Users at Civilized.de believe that the problem that many people are experiencing with jerky graphics & regular crashes can be explained by variable pagefile sizes.

It is therefore suggested that they can be reduced simply by setting a (large) permanent page file.

I was going to post screenshots of how to set this in XP, but I have windows 2000 here. Can someone please post screenies of how to set it?

Edit: Screen shots have been supplied by franlato - in french, but the buttons are in the same location:


http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7784/1808/320/Screen03.jpg


http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7784/1808/320/Screen04.jpg


http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7784/1808/320/Screen06.jpg


http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7784/1808/320/Screen08.jpg


http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7784/1808/320/Screen10.jpg

Also - can people experiencing these problems please try this solution and report back if it improves anything?

Thanks.

Mine has always been set to a custom fixed size. Min of 1536 and a max of 1536 on Winxp with 512MB ram.

Sadly it has not helped.

Same. My paging file has always been set at min & max 1.5GB, adding up to 2GB with physical memory. I don't see how having larger memory would alleviate consistent choppy frame rate (which in fact doesn't help), maybe it'd help with the crashes. Oh umm...my game crashed for the first time after playing for three hours straight.

Ainwood,

It sounds like you have a lot of computer knowledge and I would love to give your suggestion a try, however I am NOT particularly computer knowledgeable myself.

Unfortunately I have no idea what you mean by "setting a (large) permanent page file". For those of us that don't understand what you're trying to say, could you please try to explain things more in layman terms?

Please don't think that I'm being short with you, as I am hoping that you have some serious input on what ails those of us that are having the "crash to desktop" error. And it's one that is frustrating me to no ends.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My system:

Windows XP Service Pack 2
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
1022MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

Ainwood,

It sounds like you have a lot of computer knowledge and I would love to give your suggestion a try, however I am NOT particularly computer knowledgeable myself.


Ok - that was why I was hoping that someone who knew how to do this would take the time to post sone step-by-step screenshots. From the two responses above, it doesn't look like its much help though :( (however it certainly won't hurt!)

I managed to find this though:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/physically_setting_the_page_file_size.htm

If you set it to a minimum of (say) 1000 and a maximum of 1000, and then see if it helps.

Ooooo! I just had my first crash, too. Thought I'd try this out.

Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Performance > click Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory. You can adjust it to whatever you want in there.

Another one I noticed there was a setting for Memory Usage, I'm also going to try switching that to Programs, since mine was set on System Cache previously.

My real question is: where do the Auto-saves go? All I can find are my manual saves.

I have about 700M of memory it's not doing anything with (1.25G less the 460m the game is using). Why should it even need virtual memory? It's eating it like candy, yes, but why?

My real question is: where do the Auto-saves go? All I can find are my manual saves.my documents\my games\saves\
and then there are various sub-folders for single, multiplayer etc.

the screen are there, in order :

enjoy (don't know if it will work, this theory is more of a myth I think)

http://learnciv4.blogspot.com/

I have about 700M of memory it's not doing anything with (1.25G less the 460m the game is using). Why should it even need virtual memory? It's eating it like candy, yes, but why?
Some sort of windows issue. You can have literally gigabytes of RAM, and for some reason windows still wants to use a swap file. Don't really know why, unfortunately.

the screen are there, in order :

enjoy (don't know if it will work, this theory is more of a myth I think)

http://learnciv4.blogspot.com/
Merci beaucoups!

Thanks ainwood. I found them in them in the folder, but I missed it in the game somehow.

Guys,

Has anyone tested this solution ? I've just changed my Virtual Memory and I would like to know if this will be effective...

Anyway, I'll test and keep you informed about the results...

Thk
Denis

I tested it and it did not improve performance. However it is nice to know that all my crashes (after about 5 mins or so) did stop after using 3DAnalyze. That might be worth a try.

Changing the Virtual Memory min/max to 1915 (the "recommended" amount) didn't do anything. I did go to the next tab and change the DEP ("Data Error Prevention") so that it didn't apply to Civ4. It didn't change the gameplay in that I still start to lag horribly after about 3 turns. But it did seem to lower my pagefile usage from about 450 to 150. No idea what that means.

