Confirmed by me at least. I had frequent reboots and crashes (rarer in early games and smaller games, but very common in late games and large games). I had originally been playing with Catalyst 5.6 (on a 9700 pro if you must know). I upgraded to 5.10 (latest) and had the same issues. Not only this, but updating to 5.10 seemed to destroy my DoD source framerates.

What I was experiencing : Crashes, Random Reboots, Wonder Movie Video/Audio stuttering, Crashes when Accessing Advisors, Sluggist Play after Diplomacy

What the following has fixed : Everything above, from what I see in a very late game Old World/New World map (apparently the largest map civ4 has). I will update this if any problems resurface, but after a few hours with no problems, I think it is finally good.

Long story short. There are two things that I did between having the problem and not. FORGET ABOUT THE "LATEST AND GREATEST" DRIVERS at least for ATI.

1. Install the latest and greatest drivers for your AGP chipset on your motherboard, for me it was VIA (I dont think this matters much, but I figured I would put it as something I did between it working and not for the sake of completeness). This step is most likely optional, just installing the below driver seems to stop crashes/reboots

Link : http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2

2. Install Catalyst 4.12 - This is the major point! Catalyst 4.12's have gained fame for their stability and speed. They fixed all my Civ4 problems, as well as improved my Source engine speeds by 10-20 fps. Also it fixes crashes in WoW in certain spots and dungeons that people experience with ATI cards.

You can find the drivers by using google. I believe I got them off Fileshack. You are welcome to find a suitable mirror. FYI though, there was 4.12 betas released too. Make sure you get the official 4.12's, the betas might work, but the officials is what Im using.

Link : http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=5984

Also note that I have a Radeon 9700 Pro. I did not have the loading bug (where you have to unpack that thing). I also run under 1600x1200 and have tolerable framerates, but no crashes. So if you run lower resolutions your results may be even better. Also note that the latest drivers are probably geared towards higher end ATI cards ... thus rolling back to these may affect your performance if you have a higher end ATI card. However, on the other hand most of the posts I read about problems in Civ4 had low end cards so I hope this helps everyone out.

Let me know if it works!

edit : Added links!

Any confirmation of this? I will try it but won't have time until later in the weekend... Plus I have an AIW so this driver pack will be a headache to install (predates the all included driver file--there are like 5 things I gotta install...).

Any confirmation of this? I will try it but won't have time until later in the weekend... Plus I have an AIW so this driver pack will be a headache to install (predates the all included driver file--there are like 5 things I gotta install...).

No worries. I have an All in Wonder too. It appears not to affect the Multimedia Center applications. TV and DVD apps tested and work fine, sound and video. I left everything installed from the latest release of Catalyst all included, uninstalled the Control Center, uninstalled the display driver, rebooted, installed 4.12, rebooted and then everything works like a charm.

I'm a little confused. I thought Catalyst was ATI's driver manager.

VIA makes main boards. Who made your video card?

I'm a little confused. I thought Catalyst was ATI's driver manager.

VIA makes main boards. Who made your video card?

Via made my AGP chipset (ie the AGP drivers for my motherboard). ATI made my graphics card. Ill make it more clear in my post.

Thanks for posting this! Installing 4.12 has done the trick for me. I'm able to load and play games that were immediately crashing on me with Catalyst 5.10.

P4 2.4GHz
Windows XP SP2
1GB RAM
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600XT

For sure,thanks alot for the info...I was able to play for a while with no ctd!

There are no new updates for my chipset drivers so I just used the ati drivers (9800 pro here)

I will be playing some more in a bit..if I have more random ctd I will post.

thanks again! :goodjob:

I can confirm this at least lets me to raise my AGP speed back to 2x like it's supposed to be and there's no more cheshire leaders...

Still doesn't fix the washed out textures and black triangled water on my Radeon 7500 though. :( Oh well.. thanks anyway.

I'm a little confused. I thought Catalyst was ATI's driver manager.

VIA makes main boards. Who made your video card?
Catalyst is the name given ATI's driver software series. The "driver manager" can be either the Control Panel, aka CP, or the Catalyst Control Center, aka CCC. The CP is simpler and a bit less trouble-prone. The CCC requires the MS .NET Framework to function and is the "next generation" driver manager...some don't care for it.
The 4.12 drivers are still available from www.ati.com. You have to do some navigation deeper than the "recent" drivers to reach them.

Ok, thanks.

I was a bit confused by the Catalyst page.

I'll just go get the 4.12 version now.

Installed omega_2597a (omega catalyst 4.12 official), though I could play before these drivers. I had pretty random CTDs, but atleast with these drivers the gameplay is a lot better performance wise.

Still have to play more to say anything for the CTDs. Atleast it looks promising. Oh and I wouldn't bother to make a new thread for this possibly old movie so I'll just post a link in here. It's hilarious:

http://www.civanon.org/main.html

Using Catalyst 4.12 with my ATI AIW 9600 Pro did the trick. No more crash, no more wonder movie that stutter.

I updated my motherboard chipset a few days ago (when I started playing Civ IV) but that didn't solve anything on set up.

Thanks for the tip. :goodjob:

Éric

YOU ARE A STUD! I"M EVEN ABLE TO PLAY HUGE MAPS - just finished game - space race victory in 1897 with 18 civs on huge map.

4.12 does solve wonder or end movie stutters but rest of game is flawless....not a single CTD!!

I set AGP to 0x (off) and had no BSOD or crash after 12h play on huge map.

ATI 9550
5.10a driver

I installed the Catalyst 4.12 (have a Radeon 9800 Pro) and it seems to have fixed the problem. Haven't had any crashes since AND the loading times of savegames has reduced from about 8 minutes to about half a minute.

Had been unplayable on huge maps for me.

Thanks a ton! :goodjob:

greeeaaaat, now what about those of us with PCI cards?

I hope it will work, I'm a little desperate now :(
thx btw :D

greeeaaaat, now what about those of us with PCI cards?

Ignore the AGP thing, Im guessing rolling back the drivers to 4.12 would work for PCI cards as well. But then again, I have no way of knowing ... good luck!

OK, had the same problems as everyone else (see "Game suddenly crashes" thread...). I downgraded to Catalyst 4.12 and so far it's looking good...played my saved game from ~1610 to 1780 and have had no crash so far, works like a charm. Let's hope it stays that way! Thank you so far, I'll post my experiences as I continue playing.

Yours
Markus

I havne't played the game long enough to test the CTDs and reboots, but so far this has NOT improved my load times or game lag at all. Oh, well, guess I'll still have to wait for a good patch or a new computer.

