I couldn't find any solution to this in the forums, so I'm hoping somone out there has run into this. I just bought and installed civ4, but when I run it, the loading screen comes up(the one with "loading" in a bunch of languages), and that's it. It just stays there forever. It doesn't do anything, and doesn't affect my computer otherwise. When I want to get rid of it I have to close it via the Task Manager.
I tried to enable logging so I could see what was going on, but when I looked in the civ4 folder, I noticed that a bunch of things -all the custom* stuff and the civ4config file - are shortcuts. And they don't go anywhere.
For example,
"%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini"

So it looks like I'm missing a lot of stuff. I don't understand what's going on here. I've installed a few times, tried the latest patch, etc. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

-Tim

The observed "missing" files are no bug, ini file and other files under My Games are created after you successfully run the game for the first time.

What you could try is to create the "My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini" file and just type in the option to enable logging.

Well, I tried running Civ4 another dozen times today, with the same nothing happening. Then I read your suggestion.

I created a "Sid Meier's Civilizatin 4" folder, and then made the ini file and enabled logging. I then started up Civ4 again, prepared to post whatever the logging file told me, only...it worked. I haven't tried actually playing it yet, but gets to the main menu, no problem.

So, thanks for the suggestion! For some reason, it seems to have fixed my Civ4. I can finally start playing!

-Tim