Back to restarting every couple of turns.

I followed the directions and played for the last hour without any crashes.
Thanks

No joy.

I changed the settings on the virtual memory as per the instructions and I am having crashes to desktop constantly. I can't seem to play more than 2 or 3 turns until the game crashes to a halt.

I'm not saying that changing the virtual memory is CAUSING additional crashes. I'm only saying that I simply can't play the game at this time because I can't keep it from crashing.

What is so INCREDIBLY frustrating is that I was enjoying the gameplay and thought I was going to enjoy Civ4 as much or more than Civ3, but until it can be figured out what the serious issue here is I simply can't play the game.

:mad:

If you set it to a minimum of (say) 1000 and a maximum of 1000, and then see if it helps.

Ainwood are you saying that a setting of 1000 is a good setting to use or are you just "throwing a number out there"?

I tried using the 1000 min and max limit like you suggested and it seems to have made no difference.

Is there just something inherently "wrong" with the Nvidia graphics card just not wanting to cooperate with the game? It just seems that nothing that I have tried so far has worked with any long-term success.

The game simply can't be played in 2 or 3 turn intervals with a CTD inbetween each session. I'm at my wit's end here!

:mad:

Ainwood are you saying that a setting of 1000 is a good setting to use or are you just "throwing a number out there"?

I tried using the 1000 min and max limit like you suggested and it seems to have made no difference.

Is there just something inherently "wrong" with the Nvidia graphics card just not wanting to cooperate with the game? It just seems that nothing that I have tried so far has worked with any long-term success.

The game simply can't be played in 2 or 3 turn intervals with a CTD inbetween each session. I'm at my wit's end here!

:mad:
It was just a number - but as I said, I wasn't sure whether it would work or not. A good "rule of thumb" is to set it to 1.5 times whatever your RAM is - if you have 1 GB, then set it to (say) 1500.

As a side note - what kind of soundcard do you have? Have you tried updating the drivers for it?

It was just a number - but as I said, I wasn't sure whether it would work or not. A good "rule of thumb" is to set it to 1.5 times whatever your RAM is - if you have 1 GB, then set it to (say) 1500.

As a side note - what kind of soundcard do you have? Have you tried updating the drivers for it?

Thanks for the clarification. Since I have 1 GB of RAM I'll set it for 1500.

My sound card is a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS.

I will download the latest driver and install it and see if that does any good.

Thanks for the advice!

Have 768 and made it 1152, no difference.. maybe use more?

Thanks for the clarification. Since I have 1 GB of RAM I'll set it for 1500.

My sound card is a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS.

I will download the latest driver and install it and see if that does any good.

Thanks for the advice!One last thing to try:

Go to the control panel.

Double-click on 'sounds and audio devices'.

Click on the 'audio' tab and on the section labelled 'sound recording', change the dropdown to the option that says something about 'AC97' or similar (presumably it says 'Sound Blaster Audigy' already??)

Click on the 'voice' tab and change the settings for both 'voice playback' and 'voice recording' to the same 'AC97'.


I'm not sure if this will help - some people have suggested it. If it doesn't, then reverse the steps and change them back to use your audigy card.

Have 768 and made it 1152, no difference.. maybe use more?
Well, I'm beginning to think this suggestion is a bit of a red-herring. I don't think increasing it more will help.

Well, I'm beginning to think this suggestion is a bit of a red-herring. I don't think increasing it more will help.

Most likely not. I checked the memory usage before the game crashed, and the application was only using ~800mb of the total 2.0GB available memory (physical + virtual). Admittedly I was only playing on standard world size, but still...

A brief update.

I downloaded the updated drivers for my sound card and installed them.

Rebooted the computer and fired up Civ4. The game crashed before it finished my first turn on my original game. I started a new game on a small map with only 4 total civs (included myself). Things went OK for the ten or so turns that I played, so I started another game with the same statistics (small map, 4 total civs). The game crashed before I finished my first turn.