ATI 9600 Pro
Catalyst 4.12

EDIT Update: Ok, on medium setting and 1024x768 res, it fixed teh movie stuttering. Time to bump those settings up and try playing the game for a long time. Thanks for the help, even if it doesn't improve lag, but stops the crashing, I'll be happier.

EDIT2: The stuttering movie fix might also be do to the fact I changed my anti-aliasing from 2 to 0 as stated in this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137002
I won't get a chance to test CTDs and reboots untill tonight.

Given the success this seems to be having. Maybe this should be a sticky thread

Akaz

The title of the thread is deceptive; it should refer to fixes for ATI card machines only. My nVidea is still crash-prone, for instance, even with lots of RAM and latest drivers.

I'm trying to get an idea of what exactly this helps with and what it doesn't. For any of those changed ack to 4.12 and the lag and load times improved, what RAM are you using and what page file. Mine:
RAM: 512
Page: 2GB-4GB Dedicated Partition on seperate physical HDD
Although the 4.12 seems to have worked for something (again, need to tplay some more after work) I still get horrible load times and lag at later stages of the game on the huge map. Trying to turn on the grid takes over a minute. Since there is a lot of HDD activity, I guess it has to do with the page file. I remember quitting out of Civ IV and watching my page file drop from 900MB to 200MB. So I'm guessing this is a multi-stage problem , Cat 4.12 drivers help with some of it, but I also need more RAM (>512MB) to help with the rest of it.

This is a pretty strange fix... then again it's a pretty strange problem. I'm gonna give this a try for my x800 PCI-Express card and see if it helps.

I'm trying to get an idea of what exactly this helps with and what it doesn't. For any of those changed ack to 4.12 and the lag and load times improved, what RAM are you using and what page file.

I have a gig RAM and a 2 gigs fixed page file, Athlon 3200+, Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB.

This seems to be a mostly reliable fix for older ATI cards with stuttering video/audio. Someone mentioned the AA from 2 to 0 also helped.

Sticky?

I agree that the 4.12 drivers have more 9### support and later drivers have more X### support. It could be assumed that some of the hardware changes in the X### series have different tweaks than the older cards: thus the older drivers have a more specific 9### support.

I installed the Catalyst 4.12 ... and it seems to have fixed the problem. Haven't had any crashes since ...

Had been unplayable on huge maps for me.

Thanks a ton! :goodjob:

There just may be some joy in Mudville, boys and girls! Installed the Catalyst 4.12 drivers, set AGP to 0x, and I was able to play without the customary crashes, stuttering or freezing. Awesome!! I LOVE this game now that I can actually play it!! :D

Radeon 9600 XT AGP w/ 128 MB
AMD Athlon MMX w/ 3DNow
512MB Ram

The title of the thread is deceptive; it should refer to fixes for ATI card machines only. My nVidea is still crash-prone, for instance, even with lots of RAM and latest drivers.

Go here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137370 for a similar nVidia fix.

vodkaman, I could kiss you.

Useless Post...

Yours? I agree.

Don't be so rude - warned.

does absolutely nothing for those of us (I'd say a good 90 percent of pc users) who use NVIDIA.

next...

Useless Post...

does absolutely nothing for those of us (I'd say a good 90 percent of pc users) who use NVIDIA.

next...

Well it's not a useless post as most of the guys here having problems are ATI users, and there's already been couple threads for nvidia drivers. As already given couple posts earlier.

Given that the thread maybe should be renamed for ATI.

nVidia is not 90% of the market.

I rolled back my 5.10 to 4.12 and got the "Failed to Init2 error at startup.

Useless Post...

does absolutely nothing for those of us (I'd say a good 90 percent of pc users) who use NVIDIA.

next...

So then, Joe. Have you taken the initative and perhaps DOWNLOADED OLD NVIDIA DRIVERS for your card and see if that helps you? Or it just easier to come and complain, and do nothing else?

Useless Post...

does absolutely nothing for those of us (I'd say a good 90 percent of pc users) who use NVIDIA.

next...

Joe, your assumption of 90% is extremely high. How did you come about this figure? Pretty presumptious on your part.

As for the rest of you ATI guys, I'm using 5.10 and have no problems but I will download this in case I do. I'm playing on a large map and haven't spent more than a couple of hours so I might just run into a problem. Thanks Vodkamattvt for the interesting update of a older driver set.

Useless Post...

does absolutely nothing for those of us (I'd say a good 90 percent of pc users) who use NVIDIA.

next...

Actually according to Mercury research:

Desktop Graphics Market Share: ATi 24%. Nvidia 22% & Intel 36%
Desktop IGP Market Share: ATi 8% Nvidia 3% & Intel 61%
Desktop Discrete Graphics Market Share: ATi 46% Nvidia 50%

Also in Laptop Discrete ATi has something like ~75% market share vs. Nvidia ~20% & in Laptio IGP its more like 70%+ Intel with ATi largest non-Intel Vendor.

Akaz

Well it didn't work for me. Uninstalled the Omega drivers and installed the 4.12 drivers. I didn't reinstall Direct X after I installed 4.12 but Civ started without a problem. After 2 turns though the screen froze for a second and there was a hard reboot. I'm crushed as I thought this would fix it for me. Anyone have any thoughts?

Downgrading from 5.10 to 4.12 stopped all my mid to late game crashes to desktops. Just played for hours straight with no slowdowns or crashes whatsoever.

athlon 2600xp, 1gb ram, radeon 9550

:goodjob:

I confirm that it worked to download the catalyst driver, I have a Radeon 9550

I'm on a 9800 pro AIW, and for some reason I can't watch TV anymore when I install catalyst 4.12 (though it does fix civ).

I've had this problem before, TV only works on the latest catalyst drivers (5.10, 5.11 beta) for some reason. Does anyone have any idea why, or how I could fix it?

That's 'cause you have an AIW (All in one Wonder) and the old Cats don't support that.

I would like to add a quick update. I started a new game on a standard map and I think that was my big problem. With the Cat 4.12 drivers and Anti-Aliasing turned to 0, the game runs smoothly. I think there was just a problem with playing tmy old saved game. The next step will be to play on a huge map and see if it's still smooth with faster load times and little lag. Thanks so much for the help vodkamattvt, you're a godsend!!

So to the point, if someone is using an All-in-wonder, using catalyst 4.12, there's no way to watch TV without getting the newest version of catalyst and screwing up civ again? There's no way to update just the TV component?

This fix worked for me :goodjob:
My specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
1GB Corsair RAM
ATI 9800pro 128MB
Win XP SP2

I had been getting stuttery wonder videos and extremely frequent system reboots, one time loosing a school project. Everything works now, the game runs like silk with all settings maxed.
The whole 'ATI latest drivers' thread should be replaced by this fix ;)

Well I'll be damned. Setting AGP to 0 really made the problem with disappearing leaderheads and unusable globe view go away. Unfortunately wonder movies still stutter and everything gets jerky eventually. I'll try to install those drivers next.

