Hello,

I just bought a new HP desk computer with Vista. I did install CIV3 Gold and Conquests. I sometimes can play the game, other times I can't play:( A window tells me that CIV3 HAS STOPPED WORKING -CHECK ONLINE FOR A SOLUTION AND CLOSE THE PROGRAM or -CLOSE THE PROGRAM. Can someone tell me why I am having so much trouble to play CIV3?

Don't know much about Vista, but I do know that Civ3 needs to be run as administrator. Make sure you're the admin or running it as admin when playing the game.

Thanks Turner :) . However I am indeed the admin. I had tried to run it as admin before with negativ result. But I did try again a few minutes ago and got a warning window titled "User Account Control" wanted to know if I allow or not a ''unidentified program wants access'' (!) or something like that. I went to "make changes in to your user account" and turn off the "User Account Control" which was on. Then try again to run, didn't get that "User Account Control" window, but got again the window "CIV3 HAS STOPPED WORKING -CHECK ONLINE FOR A SOLUTION AND CLOSE THE PROGRAM or -CLOSE THE PROGRAM" It is mind boggling :eek: that I can not run a simple CD game. Can someone help?

Details of the window "CIV3 HAS STOPPED WORKING -CHECK ONLINE FOR A SOLUTION AND CLOSE THE PROGRAM or -CLOSE THE PROGRAM" is as follow:
(if this can help...)

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Civ3Conquests.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 3f904574
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Fault Module Timestamp: 4549bdc9
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00043c18
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 3084
Additional Information 1: e594
Additional Information 2: dc5d5038c58016da5075e0f4f285f8af
Additional Information 3: 7f33
Additional Information 4: 78472fa3114f87cf4fba891b54f52c03

Sorry, don't know. Like I said, I don't have Vista, just picked up a little here and there.

Hopefully someone who knows will stop by and help out.

You know I was just about to ask this very same question, but I don't have a laptop yet or rather I need to procreate 2,400 bucks for one.

First and foremost update civilization III...your playing with version 1.0

But when I get the money for a new laptop this is going to be the first thing I look into doing, and troubleshooting.

I also had problems with conquests in vista...
If you navigate to the .exe file for Conquests (and CivIII for that matter), right click & select properties. In the compatibility tab select windows XP SP2 and run as administrator.
So far this has worked OK for me but I've only had the new PC for a few days, we''l have to see if it stands the test of time (excuse the pun).
Hope this helps.

I had already installed the latest patches. Windows XP SP2 has been already selected and I do run the game as administrator. Also it seems after all that my problem has nothing to do with Vista: 1. Strange enough I was able to run the game and play 2 or 3 times. The last time was yesterday morning. When it was time to do something else, I just save my game and exit. Last night and today I could not run the game, the result being the usual message: CIV3 HAS STOPPED WORKING -CHECK ONLINE FOR A SOLUTION AND CLOSE THE PROGRAM or -CLOSE THE PROGRAM. 2. Now, my roomate who's computer is 2 years old and operates with Windows XP is also unable to run the game. Any idea?

Try reinstalling it first. Also do a virus scan, disk defragmentation, run scandisk, and make sure virtual memory is at automatic. You might want to call tech support, if none of that works.(Like Geek Squad, etc.) And BTW what is the specification of your computer, Ive seen cases where the computer was too good to run a program.

Thank you SG-17. Yes, virtual memory is at automatic which seems to be the default setting. Virus scan is on automatic mode with my Bell-Sympatico Security Services. I will run disk defrag and scandisk later on... I am now playing a game with CIV IV Warlords. Thanks again.

Might want to do a manual (nonscheduled) virus scan just to see if anything turns up. Also do spyware scans and whatever other ones you can. Also make sure the auto-scan time is sometime the computer will be on - before I had Internet mine was scheduled at 3 AM Fridays or something and did about one scan every 6 months.