I only know enough about computers to typically get myself in trouble, but there is something terribly wrong going on here and I'm at a loss to figure it out.

I've updated the drivers for my graphics card and sound card, I've cleared out the game's cache folder, I've turned the graphics on the game down to "low quality" (using the in-game "Options" menu), the screen resolution has been set to 1024x768, I've turned down the quality (as best as I know how) on the settings for my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra). I've even tried being gentle to the mouse and keyboard controls, and nothing seems to work.

What to do?

A brief update.

I downloaded the updated drivers for my sound card and installed them.
Did you try the suggestion re turning off the sound-card support for the voice stuff?

I have had a static virtual memory file for a long time. Something like 1.5gb to 3gb so the issue does not stem from virtual memory.


I have tried the following and it has improved performance greatly:
-Turning all graphics down to low (visually the difference is barely distinguishable)
-Running the game windowed (I am running the game at a 1280x1024 resolution on a 1600x1200 desktop.. I know, I know, it runs better windowed than fullscreen which is very very weird)
-Running the game without in-game movies helps it along.
-The unpak fix didn't do a thing but allow me not to play the game.
-Turning off show friendly movements. If I converted several friendly cities the map would move a lot during turns and thus this is when a lot of my crashes occurred.

Flipping the switch for windowed mode and no-movie play mode was found in a configuration file in the my documents civilization iv directory.

I am running on:
AMD Athlon XP+ 3200
1GB PC3200 Corsair Memory
128MB GeForce FX 5900
400GB+ hard drive space

Thanks ainwood for the tip! :goodjob:

But one caveat to casual users...be very very cautious changing OS sytem variables - don't do it unless you understand what you are doing. Setting the Virtual Memory incorrectly can lead to other serious issues on the OS level...and potentially could result in Data Loss or the total crash of the OS. There is no one correct setting for this, it depends on your individual system specs ( and the OS version); actually Windows 2000/XP does a fine job on memory management (Windows 98 was a different beast - I won't go there as it is not a Civ4 supported OS) and this really should not have to be messed with. DEP is another setting you should use care customizing.

The analogy is kinda like a car - on older cars that had plugs and distributors, you could increase the performance of your engine by fiddling with the timing and plug gap - but unless you understood what you were doing you could cause the engine not to run.

I am curious about the reported memory leaks - I'm not saying folks are not having them, I believe they are - but on my system, which does crash to desktop randomly when playing at times, there is no indication of a constant memory leak.

What I am seeing instead is 100% CPU utilization at all times. This usually occurs with older DOS/Windows 9x programs that were ported to the NT Kernel. You usually don't see it with programs that were written expressly for 2000/XP. If I were looking for a solution, these clues would direct me to suspect that DirectX is involved somehow. It is the ganglion where the Game, the OS Memory manager and the Drivers all tie together. On some systems, the game's DirectX hooks may not be working as planned.

Either that or there is a corruption somewhere in one or more of the animation flics. ( I remember the Sims would crash like this if a bad flic was introduced). My crashes occur most commonly soon after a new leaderhead appears. Saladin is the one that makes it happen the most. Also, at least one of the wonder movies freezes up- the one for "The Globe Theatre". I have also had a crash soon after this event.

Anyway, hope this helps in the efforts to find the solution - I hate to see this stuff with any application - I feel for the tech team - I've been involved with this many times working in Q&A environments and it is not my idea of real fun.

Thanks ainwood for the tip! :goodjob:

But one caveat to casual users...be very very cautious changing OS sytem variables - don't do it unless you understand what you are doing. Setting the Virtual Memory incorrectly can lead to other serious issues on the OS level...and potentially could result in Data Loss or the total crash of the OS. There is no one correct setting for this, it depends on your individual system specs ( and the OS version); actually Windows 2000/XP does a fine job on memory management (Windows 98 was a different beast - I won't go there as it is not a Civ4 supported OS) and this really should not have to be messed with. DEP is another setting you should use care customizing.

The analogy is kinda like a car - on older cars that had plugs and distributors, you could increase the performance of your engine by fiddling with the timing and plug gap - but unless you understood what you were doing you could cause the engine not to run.

