After that, the next 8 times I entered the world, I crashed immediately. I suspected it had something to do with the "drumroll" sound being made when I re-entered and joined back up to group. So I asked my party leader to remove me from the group. The 9th time I tried to log in it worked. Then it crashed again a couple minuted later. This happened two more times.

I never gave any credence to the internet connection theory as being a cause, but I decided to give it a shot since I was out of ideas. I plugged in directly to my cable modem instead of being connected to the Linksys router (which is wireless but I was connected directly) and that SEEMED to have fixed it (though every single time I think I have "fixed" something, it's purely speculation as I have no idea what's going on anymore). Then it crashed again a couple minutes later.

I remember reading on the WoW support page that the audio output should be the default, so I switched from my Bose USB Companion 5 speakers, to the MBP's default speakers. The rest of the night as smooth sailing. But again.. who knows if this was going to fix itself anyway. And it this point I'm tired of speculation.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can pin point what is causing the problem? If it's my Linksys router, I'll run out and get an Airport extreme. If it's the USB speakers (which I doubt because I just got these last week), well then that just ***** because I want to play this on a good sound system.

I ran disk verify again and everything checks out OK.

Jan 5, 2009 3:11 AM in response to Rod Hagen

Blizzard has a team of competent, hard-working engineers that focus entirely on the MacOS version. They had a strong presence in WWDC last time I was there and their US support forum for Mac users is very good as well (with a strong developer presence).

I think the biggest problem right now is the stability of the nVidia drivers under heavy load. It could also be a hardware issue, but I think it's more likely to be a driver problem. The reason these problems show up with WoW is that the game can push the graphics card to its limits. There's no way for the game to limit how many players cram into a small zone and when the texture/polygon/effect counts fill up the graphics card, some of the data structures seem to become irreparably corrupt, causing poor frame rates or even a crash later on.

I think the heat issues are something that Blizzard could maybe address. Having to type /console maxfps 30 is not something every Mac users is likely to know about and do, so a lot of users will have their MacBooks running a bit too hot. I use an addon to control the maxfps and maxfpsbk based on my activity/afk status in the game and the addons also sets the maxfps to 60 and maxfpsbk to 5 on logout, which makes the computer run a lot cooler, if you let a WoW movie compress on the login screen while it's in the background (and thus running at 5fps). I set it to 60 instead of 25 or 30 (on logout), because there's a bug/feature in the loading screens that prevents the progress bar from moving faster than 1 fps (try logging out & back in with maxfps set to 5 - it takes ages).

They could also maybe make it easy (or even automatic) to switch between "better quality" and "faster graphics" settings, so that you could run with higher settings where possible and run with faster frame rates & a cooler machine in other environments.

I think the biggest problem is in the nVidia driver.

Jan 5, 2009 5:00 AM in response to Juri Munkki

Except that my card isn't nVidia; it's and ATI Radeonx1600.

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World of Warcraft: Once and for all. HELP!