I'm searching my CivIII folder right now to see if that error is in the actual game in text form. Google turned up nothing. It also might be in cryptic form, though, which can't be searched for.

edit: Nope, nothing turned up. Didn't check the CD, though. Hopefully someone else is familiar with the problem.

A solution for the freeze and "back to desktop" problem under Vista (and XP):
(I tested it on Railroads!, Supreme Commander, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Civilization III (and it worked(for me)))

The problem analysis and the solution from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

"Operating systems based on Microsoft Windows NT technologies have always provided applications with a flat 32-bit virtual address space that describes 4 gigabytes (GB) of virtual memory. The address space is usually split so that 2 GB of address space is directly accessible to the application and the other 2 GB is only accessible to the Windows executive software."
etc:
It is a solveable "memory specific problem" that could not allocate more than 1,98GB RAM to 32bit applications.

(a few searches for Large_Address_Aware later)

A tool that was formed for Supreme Commander (and adds the Large_Address_Aware handler to any *.exe "userfriendly")
http://files.filefront.com/3GB_enabler2zip/;6791818;;/fileinfo.html
http://rs62.rapidshare.com/files/23252938/3GB_Enabler.zip

What to do:
[All]
Download the 3Gb_enabler2.zip (links above)
unzip it to a user friendly location (c:\3GB)
copy your "Civ3Conquests.exe" to your "friendly location" (c:\3GB\Civ3Conquests.exe)
(make sure the exe is not copy protected)
open your command prompt (cmd.exe)
locate your "friendly" (cd c:\3GB\)

add the Large_Address_Aware handler to your exe
(editbin.exe /LARGEADDRESSAWARE Civ3Conquests.exe)


[XP]
"First you need to tell XP that it can use more than 2GB of RAM for applications.
Manually edit your boot.ini file by adding " /3GB /Userva=2900" to your boot.ini (no quotes). Your boot.ini is normally read only and you will need to change that temporarily while you edit it.
To Edit it manually you can find it on the root of your system drive or
go to system properties/advanced tab, settings under 'startup and recovery' section, then hit edit."

you can also use /Userva=3072

[Vista[32bit]]
run
BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 2900

or

BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 3072


[Vista[64bit]]
has no problem allocating up to 4Gb RAM to a 32bit application

---
(oh and do not forget to restart after that)
---
Attention:
CivIII runs fine now ... but if you [Alt][ TAB] or [ALT][F4] it will crash
(no problems with Railroads! , S.T.A.L.K.E.R ... yet...)

: Ran game as: "compatible with XP SP2"
:
: Also ran game with: "Administrater".
:
: Worked like a charm.

Well now I can play civIII! My problem had nothing to to with Vista. It has to do most likely with Bell-Sympatico Security Services: MSN Premium. Explanation: It turns out that when I open my pc, I just have to make sure that I launch Conquests before MSN Premium turns on. Easy as it takes just a little while before MSN is activ but plenty of time to launch the game. Now, if I decide to run the game after doing others things on my pc, like now. I won't be able to run the game and will get "CIV3 HAS STOPPED WORKING -CHECK ...''. The final solution to resolve the matter will be to have my pc protected with the usual essentiels of Windows Security & free anti-virus program of avast! Home Edition. This should do the job just well. I will desinstall MSN and save 10$ CDN/monthly. Hopefully my experience will help others. Thanks.

Its called uninstalling :lol: but yes Danside you should go with a Gmail account. Its free, 2.5+ gigs of storage, and best thing is that its Google ^_^

And then if you wanted to still use MSN messenger thats easy because you have to do is sign up for a .net account using the gmail email account.

Good luck my friend and hope it all works out for you in the end

Glad you got it sorted! I was just about to say that Civ3 works absolutely fine in Vista... but there you go!

Don't know much about Vista, but I do know that Civ3 needs to be run as administrator. Make sure you're the admin or running it as admin when playing the game.

This isn't true at all.