I am curious about the reported memory leaks - I'm not saying folks are not having them, I believe they are - but on my system, which does crash to desktop randomly when playing at times, there is no indication of a constant memory leak.

What I am seeing instead is 100% CPU utilization at all times. This usually occurs with older DOS/Windows 9x programs that were ported to the NT Kernel. You usually don't see it with programs that were written expressly for 2000/XP. If I were looking for a solution, these clues would direct me to suspect that DirectX is involved somehow. It is the ganglion where the Game, the OS Memory manager and the Drivers all tie together. On some systems, the game's DirectX hooks may not be working as planned.

Either that or there is a corruption somewhere in one or more of the animation flics. ( I remember the Sims would crash like this if a bad flic was introduced). My crashes occur most commonly soon after a new leaderhead appears. Saladin is the one that makes it happen the most. Also, at least one of the wonder movies freezes up- the one for "The Globe Theatre". I have also had a crash soon after this event.

Anyway, hope this helps in the efforts to find the solution - I hate to see this stuff with any application - I feel for the tech team - I've been involved with this many times working in Q&A environments and it is not my idea of real fun.


yes
oldStatesman already said everything i wanna say
dun anyhow change the setting for yr virtual memory UNLESS u know FOR SURE wat u are doing.
changing the settings for VM can either greatly increase yr system [ i mean system here not just civ4 alone ] performance or totally ruin yr system
by default windows should have distributed enough VM for standard usage , so unless u are 100% sure of wat yr setting are for , do not anyhow change the VM settings [ esp true for ppl who got no comp knowledge ]


ok back to topic
i suspected memory leak also at first
but seeing how smooth civ4 has been running on my system with [ map setting smaller then standard ]
i starting to think otherwise
after a few testing on the different maps size and the amount of memory used up by civ4 , i m starting to suspect imporper calling of graphics files and not releasing them
an average huge size map will utilize around 400-500mb of system memory
with that amount of memory being used + yr default memory usage by windows and some background application, i noticed that once the overall memory usage for the system exceeded 750mb civ4 will start to lag internally [ slow UI , mouse cursor lag, ingame wonder movies not played properly, etc ]

i suggest ppl to start playing the game with small maps first
if u got 100% no lag with [ mouse cursor, leader head,etc ] smaller maps
and problems starts only with those standard or huge maps, chances are it's not yr system fault, wait for a patch to fix things up

Hello,

today I got Civ 4 and I have been very happy, but when I begun the game my mood switched to frustrated. I knew it that problems will appear.
When I start the game the intro-video jerkes the whole time. ALWAYS, really ALWAYS before a wonder movie begins my computer crashes, sometimes a blue screen appears(it appears only half a second, is full of numbers and words and then the computer restarts) or once the message "Virtually memory"(translated from german) is to little appeared(then returned to the Desktop) and so on. The second thing is, that the loading times take half a century. Sometimes it takes 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes only 3. It's weird, because my computer is not really old. Of course I played the game on a huge world map with High graphic level and many civs, but my computer should fullfill the requirements.
So my questions are:

--How can I avid jerky graphics?
--How can I avoid game crash before playing the wonder movie?
--How can I avoid long waiting from turn to turn and long loading times?
--Has it anything to do with the firewall or the antivirus?
--Can I only play the game only on minimal requirements?(Which would be very sad)

Only for information I play the EU-DVD version(German).

I know my questions are really tiresome but i am sitting since 5pm(now it's 11:40) in front of the computer and try that the game runs normally so I am a little bit irritated.
I really hope that you can help me and execuse me for the efforts.
I will put my dxdiag here, perhaps it helps you, if you have further questions write me I will send you the informations you need.

