Many young Wizards contact us to say that the game has 'white blocks' or 'red clothing', or just generally runs slow or 'choppy'. Almost all of these issues are cleared up with a Video Driver Update. What this means, is the Video card you have in your computer has software that it needs to run. That software gets out of date if you don't update it, and the Video card can't keep up with new games that you run.
It's very easy to update your Video Drivers but takes several steps to figure out what it is. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, have an adult or friend help you:
1. Determine the manufacturer of your video card > Open your Control Panel, click on "Display" > "Settings" tab > "Advanced" > "Adapter" > "Properties" > "Driver" tab.
2. Write down the Driver Provider and Driver Version. (Example: NVIDIA 197.16)
3. Go to the driver manufacturer's website and locate your particular computer and download the newest driver (you can check the latest driver they post with the driver version you have, if it's the same, then don't bother with the download - likely they've come out with a new one since last you updated though).
After updating the driver, reboot your computer and hopefully, all is right in Wizard City!
Been there, done that. My video card drivers are the most up-to-date possible, verified multiple times since the patch (and had been verified prior to the patch as well). My wife's video card drivers are also up-to-date. My wife is experiencing the same very bright graphics and flashes in battles as I am, as well as she's seeing the white blocks appear during certain animations. In addition to the bright graphics and flashes, I'm also seeing the "red characters" when I teleport in to anywhere. For a brief moment my character's texture is just solid blank red, no details, then the game appears to load up each piece of my equipment...slowly. I've also seen a few NPCs and items in shops show up with solid blank red textures instead of details. The biggest problem I'm having (specifically during the Gurtok Barrier Demon battle in Ravenscar) is that, during very graphically-intense casting animations, my game freezes for 10 seconds or so, then goes to a solid black screen and minimizes, giving me a video card error. Restoring my game screen brings it back up normally, but three in a row of such errors crashes my game to a solid white screen that is unrecoverable. I have to CTRL-ALT-DEL out of the game and reboot (as it also does video damage to other programs such as surfing the net and so on). NONE of this was happening prior to the pet patch and NONE of this was happening while we were exploring the Test Realm of the pet patch. Both of our computers were working fine UNTIL THIS PATCH.
Steps I've taken to attempt to fix this: I can't adjust the "Bloom" settings on my computer, as it's grayed out and default off. Not an option. I've tried adjusting all graphics options to minimum in-game. They have no visible effect. I've moved my "Particle" slider all the way to the left (after "playing" with it back and forth to see if there was any difference). There is no change to the graphics and the slider has no effect. I've updated my video card drivers to the most current ones possible. I've rebooted my computer many times and played the game first, with minimal/nothing else running. No help there.
All signs point to the patch being faulty. Sorry for the bad news. I'd really like to continue playing Wizard101 as I really enjoy it, but if I can't play the game without crashing, why pay the subscription fee? Please fix the patch!
I've got similar problems - red placeholders for wizards & pets that never finish loading, missing npc's (including 'invisible' wandering monsters), frequent short freezes (usually 5-10 seconds) during battles. Most areas of the game are not just ugly, they're downright unplayable.
I had these same problems back in Test realm, updated my video drivers then so I've got the newest I can get. I turned in a support request to Mr. Lincoln back then, reporting all these bugs & glitches like we're supposed to, and was told they didn't offer tech support for the Test realm.
I updated my ticket when the same problems persisted in Live, got a note back three days later saying it had been sent on for investigation, and that's the last I heard from anyone.
I've been playing 15+ months, with wizards in every school (including 5 grandmasters). Please, KI, whatever you changed in the graphics engine with this update, put it back!
Mine is all up to date and still have this going on?
ProfessorGreyrose wrote:
Many young Wizards contact us to say that the game has 'white blocks' or 'red clothing', or just generally runs slow or 'choppy'. Almost all of these issues are cleared up with a Video Driver Update. What this means, is the Video card you have in your computer has software that it needs to run. That software gets out of date if you don't update it, and the Video card can't keep up with new games that you run.
It's very easy to update your Video Drivers but takes several steps to figure out what it is. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, have an adult or friend help you:
1. Determine the manufacturer of your video card > Open your Control Panel, click on "Display" > "Settings" tab > "Advanced" > "Adapter" > "Properties" > "Driver" tab.
2. Write down the Driver Provider and Driver Version. (Example: NVIDIA 197.16)
3. Go to the driver manufacturer's website and locate your particular computer and download the newest driver (you can check the latest driver they post with the driver version you have, if it's the same, then don't bother with the download - likely they've come out with a new one since last you updated though).
After updating the driver, reboot your computer and hopefully, all is right in Wizard City!
I went to change my screensaver and noticed something about power settings at the bottom, and it mentioned that they could affect performance. I always leave my laptop plugged in so there's no reason to worry about battery life.