I am one of those who uses an x### card and I still had crashes with civ4 with the latest drivers.

Just downloaded 4.12 and will give this a go later tonight. Will post my results, but it seems as if I will just be repeating many other people. :)

Yes, sorry for naming this thread deceptively. It should read for ATI users only. If a mod can change it that would be great.

As for TV working ... I tested TV after installing and it seemed to work ok. I had video and audio from cable. I never touched the latest ATI multimedia install, just uninstalled the control center and drivers and then installed 4.12. I have a 9700 Pro AIW.

Like I said, these drivers are from around a year or so ago, so support for newer ATI chipsets may be dodgy. For the 9700/9800 and similar cards, 4.12s seem to be the fastest and most stable drivers I have found.

Does it fix the "black terrain" issue too? I have a Mobility Radeon 7500 card (laptop).

Ok just had a nice multiplayer action going, we had like 6 players and rest computers. 18 players in total. Heh, and I WON!.. By points victory on 2050ad. Oh well no CTDs at all, and my first online game, spreat Judaism like hell, created prophet and had some +13 gold with 100% research.

:king:

This worked for me!

vodkamattvt, you sir, win many internets.

May thousands of Al Gore-faced world projects bless your glorious future. :)

Using the Catalyst 4.12 drivers and setting my AGP to 0 (on a Radeon 9700) worked, mucho thanks to vodkamattvt and bart_pl. It could have just been the AGP that did it though (that was the second thing I tried, the drivers on their own had no effect), so if no one has done so already, someone should try that on its own, I'm sure many of us would rather use newer drivers if it works just as well. Note that I didn't update my motherboard chipset.

BTW, when I say 'worked' I mean I no longer have the frequent crashes that I used to have (especially in diplomacy, but at other times as well), I do however still have the stuttering problem during wonder movies, so I'll have to try some of the solutions for that which I've seen. As for the crashing, I think larger maps have more of a problem that smaller maps, my last game was on the 3rd-to-largest size and had less problems that my current game which is on the 2nd-to-largest size.

Well it didn't work for me. Uninstalled the Omega drivers and installed the 4.12 drivers. I didn't reinstall Direct X after I installed 4.12 but Civ started without a problem. After 2 turns though the screen froze for a second and there was a hard reboot. I'm crushed as I thought this would fix it for me. Anyone have any thoughts?

Must the Anti-Aliasing and AGP be set to 0 for the 4.12 drivers to work? I see people mentioning that they have done one or the other. I didn't change either one of those and the 4.12 still led to crashes.

4.12 made things slightly smoother, but it's still pretty jerky. Also, info boxes stop appearing once in a while which is fairly annoying.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem that the Catalyst 4.12 drivers include support for the Radeon 345 IGP. So this suggestion won't work for those of us who have this chipset in our laptops or embedded motherboards.

This fix worked for my X850 XT PCI-E, but it's far from ideal because there are fixes in later drivers that I need for other games.

I reverted back to 4.12 and got the failed to int. thing :( , so I had to revert back to the new drivers and face the crashful hell.

how do you set your AGP to zero, I have a RADEON9550??? would like to try this first before uninstalling and reinstalling those damn drivers, had enough fun with that last night:eek:

I have a 9800PRO and this fix (4.12 drivers and setting AGP to 0 in Smartgrat) corrected my random reboot problem.

I had already set my settings all the way down to fix my slow down issues so now my games run fine for hours on standard map setting.

I have not turned the wonder videos or unit animations back on yet nor have i tried trading maps (which use to cause immense slow downs).

But none the less i can atleast play the game now without rebooting every 15 min.

Thanks for heads up on this man!

Akaz

Great Work! Thanks! :goodjob:

But I'll pass and wait for the patch that allows the current drivers to work.

I have other programs that are optimized with the 5.10 release...and don't feel like re-tweaking everything just to get the game to run.

Since I'm using an even older 8500DV, I jumped at the chance to put older drivers into play. Unfortunately, it worked only part-way. While my repeatable crashes were solved, gameplay was very very slow. And I got a system-killing bug before I got too far.

I went the other way (found leaked 5.11 cats on an omega DL mirror) and got the same relief from repeatable crashes, only with better performance. Still had the random system crash after a few minutes though.

Something that game does is too aggressive--they need to make it more systems friendly, instead of fiendly.

I reverted back to 4.12 and got the failed to int. thing :( , so I had to revert back to the new drivers and face the crashful hell.

Someone on Apolyton had the same problem as you and used this Pak Utility and now it works fine for him with the 4.12. Maybe you should try that.

Here is the thread from Apolyton.

Apo (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=142410)

Hope it helps! :)

You are my HERO

This solved every problem I had in Civ 4, including slowdown in game, stuttering videos and stupidly long load times, the game now runs smooth as silk!
Not only that, but it seemed to cure a problem I had in World of Warcraft which would cause my system to lock up and need a hard reboot. :goodjob: :goodjob: :goodjob:

I don't know much about programming a computer and all, but I downloaded the catalyst file to fix the CTD issue. But after I unzip the files and click on the startup icon, a pop up comes up staying it doesn't have the components and to ensure I have the proper software and hardware. I am not sure if I have Readon or Nivea, which both were mentioned in the thread (sorry if I mispelled it) How do I find out what ATI files/programs I have? I have windows XP, CPU is 3.60 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM, and 1536 MHz of vitural memory. I have Civ III on the same computer, and never had an issue. Anyone have an recommendations/fixes? Sorry for my lack of computers, and I will continue to surf the threads here to see if I can figure anything. But any input would be appreciated. Thank you.

Vodkamattvt you are the greatest man to ever live! Well, at this moment that's how I feel. :lol: Your fix worked. I've tried everything listed on the message boards to fix this CTD problem: new drivers for every piece of hardware I have, screwing with the swap file to no end, every combination of in game settings, etc., but nothing worked until I loaded the 4.12 Catalyst drivers.

Note: I left my AGP set at 8x, and i have windows manage my virtual memory again, and this still works. The only change I needed to make was to load the 4.12 drivers. To think of all the hours I wasted on this makes me sick. Especially because my drivers very well have worked if I didn't update them before installing the game, AS RECOMMENDED! :mad: They should put this fix on the official site and stop telling people to update to the most recent ATI drivers.

Great Work! Thanks! :goodjob:

But I'll pass and wait for the patch that allows the current drivers to work.

I have other programs that are optimized with the 5.10 release...and don't feel like re-tweaking everything just to get the game to run.

The first sensible post I've seen in this thread. Its nice to know that a driver from last year will "force" Civ IV to run properly for those that are having problems. I would rather wait for a patch. Once the patch is out the game will be optimized for the latest ATI drivers.