Thank you very much.
Baron Rakkan

Here is the DxDiag, I wasn't able to post it in the last post.

if the crashes are so randomly it's very unlikely to be a windows OS failure because of virtual memory? who came up with that idea? Programs don't have their own memory rules if something must be swapped or on your RAM. windows does that! programs do set memory privacy rules which windows uses! i.e. your number of gold is put in one memory adress(allocated by windows OS), while your number of soundtrack playing is put in another(also by windows), if you do object programming most memory is private(meaning no sharing with other variables) set it to public, and 1 wrong code written out of billions of code-signs can cause anything, without knowing what can happen, this is however not a memory problem solved by bigger/smaller/virtual/hard memory.Windows knows to give private memorys a closed memory adress unable to change it's value by some other variable...if it is set to public, window knows it is allowed to change its value with some other variable.it is just more unlikely at bigger memory to happen to write to the same adress as it would be if you have a smaller memory(ie. if it would be so small to fit in only 100variables while you have 101 it will be 100% garanteed that windows will put 2variables on the same adress...if they are all private, windows will tell you not sufficient memory..if 1is public, windows won't warn you, the program runs, but on the public slot some private will overwrite, blocking it from furter access of the public variable, and noone will know how the program will run, you need a debugger to check that..a good one! xml is a dangerous language for such programs, mostly code writes use variable codes...asembler for hot codes(things that need to be fast and smootly) C or C++ for more complex codes in which you would not see the woods through the trees if you'd use assembler, delphi etc for visuals, etc etc.. there are many reason why you should use or not use some languages..but if they'd used C++, they got a warning for programming such errors described here throughout the forum as "memory leaks" that's very unlikely, if they used to much xml, it is possible, and then you can change numbers of your virtual memory like crazy..it won't change anything, your changes on errors just gets fewer as you enlarge your virtual memory, but like murphy said:"if it can happen, it will happen, you just need to wait"

I am experiencing some odd behavior, although it has only happened once so far. Today I was playing the game and my computer rebooted in the middle of the game. Is this what you all are talking about when the game crashes or is it that the computer freezes, or stops responding completely?


Thank for you help.


Angi

I am experiencing some odd behavior, although it has only happened once so far. Today I was playing the game and my computer rebooted in the middle of the game. Is this what you all are talking about when the game crashes or is it that the computer freezes, or stops responding completely?


Thank for you help.


Angi

Hello,

no my computer doesn't freeze, suddenly it crashes, mainly before the WonderMovie starts, then as I described before a blue screen appears. The blue screen appears only less than one second. On the screen there is written "the system has found a problem" or something else(I am really not sure because it appears only half a second) and many numbers. Then the computer reboots. I remembered that when I started the game the first time a little window opened with the message that the computer is not compatible with the game and that some functions cannot work as they should work. (Which was wondering me, my computer is not 4 years old it's nearly new) Only once it happened, that the game crashed and returned to windows with the message "there is not enough virtual memory". So at about three times it happened, that when the game want to play the wonder movie, that it crashed returned to the desktop, which changed to a less colored mode and a solution from 640x480.
I have tried sometimes to change my solution (on desktop) to 16-Bit-Mode, I am really despaired, I don't have any ideas now. I hope you can help me.
Thank you.

BR

I have even tried to delete the cache folder, although I don't have a Radeon and use a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420. v5.6.7.3., but it didn't change anything. Does anyone uses this card?

Secondly, I mean I don't know if it has any influence, but I have divided my harddisk(C, D). Harddisk is older. C Drive is for windows and so on, D Drive for games or other programs. I am really not a technican nor do I know something in this matters(only the routine things that happen), but Civ4 is installed on D, but even if I have installed it on D, some folders and components are on drive C. I know stupid question, but does this have any influence?
It's weird, I don't have any graphical errors(Until now), only this crashes before playing movies?! Additionally I have tried to extend the virtual memory(up to 766), but it didn't change really anything, I will default it soon(512MB)

Thanks

Addition:
I used solution 1024x768 and color-quality 32 Bit(Desktop). Then I started the game(Zone Labs Firewall and AV were deactivated also the connection to internet) and when the game tried to play the movie this message cam(translated from German):

"The GraphicDriver nv4_disp is not performed normal. Save your data an restart the system to restore fully displayfunctionality........." Then the game crashed and returned to desktop(with bad solution), I had to restart the computer then.