So I went into that (Control Panel > Hardware & Sound > Power Options) and changed it from Power Saver to High Performance, and now it works again! The cannon game's loading in just three or four seconds now instead of four minutes, and even at its busiest the Pet Pavilion's playable in a few seconds and fully loaded under half a minute.
I still get the white squares for some of the sparkle effects (usually a minion's Donate Pips spell) but those are a very minor concern. I'm just glad to be back in the Spiral!
The Control Panel's layout is different in Windows 7. Could you possibly post instructions for Windows 7 users?
On Windows 7 right click on desktop and then click personalize. on bottom right click on screen saver. In bottom of that window is power management. Click on change power settings. I am on a laptop, so i hope yours is the same.
I just change mine to high performance. Wow! what a difference.
:(I did all of that and used the link to update that you sent me but it made things worse! Before I had a desktop icon and could open the log in page but the game would shut down and not let me log in, since the driver updates that didnt work I cant reinstall the game and when I do I have files for wizard 101 in my computer but no desktop icon, and cant open a file to try and play the game that way. Why isnt there a way to play t he game from the website? It only works if there is an icon on the desktop..But in my case nothing works anyway! And KI hasnt responded back to me. maybe KI will just refund all the money I spent on their site and then I can find another site to play on????? I love wizard 101 but I need help, please respond KI!!!!!
Uninstalled by video drivers, rebooted in safe mode and used Driver Cleaner to removed all remaining traces of my old drivers. Installed latest driver from ATI and I still get white blocks.
I've had the problem of my game crashing ever since the pet update. I get a wizardgraphicclient.exe has stopped working and then the game disappears. I have updated my driver, which was new to begin with. Nothing helps. It happens all the time whether in battle or out. I could be standing there and it crashes. I also still see the white squares of certain spells but no red clothing. It is extremely frustrating to have this problem when none existed before. I can't play the game for 15 minutes and this happens. Nothing worse then being in a DS tower and almost finished when your game crashes and you have to do it over and over again. I have completely stopped playing in DS because of the constant crashing in towers. KI needs to fix this or I will be canceling my three accounts and moving onto another game.
I went ahead and checked my desktop computer's card for drivers, and its got the latest patch! The white blocks are coming from the jade oni and the gurtok oni's natural attack and such spells as stormzilla. This problem is FAR from fixed. And trust me, this isn't the only problem from the pet update. If this was the only problem, I wouldn't be posting here. :x
Many young Wizards contact us to say that the game has 'white blocks' or 'red clothing', or just generally runs slow or 'choppy'. Almost all of these issues are cleared up with a Video Driver Update. What this means, is the Video card you have in your computer has software that it needs to run. That software gets out of date if you don't update it, and the Video card can't keep up with new games that you run.
It's very easy to update your Video Drivers but takes several steps to figure out what it is. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, have an adult or friend help you:
1. Determine the manufacturer of your video card > Open your Control Panel, click on "Display" > "Settings" tab > "Advanced" > "Adapter" > "Properties" > "Driver" tab.
2. Write down the Driver Provider and Driver Version. (Example: NVIDIA 197.16)
3. Go to the driver manufacturer's website and locate your particular computer and download the newest driver (you can check the latest driver they post with the driver version you have, if it's the same, then don't bother with the download - likely they've come out with a new one since last you updated though).
After updating the driver, reboot your computer and hopefully, all is right in Wizard City!
well i cant play at all i can see wre to hit options and sucjh and acant see what people are saying worst fo all all the characters look like there making the grapics and ugh i just my sub with a year :( man i love thi game to anyone can help meout i updated the driver and stuff
well i cant play at all i can see wre to hit options and sucjh and acant see what people are saying worst fo all all the characters look like there making the grapics and ugh i just my sub with a year :( man i love thi game to anyone can help meout i updated the driver and stuff
It's a really good thing then that we have technical support. Just go to the Help & Support tab on the left and select the Contact Us option at the bottom.
Aside from some white flashes, the only problem I am having is with the weird white blocks. I see it on the mander donating pips and on the elephant spells (e.g., Jade Oni, Helephant). I checked for new drivers and the system said I am up to date. From what others are saying also, it seems there may still be on issue on this one.
Ok, it looks like it is something wrong with the computers cause I used wizard101 and my friends computer for a day and it ran fine. Red clothing loaded in like 1.5 seconds. But on my computer it is plain horrible. It takes about 2 minutes for all the red clothing to load and during that I'm lagging like crazy and end up running in a corner to find out after all the loading it is still choppy. :? I should have thought before buying a 1-month subscription. It might just be because we don't have gaming laptops/desktops or whatever. Anyway this is what the problem has caused: 2 invisible npc's ran into, 4 game crashes, 1 color screw up (color correction or whatever switched a bunch of colored textures), and about red clothing every time I go to another area. And my running video card is an ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics. Anyway, you staff messed up on the update for some of us OR we just need more powerful video cards. :? OH forgot to say, I updated too, but found out I don't have DirectX 11 and I have DirectX 10. Does that help?