Either way, I run on a p4 3.0, 1 gig of ram, and an ATI 9800 PRO using Cat 5.10 drivers, and I've had barely any issues.

I don't know much about programming a computer and all, but I downloaded the catalyst file to fix the CTD issue. But after I unzip the files and click on the startup icon, a pop up comes up staying it doesn't have the components and to ensure I have the proper software and hardware. I am not sure if I have Readon or Nivea, which both were mentioned in the thread (sorry if I mispelled it) How do I find out what ATI files/programs I have? I have windows XP, CPU is 3.60 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM, and 1536 MHz of vitural memory. I have Civ III on the same computer, and never had an issue. Anyone have an recommendations/fixes? Sorry for my lack of computers, and I will continue to surf the threads here to see if I can figure anything. But any input would be appreciated. Thank you.

Right-click on your desktop and select properties. Then select on the settings tab in the upper right corner. Now you should see which graphics card you have, most likely either a Nvidia GeForce or an ATI Radeon. If you have an ATI card, you most likely can use the Catalyst drivers, though they don't seem to work with all models.

Nice work vodkamattvt!

Game would load but crash when starting a new game until I changed from Catalyst 5.10 to 4.12

Graphics card: 9700 mobile

I noted that a few of you have excessively large swap files and I thought I might offer a suggestion...

A swap file for Windows XP should, if not managed by the System, be the same size as your RAM + 11MB. This is what us needed for a page-file dump and is, I believe, considered to the the optimium swap file size. HOWEVER I would strongly suggest from personal experience that your combined RAM, both physical and virtual, be at least 1GB. If you are running with 256MB of physical RAM then you could really do with a 768MB swap file...

If you have 1GB of RAM or more then I would advise setting your swap file to your RAM size + 11MB. An excessively large swap file will increase disk thrashing and reduced performance.

If you have 2GB of RAM or more and do not care about the lack of a page-file dump then you could actually run without a swap file... You could do this quite happily with 1GB of RAM too but 2GB errs on the side of caution. Of course if your swap file is on a different physical drive (increases performance) or even a different partition and you have not created a ghost page-file on the boot partition you will not get the page-file dump anyway! :) I would also advocate the use a fixed size swap file as this can hep prevent the creation of a fragmented page file - just don't set it as fixed if it is already a fragmented page file.

Microsoft say that for best performance you should use between 1.5 and 3 times the amount of RAM in your machine. If you look at the numbers between their suggestions and my own you'll see that they are similar except that I believe that once you have 1GB of physical RAM then a swap file larger than the size of the physical RAM + 11MB will lead to an unnecessary decrease in performance.

Disclaimer: These are just my personal opinions - listening to me is done entirely at your own risk! :) If anyone has any information regarding technical inaccuracies please let me know.

Hi guys, new to this forum, not new to the Civ games!~Been fan for years and years and now I play the 4th part in the cyclus I encounter my first hardware/software problems.

I have a:
P4 3.6ghz
Radeon X300 400mhz
512mbram
300gb hd

Regulary crashes total reboot or a desktop crash......
Tries almost all the Radeon fixes on this forum, including this one.....no luck. There have been less crashes lately, but now it seems to come back fully.

I regret it. I don't like paying that much for a pretty good PC and 50 bucks for a game that works 20%.

Does anyone have had more luck with the X200/300/400 cards?

Thanx alot!

Cheers,
Barry

Oh well, after the downgrade to Catalyst 4.12 had pretty much elminiated my crahses/reboots/freezes, they're all back now. They game ran fine with 4.12 from mid-1700s to about 1925, I then had one crash to desktop almost immediately after loading the saved game yesterday and just had a complete freeze/crash (but at least a new one, so it stays interesting :-/ -this time I got a completely garbled screen full of multicolored dots when it crashed).

Congratulations to all the people whom the 4.12 drivers helped, but don't get overconfident, don't leave your OpenOffice running in the background with your doctoral dissertation open or anything like that :D...

Yours
Markus

Same with me, it helped in the beginning, just like in the beginning when I 1st installed the game....

The change of drivers worked for me and it went much smoother and thankfully I did not have any crashes to desktop or blue screen system freezes with the old drivers running. (like I had with the new ones while playing civ4). But it did not help lessen the load time.

However, since the old drivers totally screw up a couple of games I'm currently playing (city of villians). I will just wait for a patch for the game to play civ4. But good catch finding those drivers submitter! I'm glad some of us can finally play it and enjoy it!

Has anyone who tried the 4.12 drivers played half-life 2? I had to update to 5.whatever in order to remove rainbow water. not too keen on rolling back to an old driver because ATI will rob peter to pay paul when it comes to their drivers.
I did the recommended ATI fix from the 2k games site, I can now play but after 2 hours playing a "later game" it crashes to desktop.
Just curious

I used to CTD & re-boot all of the time. Sometimes play for 2 minutes, sometimes 2 hours. Sometimes just trying to load. Crash. Crash. Crash.

Tried the "patches".
Tried new/changed drivers.
Tried swapping video cards (from ATI to GeForce).
Screwed around with my CD-ROM devices.
Screwed around in the BIOS.
None of these worked.

Using sd4hider, I have COMPLETED TWO FULL GAMES WITHOUT A SINGLE CRASH OF ANY KIND.

I am convinced that the "copyright protection" and "device checking" are the cause of the majority of the crashings.

This sounds like an interesting solution. Has anyone tried it with an x600 card yet?

My cards are: Radeon 9200SE and Geforce FX5600XT

Just downoad and try the sd4hider. Just do it.

4.12 solved my reboots, lag in later stages and I can even load and play scenarios. I've just completed the huge world game with minimum lag. The game was a real mess with 5.10. The card is 9800 PRO.

Just to say that the 4.12 thing worked for me.
I had problems with speed at the end of my epic, huge map game. Now I can put my graphic setting to the max and it run smooth (still have to movie problems)

so if you have an ati card, try it :)

the card is 9800 pro too

Excellent fix worked wonders for me.
I have a big map size game going in the 1800's and all setts are up full @1024*768.
Game runs like a dream from what i can only describe before as horrible.
At last i can start to appreciate the game for what it is.
I see units zipping around the map, movies load now at the same time as the naration for them. It also fixed some gfx bugs i noticed like ships turning into the color of the flags they carry.
Lets hope the issues with the 5.10 catalyst driver can be addressed in a patch and Firaxis and this forum will stop telling people to update to the latest drivers and suggest a more stable version.
Many many thanks dude you've made my day

Radeon 9700 pro 128
Asus A7N8X-X
1024mb corsair valu select ram
Athlon 2500+ Barton Core

I used to CTD & re-boot all of the time. Sometimes play for 2 minutes, sometimes 2 hours. Sometimes just trying to load. Crash. Crash. Crash.