What does this mean?

Thank you

I've been having similar problems with lag and crashes. I tried the virtual memory thing, and after 45 minutes of playing the game didn't crash once, whereas before I changed my settings it was crashing about once every 10 or so turns.

One thing I noticed is that it seemed to be crashing during an auto-save. I'm not sure on this, but I noticed once that the date (the game date) was 1856 when the game crashed, but the newest autosave was for 1858. Another thing, that save file was 1.2 MB whereas the rest of the autosave files were about 300kb. This is the case every time the game crashes. I don't know if that has anything to do with anything, I'm no computer expert, but it's something I noticed.

I've been having similar problems with lag and crashes. I tried the virtual memory thing, and after 45 minutes of playing the game didn't crash once, whereas before I changed my settings it was crashing about once every 10 or so turns.

One thing I noticed is that it seemed to be crashing during an auto-save. I'm not sure on this, but I noticed once that the date (the game date) was 1856 when the game crashed, but the newest autosave was for 1858. Another thing, that save file was 1.2 MB whereas the rest of the autosave files were about 300kb. This is the case every time the game crashes. I don't know if that has anything to do with anything, I'm no computer expert, but it's something I noticed.

Hello,

I don't really have problems with the autosave, also I didn't benefit really from extending the virtual memory. I think my problem is with the videodriver. I am also not a computer expert, but perhaps someone will have an idea. That's why I posted my dxdiag before.

Thanks

Probably not the best place to do this, but there's a sticky, so maybe someone will see it and consider it:

The tech support/bug threads need to be reorganized in a big way. There's duplicate threads in both sections, duplicated subjects in the same section. Basically, I'll find a really good suggestion that works, but won't be able to find it again later to post that it works. I can't be the only one having this problem. So the Grand Poobah Moderator-in-Chief should (if I may so humbly suggest) consolidate and break these threads down into sections. ATI cards, nVidia cards, Cheshire cats and other black screens, movie crashes, leaderhead lags and other memory leaks, actual install problems, etc. It'd help folks looking for solutions, help those posting solutions, and probably make it easier for Firaxis to see what the problems are and how many people are having them so they can prioritize their efforts.


All the beta testers must have had high end gear with all the latest drivers if they didn't catch any of this stuff. Next time maybe they should beta test it on broke slobs with three year old machines and a skillset that barely includes the 'on' switch. We're not all professional gamers. Some of us have played nothing but Civ, Pirates, and Colonization since 1991 and didn't need all the hardware. (For that matter, some of us bought new machines to play Pirates.)


BTW, since I couldn't find the thread where it was suggested: Updating the chipset driver fixed my leaderhead induced lag, but not the general slowdown as play progressed. Still have to restart, but not nearly as often. For those with Dell Intels, the Dell site has bios and what they call chipset updates. These didn't do much. I had to go to Intel's site and use their chipset updater too.

Setting the pagefile to a fixed size should be standard. Otherwise the pagefile will be left using scraps of space as your disk fragments.

Has anyone tried turning down the video and sound accelerations?

I tested it and it did not improve performance. However it is nice to know that all my crashes (after about 5 mins or so) did stop after using 3DAnalyze. That might be worth a try.


What 3DAnalyze options did you use? What kind of video card do you have?

I'd be interested to know what 3DA is doing for you.

Godd idea Ruffin.

I reinstalled my NVIDIA card, because I thought, that it will change something, but it didn't.
I will put my "new" dxdiag here later, because now I can't attach it, it doesn't work.

i have 512mb RAM and an amazing 10gb Virtual memory =)
but still it crashes to desktop after 3 min.
I have also suspended all sound posable.

Even my Age of Empires III crashes.

Whats with these games... didnt they have Beta testing befor release.
or do we have to buy the best PCs on the market to play.

Thanks for all the feedback people.

Sounds like this was something of a red herring. :(

- I'll unstick it now.

Hello, here is the attachement as I said in a former post. The other thing is, has someone an idea against long loading times?(6 minutes record for loading the next round, my computer is not that worse)