There are several ways which you can find your computer’s specs. You can either consult your computer’s manual, find out from where you bought it or you could simply use your computer to do this.

Your computer can tell you in so many different ways, but for simplicity sake, you can use something called “dxdiag” which is a windows application that is already installed on your computer.

Step 1: Press the windows Key
Step 2: type “dxdiag” without quotes
Step 3: open dxdiag that appears in the search
Step 4: If it asks you about updating signatures, you can do it. If it doesn’t ask you, don’t worry about it.
Step 5: You have your computer information in those tabs

How Dxdiag Appears in the Start Menu

If you need to know your motherboard’s information in the event you need to update your bios, you can type in the following command in command prompt:

wmic baseboard get Manufacturer, Model, Name, PartNumber, serialnumber

On the note of system requirements, I highly recommend that you invest in a high performance nvme drive to store your games on. They look like a flat, long chip and make gaming so much more enjoyable. They are around $50 and are well worth the investment. They are much faster than SSD and significantly faster than an old fashion platter based hard drive. In fact, I would not recommend playing BDO on a platter drive at all, but if you do, you may experience some really odd bugs and a lot of lag, latency related issues. Load screens will take a while and it may cause the game to crash. Despite this, many people do use platter drives with BDO so don’t let that discourage you to at least try.

Since BDO keeps changing, the requirements will also change. Please visit the following URL for the most up-to-date spec recommendation:

https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Data/Down

The event viewer is a great tool and possibly your best friend at troubleshooting what is going on with your games and other applications. It will show you if your computer is healthy or if it’s encountering issues. It’s basically a health record for your computer.

Accessing Windows Event Viewer:

Press the START MENU and type “event viewer” Click on it

There will be three columns. Left column is meant for navigation. The middle column is the information panel and the right column is for actions which you won’t likely ever use.

On the left panel click on WINDOWS LOGS then APPLICATION

Now you can see in the center of the screen a list of events that happened on your computer. If you scroll, you will eventually find warnings and possibly even errors. Errors will appear like this:

Ideally you will check event viewer after BDO had crashed because it’ll be difficult to locate the error in this sea of information.

What you can do with this information

It’s time to play the detective game! There is a box beneath it that will show the error information, but it can be difficult to interpret it but if it says something related to your video card, the chances are, there’s a problem with the driver. But you can google the fault code with the application that caused it and usually find an answer.

I don’t have a specific BDO related crash available but I can give you an example of what I do.

As you can see the Exception Code is 0xc0000005 and the program is qemu-system-x86_64.exe

I would simply paste those two pieces of information in google and would you know? There are many websites with answers.

Will this always work?

No, it won’t always work because not every error gets logged. There are some more in-depth techniques that are too advanced for this guide but this can help solve a lot of computer related issues.

The first step to fixing any problem is to first diagnose what is going on. A doctor should not prescribe medicine without first knowing what issue you are having and the same applies with computers. Under most circumstances, it is user error, and it is easy to cause these problems. Let’s first ask a few questions…

Answer the following:

1. What is happening? Is the game crashing? Are you going directly to the desktop? Is the game stuttering a lot? Are you experiencing a Blue Screen of Death? (BSOD)
   
   
   
2. Is this a new issue? If so, what have you done recently? Your changes may have caused an issue such as installing a new Antivirus, moving your BDO installation to another hard drive etc… A simple change like updating your video-card drivers can also break a game.
   
   
3. When is this issue happening? Is it on the game Launcher? Is it at the Title screen? Is it whenever you perform a certain action or play for a certain period of time? Each of these will have their very own reason why the game crashes.
   
   
4. How often does it happen? If this is consistent, look for a pattern. What is the pattern? Sometimes like I said before, you may be playing for an hour and then your computer turns off. That is a sign of your computer overheating. Little things like that will determine how to fix your computer.
   
   

Now that you have answered the previous 4 questions, consider what may be the cause. If you are uncertain, don’t worry, this guide will help you become a computer doctor! So, keep reading!

Assuming you need to install new drivers or revert to older drivers (in the event new drivers break your game) you will need to install them. To do this, determine what brand of video card you have. You may have Intel, AMD or Nvidia. Don’t worry if you’re using ASUS, Gigabit or other manufacturing brands, the important part is knowing whether it’s one of the three mentioned.

How do you know what you have? That really depends on your situation. The easiest way for you to know is to consult the purchase order of your computer and look there. But if you don’t know, then w can find out.

WHEN:

• You are experiencing a lot of stuttering in the game
• If the game suddenly crashes to desktop
• You are experiencing BSOD that may be related to the video card

OBTAINING YOUR VIDEO CARD MAKE AND MODEL

Method 1: dxdiag

Open the start menu and type “dxdiag” and open the application that was found. If prompted about signed drivers, you can say “Yes”.  After a little bit of time, the application will appear. There will be tabs at the top such as System, Display, etc…. Click on Display. This may say something like NVIDIA Geforce [something something]. Or perhaps it will say AMD [something something].  That would be your video card. Keep note of it.

However, there is a chance that it says Intel. Unless you specifically purchased an Intel video card, it’s possible that this is a laptop and it is sharing the videocard resources with the CPU and will display intel instead of another brand.

Method 2: Task Manager

The second method is to consult the Task manager. You can press CTRL + Shift + ESC or Alt+CTRL+DEL to access it. Click on Performance and on the left side it will show different resources. Somewhere in that list will have “GPU” this will tell you the model and make.

Method 3: System Information

The third method is to view it from System Information. Open the start menu and type msinfo and it will be the first one there called “System Information”. You can open that and get access to your computer’s information. Click on [Components] on the left side which will have [Display] in the list. Make note of the name there.

Method 4: Command Prompt

While there are many other ways to find the information I will provide just one more. You can find out your video card by opening the start menu and then typing cmd, this will list “Command Prompt” click on it and then once loaded you can enter the following:

wmic path win32_VideoController get name

This will show you the name of your video card

DOWNLOADING YOUR DRIVERS

Now that you know your make and model, it’s time for you to download your drivers. If upgrading, you can download the latest version of your drivers. If downgrading, you will need to download a specific version, restart in safe mode, uninstall your old graphics drivers and then install your new graphics drivers. Hopefully you won’t have to do that part. The reason why you need to do this in safe mode is because windows will automatically reinstall drivers after you uninstall them unless it’s safe mode or you use a script.

NVIDIA Link: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

AMD Link: https://www.amd.com/en/support

Intel Link: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download-center/home.html

Simply search for your graphics card at any of those links provided.

INSTALLING YOUR DRIVERS

This step is important because most people will just install drivers using an “express setup”. It’s important that you use a custom installation while installation. If the installation provides you with this option, do so, and ensure that all previous drivers are uninstalled.

Once this is complete, restart your computer and this part will be complete!

Special Notice: Please note that in some rare instances you may be required to uninstall your graphics drivers, reboot in safe mode (without drivers) and then install your video card drivers. For instance, if you're dual booting windows from a mac using custom drivers, this process may require you to do it this way. Additionally, downgrading video card drivers might require you to follow this process.