Tried the "patches".
Tried new/changed drivers.
Tried swapping video cards (from ATI to GeForce).
Screwed around with my CD-ROM devices.
Screwed around in the BIOS.
None of these worked.

Using sd4hider, I have COMPLETED TWO FULL GAMES WITHOUT A SINGLE CRASH OF ANY KIND.

I am convinced that the "copyright protection" and "device checking" are the cause of the majority of the crashings.

If this is the case then Firaxis is in for a sh!tstorm. Obviously this is happening to tons of people with legit copies of the game. I've spent hours trying to work on this problem.

Hi,
I'm confirming that the 4.12 version workaround has indeed solved most serious gameplay issues for me.

I installed the game with the 5.10 drivers already running and had all the following problems. Note, that most did not occur until the mid-endgame portion of a game, somewhere around the time when the full map is available and in the modern age. All in-game graphics set to high, a 1024x768 fullscreen resolution and 4x anti-aliasing. I have only attempted to play standard sized maps.

- Random crash to desktop or reboots.
- Blue screens, usually telling me the ati driver did something bad
- Serious degradadation in perfomance, sometimes taking several minutes to complete a round, several minutes to load the diplomacy screen, and terrible slowdown in framerate.
- Horrible graphic problems -- (usually) large portions of the map would be black and gray pyramidal shapes stretching to infinity. Saving the game at this point would result in a ~1400 byte-corrupt savegame.
- Studdering movies

After reverting to the 4.12 drivers, only the studdering movie problem remains (I've read of other possible solutions to that problem that I haven't tried yet).

I have now completed a full standard map sized game and for the first time:
- I did not crash to the desktop or reboot.
- I did not have any graphical issues
- I did not experience any slowdown

My system:
3.2ghz P4
MSI NEO2P motherboard
1g ram / 1536mb page file
ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb (8xAGP)
RealTek AC'97 on board sound

Thanks for posting this vodka, it's a sufficient workaround until a fix comes out.

chillin..

ATI's new drivers cause problems with many games, not just Civ 4. Everquest 2, Knight of the Old Republic 2 (you have to get exactly the right driver for that one), World of Warcraft... ATI tends to be somewhat notorious about OpenGL problems. Omega drivers for ATI cards tend to be significantly better, but will still share some of the same problems as the Catalyst drivers they're based on.

I haven't read much from laptop users on this fix...so I guess I'll post my two bits.

I'm now running the Omega 4.12 drivers on my 9600 mobility...no more CTD...no more blue screen. :goodjob: For the most part the game runs flawlessly...except when my processor fan kicks into high. :confused: Anyway...here's my specs for those interested:

Dell 8600
2.0 GHz P-M
1 GB RAM
128 MB ATI 9600
Omega 4.12 Drivers
[civ4] - Now Error free!

Downloaded the 4.12 and I am still constantly SLLLLLLOW and still rebooting after a few minutes ALL the time.

GOD! This is so f***ing frustrating. After immediately installing the game and starting it I played for over an hour with no problems but after I shut the game down and came back to it some time later it's been reboot after reboot.

I installed 4.12 driver. It didnt solve the problem with movies (intro + wonders) so i disabled them :( but the game runs very well now. no more reboot or big lag in end game :D

This sounds like an interesting solution. Has anyone tried it with an x600 card yet?

Yup, I´ve got a x6oo, but have the crash-problem all the time. Don´t seem to have any of the lagging problems described though, but that might be due to the fact that I can´t play more than perhaps 20 turns until the PC crashes. The screen turns all black and I have to restart the PC... :mad: :cry:

I have the same problem with Call of duty 2, with the interesting difference that I can hear the sound of guns firing in the distance for a couple of seconds after the screen have turned black...

I´ve tried the 4.12 AND the sd4hider, but absolutely no difference here. How do I set this "AGP" to 0?

Yup, I´ve got a x6oo, but have the crash-problem all the time. Don´t seem to have any of the lagging problems described though, but that might be due to the fact that I can´t play more than perhaps 20 turns until the PC crashes. The screen turns all black and I have to restart the PC... :mad: :cry:

I have the same problem with Call of duty 2, with the interesting difference that I can hear the sound of guns firing in the distance for a couple of seconds after the screen have turned black...

I´ve tried the 4.12 AND the sd4hider, but absolutely no difference here. How do I set this "AGP" to 0?

Right-click on your desktop, select "properties", then select the "settings" tab. Then click on "advanced" and select the "smartgart" tab. There you can adjust your AGP settings.

Thx, Tokio! Unfortunatley it didn´t help me... I set it to 0 and started the game, but it froze... I´m about to give up - a shame since Civ´s always been one of my favourite games.

Guess I´ll have to wait for a patch (if there´ll be one...).

Thanks for the info! It works perfectly now. Although I still have the wonders disabled and sound off as I didn't have time to turn them on I've tested it on settings that usually restart/crash my computer and played it for a good 30 minutes with no problems what so ever.

Furthermore the red boxes I was getting before are gone.

This is my rig:

512 MB DDR400 ram
Radeon 9800 SE (using Omega Drivers to software mod to 9800 np/pro)
ASRock k8 combo-z mother board
AMD athlon 64 3200+ 754 socket

Will test more later with said things enabled. Thanks for the info although I think this was suggested before but nobody but much stock into it.

Thanks vodkamattvt, your solution did a miracle for me !

With the Omega 5.10 I had a slight improvement over the std Cat 5.10 drivers but was still haunted by frequent CTD. After installing 4.12 and keeping AGP at 8x I played for 7 hours straight :goodjob:

I have a 9800 Pro.

This really deserves a sticky, but I'll give it the next best thing: a bump! :)

I was wondering if this 4.12 driver will work on mobility cards for laptops?

forget it... I found the answer myself

edit: which is no, 4.12 doesn't work for laptops... I guess I bought a game I'll never be able to play.

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH! I've play for 17 hours since using this and not a snigle crash! :goodjob:

Yup, I´ve got a x6oo, but have the crash-problem all the time. Don´t seem to have any of the lagging problems described though, but that might be due to the fact that I can´t play more than perhaps 20 turns until the PC crashes. The screen turns all black and I have to restart the PC... :mad: :cry:

I have the same problem with Call of duty 2, with the interesting difference that I can hear the sound of guns firing in the distance for a couple of seconds after the screen have turned black...

I´ve tried the 4.12 AND the sd4hider, but absolutely no difference here. How do I set this "AGP" to 0?

