Hi there. I realise having your first post a cry for help isn't exactly original, but you do have a nice place here :goodjob: (been lurking for a while now), and well, I need help :)

Now then, the thing is that I got BtS on monday, played hard monday and tuesday (ca 12 hours total) with few problems. Only the occasional ctd that I've grown accustomed to. No big deal.

But on wednesday I got my net connection set up in my apartment, and it works fine. And then Civ(BtS) started to freeze up my PC, requireing a reboot. This happens usually as soon as within 15 minutes of starting the game, no later than half an hour. It happens during gameplay, from the main menu, when I'm actively playing or the game is idling while I do other stuff, both in fullscreen and window mode, and whether it's singlepalyer or MP. Completely random. Reloading a save lets me play past the point where it froze last time with no difficulty (except of course it will freeze up soon enough at a later point). Now I have seen that others have had this same thing, and I have tried various ini-settings, I have disabled the firewall (even though civ is set to an exception and I can't see what this would have to do with singleplayer anyway), and I always play on the lowest settings as my pc isn't that great (though more than adequate). I do have the latest drivers I'm fairly certain, I've tried reinstalling the game (and it's storebought and proper, not as much as a no-cd crack), but the only thing that makes the game not freeze up is disabling my internet connection.

Now I am quite certain it's something to do with the net, because when I have it disabled I haven't seen any freezing, this was true before I got it hooked up wednesday and it is true still when I disable it. I had a 5+ hour continious game yesterday, no trouble at all, with the connection disabled. Fairly compelling evidence seeing as it otherwise will freeze reliably between a few minutes after fireing up the game and half an hour. Always.

I am at work now, but will come back with system specs when I get home. But any input and speculation from techsavvy people would be greatly appreciated :)

Ok, my PCI card is an SMC WPCIT-G, and see also the dxdiag file for more info.

Other than that, I have searched this forum, and elsewhere, and found various people with freezes but not really many answers on what to actually do with it (although as mentioned above I have tried various things). Add to that my belief in having narrowed down the culprit to something related to my pci card, or the network itself somehow, possible solutions like bad ram doesn't seem likely (mentioning this as I have had bad ram some years back and know how frustrating that can be :cry: ).

Oh, and should I try the 3.03-patch? Reading about it here it sounds dreadful, and I don't have vista either (which it seems tailored to).

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you would have said so already, but by any chance does your game ever make it so you can only see the leader's teeth and eyes? Or make it ultra-dark?

Never had that leaderhead-bug, no.

I have seen a darkness bug of sorts, where all units and ice gradually grow dark until pitch black (only units and ice, lightlevels on other stuff stayed normal). It has been a while since I have seen this though, months, and restarting the game always fixed it then.

Bleh. Run DxDiag for me, and put the information here. I probably won't be able to get back to a computer screen for a little while, however, as I'm embarking on vacation.

DxDiag should be there in the second post, I can see it from here at least :) Though maybe I misunderstood and you are referring to something else, wouldn't be the first time, hehe.

And any help is greatly appreciated. At least I get to play Civ, if I disable the net, but I was keen on playing vs a friend of mine, not just solo.

I found a way to stop the freezing without disabling the net.

On the disc that came with the network adapter there were a program I was "supposed" to use to hook up to the net (SMC-card, program called SMCsomethingnumbers, recommended option). But I couldn't get that program to work, there wasn't any way I could see of actually making it hook up. So I ditched it and connected via the built-in windows feature (choose network, type code, and I'm on).

But trying to figure this program out and some random experimentation back and forth showed that Civ4 won't freeze if I have that program installed and running when I play (online or singleplayer). The odd thing is that I still have no idea how to get that program to work, I have to override it and use the windows-option. Then, after I've connected around it, the program lights up green and proudly proclaims that the net is on and connection is excellent. Bloody no-good leech :crazyeye:

So net off: no freezing
Net on via windows: freezing within a few minutes, always
Net on via windows with stupid program leeching in the background: no freezing

I've tested several times by removing and reinstalling this program and playing both SP and MP, there can be no doubt it is the way I typed above. I find this highly peculiar, but there you go.

addendum: last two days my net connection haven't worked, meaning there haven't been any signal coming in to the house (provider is a bunch of prats I guess). But I've had the net + the aforementioned program up waiting for the net to come back. And then Civ freezes on me just now, under conditions where I deemed it safe. But when I get the PC back on, I check and the net is back in working order. Weird stuff.

Further, Civ and other games now freezes the pc on occasion no matter what, viewing videos sometimes freeze (though only the video, not the entire system) in the beginning, and music freezes frequently as well. Must be the card. Don't buy SMCWPCIT-G, is my advice.