Hi, hope somebody can help. I've had the same problem for months now: a while back I had a problem downloading a patch (the latest warlords patch). The program crashed and I had to re-install the programs (CIV IV and Warlords). Following the re-install I still couldn't start the programs ... I had a missing .DLL message. After having contacted 2K's support I acquired the proper .dll and I thought everything was o.k. . I re-installed the vanilla programs for Civ and Warlords and they both seemed to work fine. As soon as I went online to get patches (e.g. the 1.74 for Civ) the programs will not start. I get the startup page and the screen resets it's resolution and then I get a Windows error message: windows has encountered a problem and will shut down the program (or something like that). 2K has dropped me like a hot potato and following a re-install of the basic Civ IV program I notice that some things are not right: sounds missing, graphics weird etc. I'm frustrated because the programs worked great for months!

Hope somebody can help

P.S I'm running windows XP with plenty of memory

does it ask you to send an error report? if so click on show report and post the upper part of it.
I assume you will need to reinstall but I would like to make sure what errors are there beforehand...

Welcome to Civfanatics :band: [party]

This is what it contains:
AppName: civilization4.exe AppVer: 1.7.4.0 ModName: civilization4.exe
ModVer: 1.7.4.0 Offset: 0067aeea

Hope it's enough

I've added my dxdiag file. Anyone have any ideas?

please open:
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\sid meier's civilization 4\civilizationIV.ini
and
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\warlords\civilizationIV.ini
and change the follwowing entries so that they look as posted:


; Set to 1 for no python exception popups
HidePythonExceptions = 0

; Enable the logging system
LoggingEnabled = 1

; Enable synchronization logging
SynchLog = 1

; Overwrite old network and message logs
OverwriteLogs = 1

; Enable rand event logging
RandLog = 1

; Enable message logging
MessageLog = 1
then start a Vanilla game and crash it. then start a warlords game and crash it, then post the following as a zip file:
all contents of:
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\sid meier's civilization 4\logs\
and
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\warlords\logs\

Here are the logs as requested. Thanks for the help

those error logs do not contain any errors - it would have been too easy if they did :(
could you tell me the name of the dll that was missing and how did you get it? was it a directx thing by any chance?

Yep was a directX thing. The file was d3dx9_32.dll. As to how I got it: I checked the forum for a similar problem and somebody had posted a link to (I think) the Microsoft website. Also when I contacted 2X technical support the first thing they had me do was verify that I had the latest DirectX. Also, the program has started randomly crashing on me while I playing. No messages, no warning, the program just closes.

Yep was a directX thing. The file was d3dx9_32.dll. As to how I got it: I checked the forum for a similar problem and somebody had posted a link to (I think) the Microsoft website. Also when I contacted 2X technical support the first thing they had me do was verify that I had the latest DirectX. Also, the program has started randomly crashing on me while I playing. No messages, no warning, the program just closes.

just on the off-chance that you do not have the newest DirectX release, here is a link to Microsoft's webinstaller (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en).
I am afraid I don't have much more to add - with no hint at what might cause it its not easy to pinpoint it and find a solution :(