Hmm, i will try the 4.12 drivers tomorrow. Ive got a X800,
The game worked excellent at the beginning, but now ive come to a stage now when i can only play 1-2 turns before the game crashes. lol. Ill see if the 4.12 make any difference.

forget it... I found the answer myself

edit: which is no, 4.12 doesn't work for laptops... I guess I bought a game I'll never be able to play.

...asmodee try the Omega 4.12 drivers...I installed them (Dell 8600 with 128MB ATI 9600 Mobility) and am now among the lucky few who can play the game.

I have 4.10 ati catalyst and zero problems with games ... A 64 3000, 1gb ram, X600pro and doing very fast ..

4.12 made no differance for me....

used DC pro to clear and tried the omega drivers, civ4 acts exact same way, random reboots after about 10 mins. It's nice that the PC reboots for me, no having to help it along other than starting CIV4 like by pressing power buttons or anything.

nothing I seem to do makes a wit of differance, not new drivers not lowering agp to unacceptably slow game speed etc.

setup is
barton 3200+ on an asus A78nx
on board sound
2gb pc3200 CL2 DDR but with *way* relaxed settings
9800 pro 128mb 8x agp
4.12 latest flavor of drivers.

Tried setting agp to 0 and well just panning on a stock normal play now involved my hard drive... eff that lol

Tried 4x agp, the next availible setting and same reboot into turn 20 from a brand new game.

Gonna try the cache clearing again, I'd normally wait to post this before trying that but then again I don;t feel like pasting what I wrote here into notepad for it to survive the upcoming hard reboot that most likely incoming.

So frustrating, but well I just sit back and listen to some www.cbs.nu to relax so all good.

Edit .........

omg this is hilarious, after clearing cache for the millionth time I FINNALY get the dreaded render issue. In classic mathmatician "we know what to do from here right class?" style I'm relieved.

Off to one of the many unpacking threads to deal with this issue.

Liq see's hope!! or was it just the nyquil talking.

Cheers!
-Liq'd

Managed to get Civ 4 running nicely with ATI card by doing the following:

1: Install the lastest Omega Drivers (www.omegadrivers.net)

2: Install the latest version of python (www.python.org)

3: Run the app in protected memmory (Control panel \ system \ [Advanced tab] \ [performance] \ [Advanced tab] \ turn on DEP)

yay! running great, only stutter was from the virus scanner turning on... my personal sign that "just one more turn" turned into just one more game LOL.


9800pro 128, used the omeaga drivers based on the 4.12. use driver heavens' driver cleaner tool first.

For the reboots, make sure to clear the cache as mentioned (under documents apps my games etc) and try reloading.

I got the unable to rendter so cleared out that cache again and did the unpack thing to the art file...

runs like a charm now.

Important thing is don;t just try one step, reset everything, drivers cache settings etc.

Thank you soooooo much for this thread.

Cheers!
-Liq

Downloading Omega Drivers v2.6.2.5 (Catalyst v4.1). As my ATI card is a mobile version I have to rely on 3rd party drivers, hope this works.

Kushan

BUMP please sticky this!

Confirmed by me at least. I had frequent reboots and crashes (rarer in early games and smaller games, but very common in late games and large games). I had originally been playing with Catalyst 5.6 (on a 9700 pro if you must know). I upgraded to 5.10 (latest) and had the same issues. Not only this, but updating to 5.10 seemed to destroy my DoD source framerates.

(...)

2. Install Catalyst 4.12 - This is the major point! Catalyst 4.12's have gained fame for their stability and speed. They fixed all my Civ4 problems, as well as improved my Source engine speeds by 10-20 fps. Also it fixes crashes in WoW in certain spots and dungeons that people experience with ATI cards.

You can find the drivers by using google. I believe I got them off Fileshack. You are welcome to find a suitable mirror. FYI though, there was 4.12 betas released too. Make sure you get the official 4.12's, the betas might work, but the officials is what Im using.

Link : http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=5984
(...)


This worked for me, too!

I have an ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 and had crashes, reboots, and was very unhappy. After installing the 4.12 drivers, however, I have not had a problem, and this is after several hours over several days of playing. Firaxis needs to post this on their Civ IV website.

-Mike

Actually ignore my previous "Bump"

This didn't work for me, I thought it did, but it broke again. It's a problem with the game (random CTD) not the drivers.

Game runs fine, just randomly crashes. No errors.

Catalyst 4.12 didn't work here with ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 on Dell Inspiron 5100 2yr old. Omega drivers didn't work either.

They're calling it the "Cheshire Cat" I think. Also the "midnight map".

Sad...I waited soooo long for this game to come out. Didn't realize that while I was waiting I should have been saving up for a new laptop!

I'm going to have to give it a poor rating and warn laptop users on CNET.

marc

Hello distressed gamers,I have an odd problem of the game running perfectly IF i turn on the bare map option or whatever that make your units invisible, i can still see citys and everything even finish long games BUT if i turn the toggle back to see my units workers and enimies soldiers i instantly crash out. so i cant really play, only build up a city and guess where things are with mini map. I have doone al popular fixes, any suggestions to help me play with units visible?? i crash instantly if i build a city etc with them visible, so i must go from turn one to the end without seeing units and such. Kinda wierd issue i guess, but unit animations work fine just if i build a city or see other ppls units lol. Useing Radeon 9200 PCI
with 510 omega amd all updated drivers

Has anybody had this fix decrease their load times at all?

Couldn't get the game to load with "new" drivers for my Radeon 9550, but this fix did it for me, too. I am thrilled and very grateful!

Having installed patch 1.09, I tried installing the latest catalyst drivers to see if the patch fixed the problem I was having with random reboots in the second half of the game. The problem still exists. The game has crashed several times using the latest drivers. I guess I'll reinstall catalyst 4.12. The game hasn't crashed on me a single time with catalyst 4.12 installed.

P4 2.4GHz
1GB RAM
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600XT

Before going to 4.12 I want to make sure CoD 2 (Call of Duty 2) still works. Has anyone been able to play both games with 4.12?

I can't believe this problem wasn't detected during beta testing :(

Thanks!

With the pathc know out, is it reall necessary to have the old drivers (Cat 4.12). Cant those of us using it go back to the newer drivers?

Kushan

Before going to 4.12 I want to make sure CoD 2 (Call of Duty 2) still works. Has anyone been able to play both games with 4.12?

I can't believe this problem wasn't detected during beta testing :(

Thanks!

CoD2 and Civ4 work perfectly fine with 4.12 on my PC (Civ4 was horrible crashlagfest on 5.10)

Where exactly on the ATI site can 4.12 be found? I am having trouble finding this file anywhere...other than Fileshack.

Thanks!

Found and installed 4.12...PROBLEM SOLVED! I can finally finish my saved game. This really should be a sticky.