Why does every1 have vista problems... It wont even run for me and it has to be vista... or my dell pc

scracth this my bro got on my acc but thunder the answer to ure Q is undder ure post

Civ3 runs fine in Vista. What problems are you having exactly?

Okay.. first of all i dont remember posting that.. my bro mustve gotten on my acc imma change my pass. But since you asked i think it was my fault.

Ojay so i put the cd in instakked fine and asked me bout gamespy and i did it and i had to reastrt so i did and i couldnt play it so i uinstakekd it and tried to reinstall but i cant. it pops up with modify repair or uninstall. i cant select anything in modify. reapir seems not to work and uninstall.. didnt i do it....

and wen i go to control panel uninstall programs there is something about civ 3 and wen i click on it it does the same thing modify reapir uninstall. I think i ened to get ris of that but how...

yaya i said in my post that it was prob the gamepsy i dont doubt that for a second. Runs fine on my older comp but locks up ( does on every game on my old comp ) so it runs fine. So i think you in advance for your help.

its not conqusts thing its Civilization 3 Gold edition Multiplayer

This is why I still use Windows 2000.

This is why I still use Windows 2000.

What a wonderfully obnoxious and unhelpful comment :goodjob:

I can't get it to run on Vista now, either. It was running 16 hours ago, and now I can only get my saved files (any of them) to load when I start a new game first. And then it quits working within a few minutes. :(

I've tried reinstalling (without GameSpy), both C3C and the 1.22f patch, tried running in Windows 2000 Compatibility Mode, am running as an administrator, and have UAC turned off. Disconnecting from the Net didn't help. I'm running a virus scan now with the latest updates installed.

Here's the information about the crash:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Civ3Conquests.exe
Application Version: 1.21.0.0
Application Timestamp: 406ddbb2
Fault Module Name: Mp3dec.asi
Fault Module Version: 3.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 3ac63308
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00001951
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 2d64
Additional Information 2: a1bd235bafc52f89e019392df0e5061f
Additional Information 3: 9d2b
Additional Information 4: f0a312bd5565890a75035cb1717ffb97

I'm considering nuking Vista and using the recovery partition to re-install, then disabling automatic updates, but would prefer a slightly less-drastic solution.

The only thing other than Vista updates I can think of that might have caused a problem is the DirectX update released 7/31/2007 that I installed so Civ4 1.74 would work, although I don't know why it worked 16 hours ago if that was the problem.

I also looked into that Mp3dec.asi. It didn't seem to matter whether the C3C music was playing as to whether it crashed. A search of my computer revealed Mp3dec.asi is part of several other programs I have installed, including Port Royale, Railroad Tycoon II, Tropico, and Age of Mythology. At some point I'll see if those are still working properly.

The other thing in that info that stands out is the Application Version is 1.21. Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be 1.22 with the 1.22 patch?

Fault Module Name: Mp3dec.asi

Google says that is an MP3 decoder... Someone playing AOM had a problem, with the same software, and they fixed it here: http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/archive/index.php/t-1383.html

No guarantees, though.

I recommend backing up your files (and your saves from your game!) before you try anything at all.

Searching my Civ3 folders, there is indeed a file called mp3dec.asi. 3, in fact- on each in:
C:\Program Files\Atari\Civilization III Complete\Redist\Win 32
C:\Program Files\Atari\Civilization III Complete\civ3PTW\Redist\Win 32
C:\Program Files\Atari\Civilization III Complete\Conquests\Redist\Win 32

Make sure all those are there.

Unforunately the link from the AoM link is dead, so I don't know if that's a different version of Mp3dec.asi or not. I tried Railraod Tycoon II, and so far it's working fine, even with loaded games. So I checked the file properties for each program's Mp3dec.asi

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s193/Quintillus/Mp3dec_Conquests.pnghttp://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s193/Quintillus/Mp3dec_RT2.png

And AoM's, though I haven't tested it yet:

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s193/Quintillus/Mp3dec_AoM.png

There are two differences: created date, and access date. Modified is when the company last made a change. Created is when I installed the program, at least for RT2 and Civ. Note that I just re-installed Civ on Tuesday and it didn't help. Size is the exact same.