Now to test 4.12 on other games (like COD 2).

works for me. I didn't have any crashes on 5.10 cept when I alt-tabbed or after loading a large map with 10+ civs (worked all the way up until saving and loading the game, went to crap after loading). Went back to 4.12 omega drivers and was able to load the game and playing right now!!!

We should all collectively pull down our pants and take a dump on patch 1.09.

For me at least, it fixes nothing, this after waiting almost a month for it.

I installed the 4.12 and then ran the unpak fix, and cleared cache. When I try to start civ IV I get an:
initialize renderer failed. Check directX installation, latest graphics drivers and graphics settings parameters:
width = 1024
height = 768\flags = 0x8
hwnd = 0x80476
adaptrid = 0
deviceid = 1
Help please!

(I could kind of play the game with patch 1.09 (but leaders would cause a freeze), so I decided to try a driver change. Using ATI Radeon 9000 card on a laptop.

After loading driver 4.12 I had the initialize renderer error (see previous post). I fixed this with the Unpak fix and going back to full screen mode and clearing cache.

For me the game is still unplayable. With patch 1.09 + driver 4.12 I can see the leaders now and the units, but the terrain looks pretty awful and the text gets covered by white blocks occasionally.

With patch 1.09 and driver 5.10 I can the the terrain beautifully but the units are missing (sometimes visible) except for their weapons [ is this the "cheshire cat" bug? ] and the PC freezes when another civilization leader is about to be displayed.

I have tried playing with the settings for the game and drivers (AGP off, low res, high performance) although there are so many options that I am sure I have not tried them all. If someone has the same config as me and can suggest a configuration, I am prepared for one more try. Otherwise I think I will have to wait for the next patch. I would be more than happy with unanimated units and leaders if that would allow the game to play! How about that option for the next patch?

I was having constant reboots caused by the game crashing before switching to the Radeon Omega Drivers 2.5.97a (Catalyst 4.12), found in the archive section at http://www.omegadrivers.net/

All my graphics card settings are the standard default, no AGP off or any of the others tweaks people were suggesting.

I did follow the directions on the ATI site to manually uninstall and delete all the old ATI drivers/ files from my computer before installing the new ones. I used to use a program that was supposed to do that automatically, but I still found some of the things ATI recmmends getting rid of sticking around, so try the full manual method detailed by ATI.

The full unistall and reinstall should set anything you changed back to default settings.

The only thing I changed was to turn the VPU recovery feature off in the ATI control panel, just incase.

Oh, in my case this not only seems to have fixed the crashes, but the game looks and runs well so far.

I love all the guys here... :goodjob:

Install Omega 4.12 on my Radeon9800pro... now I can play large world with smooth silky gameplay.

Thankssssssss:king:

I gave the 4.12 driver another go. And yes it works. The performance is slow and the graphics are not as beautiful as with the 5.10 driver - BUT I have not had a crash yet. I have the white eyes feature on some leaders. This puts me in the category of playable, but still needing a further patch to be satisfied with the game performance.

Finished a Standard world size game today, no crashes or problems. The Omega 4.12 drivers seem to be very compatible with the game. If I get bored enough I'll try moving forward slowly through the Omega drivers post 4.12 and see at what point the problems start to crop up. I think 4.12 was chosen because of their reputation for being very stable for other games that had problems with newer drivers.

Ok....

I followed this entire thread to a T. I even went through the trouble of reformatting to make sure it worked. I did exactly what you told me I went to the SiS website and got the latest AGP drivers for my barely year old motherboard. They installed ok. Then I got my drivers from ATI, the 4.12 version. It crashed the first time. I was about to come on here and get all crazy. I decided to give it a second try. It worked perfect. I played and actually got to turn the game off for a change. Then today I reloaded my game hoping to tear into Ghandi. {I have something against him, its theraputic to nuke him in my opinion} When just as I was about to throw some nice cavalry into him it crashed. It hasnt stopped. I kept getting mem dumps and the entire comp now crashes along with the game. I got the latest drivers to see if maybe that might work and of course it didnt. Im a civ junkie. I warped my test of time disc and still have civ 2 stuck in my previous comp. I need help.

I dont know if this helps but some part of system32 is missing. I believe its the delfolders.exe. No idea what it means. Thank you.

Replaced new 5.10 driver with "new" 4.12 driver and it works!

AMD athlon 64 3000+
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9550


Thx, Taurus

4.12 isn't exactly working for my 9800 pro 128.

Specs: P4 2.4gig, 1gig ram, 875P chipset (latest bios F13), 9800Pro 128

Problem: Diplomacy crash to desktop, VPU recovery crash dump generated by catalyst driver. After two or three of these in a game my monitor will slam into a standby mode.

Discussion: Dropping from 5.10/5.11 to 4.12 fixed the diplomacy crash...but it just moved the crash to other points in the game. Now just scrolling around the map can cause the crash.

Others report that dropping the AGP down to zero on the catalyst control center fixed crashes but late game crashes still occur.

4.12 isn't exactly working for my 9800 pro 128.

Specs: P4 2.4gig, 1gig ram, 875P chipset (latest bios F13), 9800Pro 128

Problem: Diplomacy crash to desktop, VPU recovery crash dump generated by catalyst driver. After two or three of these in a game my monitor will slam into a standby mode.

Discussion: Dropping from 5.10/5.11 to 4.12 fixed the diplomacy crash...but it just moved the crash to other points in the game. Now just scrolling around the map can cause the crash.

Others report that dropping the AGP down to zero on the catalyst control center fixed crashes but late game crashes still occur.


I have practically the same problem.

My Specs though: 3.0ghz, 1 gigRAM, 9550 ATI 256, no idea my chipset but the boards a year old.

Ill try it ... thx
here is a mirror without registration
http://files.ngohq.com/omega/ATI/rad_w2kxp_omega_2597a_7z.exe
and its the omega version.

catalyst 4.12 did not help me
same low stupid fps :/
xp2800
9800 pro
2 gb ram

I am glad you started this thread. The 4.12 drivers have fixed all my problems.

Thanks mucho.:goodjob:

Seems to have fixed my crash/reboot/infinite_loop_memory issue with Catalyst 4.12. Wait & see...
Although it shouldn't be so difficult to change my mobile drivers... :eek:

Thanks! A mod should sticky this thread!

This solved my crashes, but occasionally, the graphics get all messed up and it slows down my machine incredibly. The just released new catalyst drivers. Anyone had luck with those??

9800pro here, 4.12 fixed the flickering.

I recommend this to anyone having problems who has an ATI card.

Thanks!

edit: I tryed the newest 5.12 drivers and they didn't work.

Dave Angel solution working for me
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3311130&postcount=98
Laptop, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo 128Mb
Using mobile Catalist 5.12
DEP turned on for all programm
Using low resolution (1280x1024)

1600x1200 still unstble.

Ok....I dont know if this helps but some part of system32 is missing. I believe its the delfolders.exe. No idea what it means. Thank you.
This may be left over from your SIS update. There's a comment in a thread here Re: C:\Windows\system32\tools\delfolders.exe (http://www.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin/2004-02/3544.html)

Managed to get Civ 4 running nicely with ATI card by doing the following:

1: Install the lastest Omega Drivers (www.omegadrivers.net)

2: Install the latest version of python (www.python.org)

3: Run the app in protected memmory (Control panel \ system \ [Advanced tab] \ [performance] \ [Advanced tab] \ turn on DEP)
What is a DEP . I don't windows English Version and I do not know.

CoD2 and Civ4 work perfectly fine with 4.12 on my PC (Civ4 was horrible crashlagfest on 5.10)

UPDATE:

Civ worked great on 4.12 but COD2 did not (during grenade explosions and smoke). I upgraded to Omega 4.12 and Civ worked fine, noticable lag from nades and smoke (but graphics were not messed up during these now). Omega 5.12 had COD2 working great but Civ is crashing again.

There appears to be no answer to getting both these games to work correctly. The problem is obviously on the CIV side so my only recourse is to never purchase another product from Sid Meyer, Firaxis and Take2.

Finished a Standard world size game today, no crashes or problems. The Omega 4.12 drivers seem to be very compatible with the game. If I get bored enough I'll try moving forward slowly through the Omega drivers post 4.12 and see at what point the problems start to crop up. I think 4.12 was chosen because of their reputation for being very stable for other games that had problems with newer drivers.

Have you tested out the more recent Omega versions yet? 4.12 is not happy with either Everquest 2 or CoD2.

Its not working for me ...

Intel pentiom 4 , 2800 MHZ.
1024 RAM.
Radeon 9200 Pro.
Windows xp sp2.

Install Catalyst 4.12
IT'S ALIVE, IT'S ALIVVEEE!!! Ok, i got as far as the tutorial. I've been that far up before, though, then it crashed after about an hour of playing (hey, i'm a slow learner!) I'll have to go to sleep now, it's 9:09 AM, i haven't slept all night. (The same goes for the two nights before last night and the night before that i spent playing Civ2 and watching the Oscars. Finally i can rest in peace.) I'll post more tomorrow (technically today) to tell you if the game still works or not. Good night! Well, it's day, but for me it's night.

Okay, so after installing Catalyst 4.12 as someone here advised i was usually able to get past the start initializition box, though not always. I tried to play through the tutorial, but the game would always crash sooner or later. The savegames seem to work with the tutorial except that Sid's commentary was always lost when reloading the game so i had to start the tutorial all over again. Finally i managed to play through the tutorial before it crashed and moved on to the actual game. I didn't get past the loading screen until after several painful attempts. After this i was able to play many hours straight without ever having a crash. Unfortunately i kinda lost track on what changes i might have made to make the problems go away. Could it be that i wasn't using the full screen mode?

Anyway, thanks to all the people here for the advice. :) I'm not sure if it will work tomorrow, though.

I downloaded the 4.12 driver and it works perfectly, except that my Catalyst Conrol Center doesn't recognize my widescreen monitor (res: 1440 x 900) and there is no way to manually type in the resolution I need.

Please help.

Thanks for this suggestion as I have CTD very frequently with my 9800SE AIW, and hope this suggestion fixes this problem.

This did it for me :) Havent been able to play through more than one single game of Civ IV since I got it just after release, but now its running smoothly. I havent had a single crash since I got the 4.12 driver.

Many thanks!

i Own A Toshiba Satellite P35-s605 Laptop. This Is A Powerful Machine That Has A Pentium 4 H/t Processor. However, I Have Been Having Problems Playing Civ 4!! I Can Only Play The Game For About 5-10 Minutes Before The Whole System Freezes And I'm Forced To Hard Reboot. After Reading Through The Forums For Days I Figured Out That The Problem Is Most Likely Caused By My Video Driver. I Have An Ati Mobility Radeon 9000 Igp With The 6.14 Driver. I Have Already Downloaded The 4.12 Driver But Every Time Ati Tries To Install It It Has An Error And Terminates. The error states: "SETUP WAS UNABLE TO FIND COMPONENTS THAT CAN BE INSTALLED ON YOUR CURRENT HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE REQUIRED HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE." I Don't Know A Whole Lot About Computers So I Could Only Understand Some Of What Everyone Is Talking About In These Forums. Will Somebody Please Help Me!!!!!!!! I Just Started Playing Civ4: Warlords And I'm Having The Exact Same Problem. Please Reply And Help. Thank You.

ktluver4, I'm suspecting that since those drivers are so old, they don't support your newer IGP video card..

ktluver - I had the same problem. I found out that if the manufacturer (ie Toshiba) purchased and installed a mass batch, they would not have on-board recognition as ATI cards. You have to contact the manufacturer to get them to send you an updated driver, you cannot use the drivers direct from ATI.

Unfortunately, this also means you cannot take advantage of the 4.12 fix. I'm having exactly the same problem and it sucks.

EW

edit: this thread has links to a couple alternative driver sites. not sure if any will work, i'll try myself later. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171994

edit2: I downloaded the mobility radeon 9700 driver (catalyst 6.6) from here http://www.station-drivers.com/index.html and it has stopped the CTD problems (so far, only ran a short test). However, the stray polygons have not gone away. bleagh

I haven't had any CTD problems, insted i've had TOTAL crash problems where the game freezes and so does the whole computer. The only thing i'm left to do from this point is to hold down the power button until the computer shuts off.

Will contacting the manufacturer really help?? If so, what do I have to do to get them to send me an updated driver? And if they do what do i do with the driver from there? Sorry about all of the questions but I don't know a whole lot about the technical parts of a computer.

In my case, I simply called the manufacturer, explained the problem, told them my model and serial number (because they asked) and then my email address.

They emailed me links to download the lastest drivers. I clicked the links, saved the downloads, then ran them.

Of course, it didn't work, but it was a pretty painless process otherwise :)

EW

ROFL @ enkidu

:( I have done all that you said to do as far as downloading the correct driver. However when I get far into a game it still will crash to the black screen and wont come back online. I am sorry I cannot give a full description of my computer setup as I am not that "hip" to computer lingo. All I know is that it is a HP a735W, the only thing I have added is my graphics card which is a ATI Raedeon 9550 All-in-wonder card 512mg. Could my problem be memory? I have no idea how to check how much memory I am running with. So any help/advice would be greatly appreciated as I have yet to play a whole game through to the end. Thank you!!!!:( :( :( :(