To see if changes had been made to the files that didn't affect the size in bytes, I opened each in an MS-DOS Edit window. Scrolling down twice, I took screenshots of the command.com window and saved them. As you can see, the two files are identical, at least at this point. Presumably they are the whole length.

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s193/Quintillus/Mp3dec_CivIII_Command.png
http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s193/Quintillus/Mp3dec_RT2_Command.png

But not being sure, my next step will be to substitute the Railroad Tycoon II Mp3dec.asi file for the Civ3Conquests one. If that doesn't work, I'll look for another version (the other four on my computer also being the exact same size).

edit: Probably ought to add the Railroad Tycoon II was playing all sounds, including the mp3 music files, perfectly.

edit: After reinstalling I also tried using just the 1.20 patch instead of 1.22, to no avail. I can't use pre-1.20 because pre-1.20 can't read post 1.20 saves.

It occured to me that the problem could be loading that one individual save onto a different machine, with a different OS. So I started up a game in Vista, played 13 turns or so, saved it, quit, and loaded it. It kept loading fine, which worried me. But I played a few more turns, and then it crashed. Yay! I don't usually want a program to crash, but this time it was good!

It gave a different Fault Module this time, though:

jgl.dll

I haven't looked into what this is, but I'm almost positive now the root of the problem is with Vista. Another oddity is that even though Civ loaded the saves, they didn't appear in the Conquests\Saves folder when I went there - I'd planned to copy them to my XP machine and see if they played correctly there. Strange.

One more update, maybe it'll shed some light on the problem.

I mentioned at the end of the last post that the saved games weren't appearing. They just aren't in the Conquests\Saves folder. I loaded up Conquests once more, after rebooting, and this time the Korea saves I'd made weren't seen by Civ, either.

It looks like there's something messed up with creating and loading saves.

While browsing CFC, I found one more instance of this happening, on Page 11 of the Civ III Mac Technical Support. Here's a link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5660964&postcount=292). It describes perfectly what was happening with me, only I had Vista instead of Mac OS 9.2.2.

The other possibility is it has something to do with my graphics card. I have an nVIDIA GeForceM 8600GT, with 256 MB of DDR2 RAM, on my laptop, and DirectX 10, along with the Vista-compatible-but-not-the-same-as-the-original version of DirectX 9 (Direct3D 9Ex?). The problem might be with that DirectX 10 is not backwards-compatible, and I'm not sure how Vista handles that with a DX10 card and DX9 applications. Not sure why that'd be causing issues with saved games, an Mp3 dll, or jgl.dll.

I'm still not sure what jgl.dll does - neither Google nor Jeeves gave me a quick answer. Chieftess mentioned something about it as, "the dreaded jiggle" in another post in Tech Support, though.

The other possibility is something with copy protection. When I tried to load CivIII on a Windows 98 VM within Vista it hanged on the splash screen, which according to CFC's CivIII Technical Issues FAQ indicates a copy-protection issue. This is the third machine I've installed Vanilla on, and second for Conquests, if that would cause an issue. Fourth and third if you count the native Vista install. But the Vista install did get past the splash screen with no problems.

Those are my three guesses as to the source of the problem. Thanks for any ideas/solutions.

Oh, and does anyone know if Mac CivIII Conquests can read saves made in the Windows version, based on .biq files made in the Windows Conquests editor? 'Cause I realized MacOS + MacCiv is cheaper than a full retail of Windows, though I'd have to check with Apple to see if I could run it without problems. Edit: Nope, has to be an Apple-labeled PC. Wonder if I can get Apple to label my PC? Y'know, get them to put a little Apple sticker on it.

--------

Edit: A complete re-install of the OS has Civ working again. Not sure what was wrong, possibly a driver? Whatever the case, I'm leaving the defaults on as much as reasonably possible to avoid re-triggering the problem.